Manager crossed the line?

[Bumperstump Cummerbund]

Professor told me today that his immediate manager has put 'needs to exercise more' on his personal development plan. Apparently his days off - which his manager believes are excessive - are because he is unfit and needs to exercise more.

Now, apart from points like 1) He works overtime almost every night due to unworkable timelines on the managers part, which has been brought up time and again; 2) He has told them about me and my current insanity, and 3) His last few days off, over a period of months mind you, have been for gastro, severe bronchitis, and 1 day he spent at the hospital with me after a suicide attempt. Can his manager even DO that, require that he exercise as part of his professional development plan?!

This has gotten me so angry. Professor actually DOES exercise most days on the treadmill, which obviously this guy hasn't asked or he'd know. Even so, he has to take it fairly slowly, having had a back injury and 2 knee operations. But seriously, what does exercise have to do with being a draftsman?!

So yeah, would like to know from someone in HR, what would likely happen if Professor were to object to this part of his 'professional development'?

[starangelk]

I see where you are coming from K but I suspect this is all stemming from the employee trying to initiate an overall well being plan which is common in reviews. Not so sure they have approached or are even identifying things correctly but it was hopefully coming from a good place. The employer can't make him exercise on his days off.

[Bumperstump Cummerbund]

Thanks for that Starangelk, I'll get him to ask about it. He's gonna go to HR today anyway about his pay rise that hasn't gone through, so he can just mention it on the side.

I'm glad he's looking for a new job though, this manager is so dodgy

[Mrs O'M]

I can say that from working in HR this is not something that is able to be placed in a PDR.

There is definetly scope to have a general sit down and chat about health and wellbeing but not during a meeting about work related performance.

If the company wants to actively support (financially and time off) for your hubby to partake in sport, this may be more appropriate. But as the way its done I would raise my eyebrow

[Nai]

From a hr perspective there may be some company policies around health and well being and they may be trying to encourage that but the manager has definitely gone about in the wrong way. It may also be that he has been told to have some sort of discussion with staff but given no guidance as to how to actually do this.

[Bumperstump Cummerbund]

There's a corporate gym there, with free trainer during certain hours. Professor was happy to use it, but then they started getting on his back about jobs taking too long. So he could get the jobs done without causing a delay he started working back, sometimes as late as 9pm, which affected his health because he was exhausted, affected our relationship because we never saw each other. He showed the manager why the jobs were taking so long, to the point of writing down everything that had been missed when it was checked previously, and the manager agreed it wasn't his fault, they needed to have better checking procedures in place.

Since then though, no new procedures have been issued, so the problem continues. Professor is still left redrawing entire jobs because of the shoddy work by previous draftees, and he's still being told he's not working fast enough. So the only time he has for exercise is 5-530 every morning, as soon as he wakes up. It just makes me angry, how dare this manager tell him to exercise when he's not doing his own job anyway?!