I received a workforce adjustment notice while on sick leave. Now what?

Could you please advise what happens to an employee who may have gotten an opting letter following workforce adjustment notification and then the employee is off sick for a month or two? 

The opting letter gives them 120 days to respond. But what if the employee happens to be sick for most of the 120 days? 

Thanks for your response, 
 
—Anonymous 

There is a short and technical answer to your question, but there is also some important context worth pointing out.

No system that deals with hundreds of thousands of lived experiences can build individualized answers for every circumstance, but there are some steps that you can take to feel more confident that you are being given the correct information and that you can do something about it if you aren’t.

I understand from your question that you are past the point of having been notified that your position has been affected and are now being advised that it is being eliminated. Your description suggests that your letter is the one that offers the three options of a 12-month surplus priority entitlement, receiving a transitional support measure (i.e., a payment of salary due to being laid off), or receiving educational support.

If this is the case, the short and technical answer is that an employee who has received that notice is deemed to have opted for Option A (a 12-month surplus priority entitlement) if they have not provided any other valid answer by the end of the 120 days.

If you’re a represented (unionized) employee, this rule is almost certainly included in your collective agreement and is not one that your manager has the right to change on their own.

If you’re an executive, you won’t have a collective agreement and the process is governed by a different directive but is very likely to have similar results.

So that’s the official and technical answer.

The general advice that I have always followed and suggested to others, though, is to research and read everything that you can to understand as much as possible about the processes, directives and policies affecting you.

Your union representative, manager and human resources representatives can all be excellent sources of information and support.

I would offer a shoutout here to all the HR professionals, managers and others involved in supporting affected and laid off employees, but especially to the union representatives who are often volunteers and who have been inundated with requests for support over these past months and who are in many cases personally affected by many of these same challenges.

Almost every single directive or policy that applies to your situation will be posted online — in a collective agreement, a Treasury Board directive, a departmental policy or something similar. If you are asking someone for guidance, ask them to tell you what documents they are using and which ones you should look at.

You may also be surprised at how sophisticated the results are from online search engine requests. You may or may not like the answers that you get, but you may also find options that apply to your specific circumstances that others haven’t thought about and you may also end up with a greater confidence that you haven’t been given the wrong answer to a very important question that will have significant consequences for you.

I offer you my best wishes in dealing with these difficult choices.

— Daniel Quan-Watson, Public Service Confidential