Work related issue. I have decided to give up my current role as very demanding. I have found a less stressful role and a lot more local. Salary will be considerably lower, but I’m ok with that. However, current employer has advised I’m covered by income insurance policy and critical care. I am aware of what these are, but I’m not sure what sensible thing to do is? If I accept, does it mean I cannot work in a lesser role? Does it mean I will have to accept to work as and when I can in current role? I feel I can work in a lesser demanding job, hence the change. But I don’t feel I can do current role anymore. Advice greatly appreciated. Want to do moral and correct thing for all.
Hi,
I don’t think income protection will pay out purely because you decide you can’t do it any more. There would have to be agreement by their assessors that you’re incapable of continuing in that role. It’s not normally a personal decision by the employee alone.
It would depend entirely on the terms of the scheme whether you’re allowed to accept less demanding work elsewhere. Some policies may only require that you’re unable to continue in your present role. But it’s probably more likely these days that they will specify you should be unable to work at all. After all, why should income protection cut in, if you are able to go straight out and get another income - even if not as good? You would have to check the exact rules and wording of your scheme. If you get another job, it may well reduce or negate your entitlement.
If the scheme is very generous, it may well be worth persevering in your present job, until all parties accept you can’t continue. Although it’s not very nice in the short-term (you have to persevere at something you don’t feel you can do, until everyone agrees with you) - it might work out better for you financially in the long-term. The insurance money, if it’s genuine income replacement, should pay at the rate you were earning when you retired through ill health, which means it would be more than if you took the lower-paying job.
Also, not to be morbid about it, but how long do you predict you would last in the easier job? Hard to tell, without a crystal ball, but if things continued to deteriorate, and that also became too demanding after a couple of years, wouldn’t you have done better to stick with the first job, and claim the insurance?
You see, I can envisage you switching to a lower-paid job, having to quit that after a while, and being left with no salary AND no insurance money (no guarantee that the new post has an equivalent insurance scheme - or if it does, it may be subject to a certain number of years’ accrued service).
I don’t think there’s a moral choice to be made here. It’s not “immoral” to opt for a lower-paid job, hence turning your back on a potentially generous insurance scheme. It just might be shooting yourself in the foot rather.
Tina
My husband has work-based Income Protection - it pays him 75% of salary LESS any IB/ESA he is entitled to. This pays until he’s 60 BUT he is not allowed to gain employment elsewhere. When he first started claiming (over 6 years ago) he would have been able to get a very undemanding job - but now virtually bedbound. As the other reply said - you have to weigh up how long you may continue working in a lesser role for. For my husband that would have been less than 3 years - and we would now have been left on benefits only.
For my husband it gave him the opportunity in those first couple of years to spend time with the children (who at that time were babies), he spent time documenting his 10s of thousands of photos - all the things he felt he may not be able to do later (that wasn’t being morbid, that was planning - and as it turned out, he was right).
I don’t think this is a moral dilemma - just what you feel is best in the LONG term!
My HR people suggested I apply while I was still working full time - I was off sick at the time. If I’d gone part time that would have been the salary they’d use to calculate how much I’d recieve. I applied for it while I was officially a full-time worker on the salary of the job I used to be able to manage. I, probably predicably, got worse so I’m glad I did. I want to know how to get the 75% - I get about half…
Not that I’m complaining at all! I get some money without having to go through the lovely DWP hoops and nightmares.