Second guessing job/ cold feet ahead of Occupational Health assessment

Hello @akushla and welcome to the community.

With regards to the new employer if there was an issue with one of your references I would expect them to have spoken to you. I suspect that all they are waiting on now is the ocupational health screening. 

As you want the job I would suggest hanging in there and see what happens. With the right support you will find things a lot easier and less stressfull.

While I fullly understand where you are coming from regarding your health needs and the needs of your family the two are not mutually exclusive. If your health deteriates so does your family situation. So yes you do need the job, but you also need to be mindful of your physical and mental needs, you ignore them at your own peril.

Occupational health in my experience are more interested in helping to keep  you in work, rather than providing reasons why the employer should avoid you or terminate your employment. Not easy, but as your assessment is on Monday why not look at it as having an opportunity to spend more time with your family and enjoy your time with them this weekend and try not to stress too much over things you have little control over.

Hi @akushla

I think I may not have expressed myself well previously, but didn't want the post too long.

Despite being taken on by my current employer on a trainee program to help disabled people who wanted to work in housing I have never had an assessment. For most of the last five years I have had a poor sickness record but at least understanding managers. It was however my current manager who sat down with me to discuss how they could better support me, and requested that my needs be assessed. The person who does the initial assessment however left and it didn't go any further.

She did put in some accomodation, compact hours so I only work four days, with Mondays off, later start which removed the stress of travelling to and from work, I do finish a couple of hours after most of the others in the team, but find this to be some of my most productive time. The option of working from home when travelling is messed up. She also had this put into my contract so it could not be removed without consulting me first. She also turned a blind eye when I bought my own desk stand so I could work parts of the day standing up, which has helped with my sciatica and also on concentration.

I have had a one to one this week with HR as they are moving the office location and this was part of the consultation. So once we move she will arrange a formal assessment so my needs can be properly assessed and any necessary equipment needed will be purchased for me. She said to mention the desk stand and ergonomic keyboard and mouse and how they have helped me so that these can be considered as well as if I need a special chair and any other equipment.

It is the accumulation of these minor changes I have made for myself, along with the changes made by my manager, which have had huge benefits to my physical and mental health and allowed me to concentrate on my work and greatly reduce my stress levels. Recently I was speaking to our IT department and moaning that the printers had not been set up to make it easy to print off and break down larger pdf files into smaller files. I mentioned that I use the free version of PDFSam at home which makes this a lot easier. A couple of weeks later this put on my work laptop. I love this program, and last week upgraded to the professional version at home. But it is a small piece of software that saves me hours of work standing in front of the printer.

I fully appreciate how you are feeling, I was unemployed for around 10 years because of my back, was so convinced I had not got the job when they called to tell me I had been successful I started to thank them for interviewing and giving me the opportunity and had to stop and ask her to repeat what she said. It then took three months to get me started because of issues with the checks - no bank account, no driving license or passport etc.

You have to do what is best for you and your family, for what its worth my advice is hold on and see what happens, if it doesn't work out you have the part time jobs to fall back on. But having an employer who understands and wants to be inclusive  can have a huge affect as to how sustainable the employment will be.

The point I was trying to make is don't sacrifice your physical or mental health to achieve what you want as this will be to everyone's detriment in the long run. I often get criticised for saying this, but as parents we are expected to put our childrens needs first, sometimes that means putting the parents needs first so that they are able to take care of their childrens needs.

What ever you decide I wish you good luck for the future.