When Did Treating People Badly Become a Management Strategy?

Someone is at work one day and then suddenly they are “no longer in the business.”

I've grown sick of hearing that phrase!

I've had people approach me to help them navigate what can be a pretty awful process. I'm not an employment lawyer and don't pretend to be, so my role has largely been helping them get their thoughts together, talking things through and signposting them to their union or proper legal advice.

Maybe that's why the phrase “no longer in the business” bothers me so much.

We are talking about a person who may have worked for an organisation for years, managed teams, supported colleagues and dealt with all the difficult stuff that comes with working in care. And they may not have actually left. They may have been suspended while something is investigated, yet colleagues are told they are “no longer in the business” and the person themselves may be told not to discuss what has happened. I understand confidentiality, but what I struggle with is when confidentiality becomes isolation.

Imagine being told not to contact the people you have worked with every day, some of whom have become trusted friends over the years. You don't know what they have been told, what they think has happened or whether you will ever go back. Your work phone and email have been blocked or disconnected, your normal routine has disappeared and so has contact with people who may have been an important part of your support network.

What do we think that does to someone's mental health? Particularly when they haven't been found to have done anything wrong. Of course organisations need to suspend people in certain circumstances while concerns are investigated. That may be necessary to protect the people using the service, the investigation, other staff or indeed the person who has been suspended. Temporarily stepping somebody away from work can absolutely be the right decision. But suspension is supposed to be a neutral act while the facts are established. It shouldn't feel like the punishment has already started before anyone has decided whether there is actually anything to answer, and I have seen it feel very much like that.

Then there are the residents and families. Someone they may have known and trusted for years is suddenly not there. Depending on their role, that person may have been the one they went to when they were worried, the person who knew their history or simply a familiar face they expected to see when they came through the door.

Residents and families aren't daft. They notice when someone who has been a big part of a home suddenly disappears. Yet everyone can end up playing a strange game of secret squirrel because nobody is quite sure what they're allowed to say. Clearly, the details of an employment matter are confidential and should remain so. But there is a difference between respecting someone's confidentiality and behaving as though they never existed. It can leave families wondering what has happened, staff feeling awkward when they're asked questions and residents without any real explanation for why someone important to them is suddenly no longer around.

For people living with dementia, learning disabilities or anyone who relies heavily on familiarity and trusted relationships, an unexplained change like this can be particularly difficult. We talk a lot about continuity of care and relationships in social care. That shouldn't suddenly stop mattering because the person who has disappeared happens to be an employee.

There is an impact on the staff who remain too. If managers or colleagues disappear, are suspended or leave following a process, other people will draw their own conclusions. If they have seen someone challenge a decision and then find themselves under scrutiny, it is hardly surprising if they think a little more carefully before saying what they really think. We need staff to raise safeguarding concerns, report mistakes, challenge poor practice and question decisions they don't agree with. We need managers who are prepared to say, “I don't think this is right”, including when the person they are saying it to is more senior than them. We can't keep telling people to speak up while creating workplaces where they have to consider what speaking up might mean for them personally.

If an organisation has repeated suspensions, grievances, negotiated exits, long-term sickness, managers leaving after relatively short periods or experienced people repeatedly leaving, at what point does somebody stop looking at each one as a separate employment matter and ask why it keeps happening? Every one of those decisions may have been justified. But if the pattern were falls, medication errors, safeguarding concerns or complaints, we wouldn't keep looking at each event separately. At some point we'd look for a common factor. Why wouldn't we do the same with our workforce?

If five managers leave, maybe five managers really were the problem. But I'd want to be very sure before accepting that as the explanation. I'd also want somebody with enough independence to ask the question properly.

I've also been on the other side of this. In senior roles I've been expected to manage people in ways that haven't always sat comfortably with me. I've followed decisions that weren't necessarily the decisions I would have made myself, and with hindsight there are things I would do differently. It is probably one of the reasons self-employment suits me. I can challenge something when I don't think it is right, say so when I think we're losing sight of the person involved and, importantly, decide that I don't want to be part of something that doesn't sit comfortably with my own values.

That doesn't mean I shy away from difficult decisions. Far from it. I've suspended people, managed serious performance concerns and dealt with situations where dismissal was absolutely the right outcome. You can do all of that properly without forgetting that the person sitting opposite you is still a person.

People get things wrong. Performance isn't always good enough and behaviour can be unacceptable. An investigation can quite rightly lead to disciplinary action or dismissal.

But an allegation is not a fact. Suspension is not a finding of guilt. Someone challenging a senior decision doesn't automatically make them difficult, and being more senior doesn't mean your version of events should be the only one that gets heard.

There is a lot of talk about staff wellbeing in social care. We have employee assistance programmes, wellbeing initiatives and plenty of advice telling people to look after their mental health. Maybe we need to pay a bit more attention to whether the way we manage people is contributing to the very problems we're then offering them support for. Deal with concerns properly, investigate them fairly and hold people accountable where that is necessary. Protect people when they need protecting, but don't lose sight of the person on the receiving end of the process.

And if an organisation repeatedly finds itself saying that yet another person is “no longer in the business”, somebody really does need to ask why.