Can a manager bring up pregnancy symptoms and grief from a miscarriage during a performance review?

This is a tricky one.

We don't know what your Sick leave policy is like at your work - if it is a fairly generous then there is an argument for your boss that goes something like this:

"We have a sick policy that is above the minimum requirement on the expectation that when you come back to work, you are well and 100% to go"

Furthermore - If it is a large company, there is an expectation that they may have internal mental health resources that can be accessed for things like this.

Doing some reading - specific to Irish law on this - there is the landmark case:

Marta Siudak v Slane Trading Company Limited ADJ-00038952

Which a quick reading is that a Lady had a Miscarriage, had no performance issues formally raised prior, then was dismissed for performance after the miscarriage.

The whole theme of the respondent’s evidence was mostly concerned with retrospectively making a case of underperformance.

And this is where I (obligatory - IANAL) think what is happening to you is on the legal side of the grey area - however, I would not take my not-a-lawyer-especially-not-an-Irish-Employment-Lawyer-lawyer opinion with much credibility.

If you acknowledge that your perfomance during this time was understandably sub-par, the Company is not doing anything wrong by pointing to this. Whilst it is a bit of an Scummy move on the part of the Company to not give any leeway or supporting you through a difficult time - they are not obligated to do so.

Now that is done - what should you do?

Even though I suspect it is legal (albeit barely) - I still think you have a reasonable grounds to raise this to HR - However, if you are going to raise a personal grievance (and again, I think you have a good argument here) - you need to be aware that this may be a CLM (Career Limiting Move) and that you may need to exit the Company in short order.

On the flipside - if you don't raise an issue - the Manager now has a precedent set.

My honest advise? Talk with a local employment lawyer about this - Ask for their input - there may be factors about your unique situation (that you cannot share with us, obviously) that push this from the legal side of the grey area, to the illegal side.

The slogan “I expect 100% from everyone every day.” is pretty ridiculous, anyone would do best to disregard that idea completely. You do admit that your work is behind schedule, and your performance has been fluctuating. It is only reasonable for this to impact your performance review.

After all, a pregnancy is not force majeure; it's a conscious choice to reprioritize your life and to take on near-certain risk of reduced performance on the short and long terms. It will impact your career, unless you already had 60-odd hours per week to spare and were fine barely sleeping for months on end.

Of course it is not appropriate for your manager to lower your performance review based on your personal health issues. It is however appropriate to lower your performance review based on your performance, which has been lower. It is common for these two to get conflated, and doing so does not reflect well on your manager.

Nonetheless it is not purely up to your employer to "just eat it", it is also up to you to plan for your reduced performance, and to adjust expectations. Concretely, here are a few things you can do to mitigate the impact on your career:

• Make clear agreements on what is expected of you. If you can no longer perform as before, which is to be expected in your situation, make clear what your manager can expect from you. Leaving colleagues waiting in the dark under the guise of "I have some personal (health) issues" is not professional. Transfer responsibilities and workload that you cannot guarantee to handle.
• This can of course be difficult to judge in advance. If you are not able to fulfill your duties, communicate this as soon as possible. If you are not delivering work on time, you should have communicated this well before delivery is due.
• Take a sick day if you are experiencing fatigue and dizziness to such an extent that it impacts your performance.
• Take your maternity leave if your miscarriage happened after the 23rd week.
• Don't expect a performance review that is fully 'excellent', because that's simply not what you're delivering anymore. Managing your workload and your colleagues' expectations well should still get you a 'sufficient' or 'good' review.

I also work in Ireland, and let me start with the normal process - without discrimination claim first.

From what you wrote, you have been definitely bullied. Sadly, as you may know, Ireland is not developed enough when it comes to worker rights so there is nothing you can do about it. But if you felt depressed, you can take a medical cert and rest to feel better. (For future you may try to file a workplace related sickness complaint, but it's very hard to prove.) If they keep pushing the issue and issue a warning, you can appeal to this warning. And as worst case scenario, if you be dismissed you can file an Unfair Dismissal complaint. With this claim, you can either get your money back from unpaid times or get your job back though. So best action is to collect & create evidence about you addressed your miscarriage and grief process.

About discrimination, did he literally referred your miscarriage and grief and disregarded during the conversation? Then this falls under discrimination by gender, and you have the right to file a complaint.

If he did not say explicitly, but you felt that he bullies you while ignoring your miscarriage and grief process with that intention, you may still make a claim but it's way harder to prove. For example, you may have to refer another colleague with same performance but doesn't get the remarks you received. Or you can compare with the previous performances of your own. Even your miscarriage and grief process is partially involved as a reason of the bullying, it counts. (i.e. While your manager was always a bully and truly cares about your underperformance, but you sensed he is more sensitive gender-related performance issues.)

Long story short: Don't have to care any comments, continue working. And see your doctor if this impacted your health. If those comments return to official warnings, document everything and appeal to them, and worst case scenario, if you get dismissed, make a claim based on the evidence - let's hope things won't go that far.

"Lacked a can-do attitude" may or may not be related to the medical issues. If it is, and you have doctor's note confirming your limitations, that's conflating two different issues and unjustified. If they were both simply mentioned in the same interview, they could be separate concerns with overlapping results and it might not be unreasonable. Perhaps unwise, due the the risk of appearing to tie them together, but ...

Either way, if you really think you were judged unreasonably, politely ask his manager to review the decision. If that doesn't help, you need to think about risk vs. reward in pushing it further, and may want to think about changing departments... Or companies.

I take the side of your manager. At high level discussions, when we give ballpark esitmates we say mandays. we dont consider somebody is pregnant/ going through divorce. When we expect work to be delivered we expect each to deliver, irrespective of their personal issues.

Professionally, i try to keep my personal issues away from my manager/ office. If things dont permit, i would rather take leave or accept a bad performance review.

At this stage, what can save you is company policies towards employee. eg: HR handbook/ your local laws.

[edit 1] All points in the comments are valid and right. Clearly you are telling when performance is going down, for health reasons, it should be accommodated by the company.

Agreed, in that case, you shouldn't expect equal appraisal during annual review (which is the case here), --because somebody in the team delivered 100% while you had delivered only 50%. Now during appraisl how would you say that you delivered 50%? you have to recall the person had health issues (pregnancy this case)