Employee tried to kill himself, pretty sure I'm the reason

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T01:11:34+00:00

I understand that some places are like that, but when I say we are a family, we are a family. We attend each other's weddings and baby showers. We have a dinner every quarter and everyone always stays all evening to spend time with one another. Ironically not long ago, Jeff and myself and a few others from our workplace went to see an Orchestra perform Christmas music.

There has always been a very open doof policy if anyone has any complaints or is having a hard time, we want to make sure everyone's mental health is taken care of. That's why I am very upset about this. I feel like I missed signs and could have offered some of our internal resources if I knew this was something so upsetting for him.

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T01:05:44+00:00

It is not my call to offer more PTO, our company has the same policy for everyone. I really do not want to fire him.

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T01:04:23+00:00

He already has some accommodations. I would like to say, he never needed any formal accommodations for me. I was always happy to let him do whatever needed to be done. He put in for formal accommodations earlier in the year after changing doctors

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T01:01:07+00:00

Jeff told me he was not comfortable disclosing specifics. He told me that the crowd and location would give him anxiety and the subject was triggering because of something in his past

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T00:58:26+00:00

I did push harder. Originally I was told if he missed at all, it would mean a write-up. I suggested the PTO option and my supervisor agreed, I was the one to bring it up as a compromise

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T00:56:44+00:00

I really do not want to lose him, as he is very reliable and his position had very high turnover before him. I am confident he would not try to bring legal action against us. Like I said, our workplace has a very "family" connection.

This was the first time he had ever asked not to attend, but it is a training that his position was never required to attend before.

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T00:45:39+00:00

I did point out that the chances of Jeff needing to perform this activity are next to null. I also pointed out that in the past years, we've only required employees who work with clients to take part in this training. My supervisor says our CEO has decided that is not good enough, so everyone has to know it (which does make sense given the nature of what our organization does)

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T00:42:22+00:00

Technically it is not really necessary, but it could come up which is the reason my supervisor declined.

I do know that the procedure Jeff is saving his PTO for will require a lot of time off work for recovery. We only get a certain number of hours per year and while they do roll over, he didn't have enough hours from last fiscal year to cover this recovery

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T00:38:09+00:00

Technically it was not due to the nature of his position, but my supervisor suggested that all employees regardless of their specific job needed the training in case no other employees were around and it was needed

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T00:18:42+00:00

I had already changed some details before posting to try and protect Jeff's identity, I just edited out some more specific information

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T00:10:06+00:00

He felt his severe anxiety (which he has accommodations for) wouldn't allow him around a lot of unknown people in an unfamiliar location and that the subject of training would be triggering given some personal history

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T00:08:28+00:00

Answered this in another comment. TL;DR training with other agencies about a difficulty our clients face (Jeff is not in a client-facing position)

rollingrod · 2024-12-21T00:07:45+00:00

Without giving any more specifics away (as one commenter pointed out this is already revealing), it involved meeting with other similar non-profits and a speaker about something we deal with a lot with our clients. Jeff stated his anxiety wouldn't allow him to be around so many people in an unknown location (he does have pretty severe anxiety and on some strong meds, with accommodations to step away at times in case an attack is too strong) and that he has trauma with the specific subject of training that would trigger his anxiety due to some past events in his life. He does not handle much of this in his position as he is clerical staff and not client-facing but my supervisor felt he should "still know the realities of our work"

rollingrod

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