Here We Go 'Round Again
Aug. 19th, 2022 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teylaminhThis is something of a processing post, and it's pretty much for my own benefit, so you can ignore it if you want.
I have mentioned this mostly via threaded rants on Twitter, but I feel like I need to hash this out more fully, because it's helpful to put things into context to get them out of my brain.
Long story short: I am in the process of job-hunting again because my current job has finally sent me over the edge. This is, quite frankly, the cherry on top of the shit cake that has been 2022 so far, and I will probably have to save the rest of its many joys for the annual Year-in-Review Meme, sadly.
I realise I have not actually updated in a while, and I didn't want my first post in ages to be a work-related offload, but this is what the universe chose to throw at me so here we are. I'll put it all under a cut, because it got long - so, fair warning, it's very wordy and probably full of jargon, sorry.
I'll have been in this job for ten years come March 2023, which is the longest I've been in any job so far. I was at Legal for six years before I moved on. Many of my colleagues have been around much, much longer - decades, in some cases. That is some of the context in which this all takes place.
I should also point out that, outside of work, all of this has been happening within a maelstrom of injury, bereavement, and relentless energy supplier fuckwittery, as well as the current political hellscape overriding all of our existences, because Life likes to make things as difficult as possible.
The main, overriding context is that there has been a Business Support Redesign slowly bubbling away under the surface for the past two years. This was initially scheduled for 2020 but then *gestures to Covid* happened so it got put on the back burner until everything was more stable. The outcome of the redesign finally got shared with everyone at some recent consultations. In brief, that outcome is this:
Part of the Grade 3 job description includes "supervision of staff" - not so much direct line management, but things like dealing with leave/sickness, monthly supervisions and duty rotas. The issue is that none of the current Gr3 staff are actually doing this. On the other side of the coin, they have decided that Grade 2 staff can take minutes of "any meeting". Currently Gr2 staff can generally be expected to produce things like team meeting notes, whereas Gr3 staff have responsibility for more complex meetings.
The upshot of all this is that essentially, all of the Gr2 and 3 staff will be redeployed across the service, with Gr2's providing minuting cover and Gr3's being responsible, from what I can tell for dealing with all the pointless bits of management that the current Gr4 Team Leaders don't have time to deal with. (Or, in the alternative, they will become PA's.) The Gr4's would then be responsible for the more complicated things like dealing with ongoing sickness absence, appraisals, disciplinaries, etc.
In short, what this means for us is that our team of highly skilled, dedicated and long-serving minute-takers will be uprooted and shifted to different service areas, and the Gr2 staff will be brought on board to provide minuting cover instead. We can request to remain within CP as part of our expression of interest, but there are no guarantees.
Allegedly an example of our minutes was sent off as part of the consultation, upon which basis they decided that Gr2 staff would be more than capable of producing them. Frankly, the minutes are only a very small part of the process, and not a reflection on what actually happens within the meeting and beyond, but they have no way of knowing that because they haven't actually spoken to us.
They have reassured us there are "no job losses" and that we won't be in comptetition with our colleagues, but that's obviously nonsense. Yes, we are not physically losing our jobs, but we are not going to be doing the jobs we applied and interviewed for (most people started before the PSS takeover, when they would have been separate jobs in separate service areas, although technically they still are even under the Business Support umbrella). We are very likely to be in competition with each other if we all want to work for the same teams. I'm not denying that some people might want a change, but equally there will be people who have been in post for aeons, and there's a bloody reason for that!
The deadline for completing the consultation (I use that term loosely because they have not really consulted us) is 22nd August, with a deadline of 23rd September for submitting our expression of interest. This is not the "six months" they initially told us it would be, because they want to get all the Gr3's in post before moving the Gr2's, which also begs the question as to who is going to train up all the Gr2's in the relevant processes if there's nobody in the team who understands them. As of yet we have not been sent the new job / team descriptions in order for us to decide where we want to work, and I'm really hoping they get circulated shortly after the August deadline, because I'm going away in September and don't want this hanging over my head for my entire holiday.
Needless to say, nobody in the team is happy about the decision, and at least three of us are job-hunting as a result. We have just had our appraisals set up for the year and everyone is completely demotivated to fill them in, because it seems pointless. "Supervision Skills" training, specifically for Gr3 Business Support staff, has recently dropped on the internal training website - so that will likely end up on all of our appraisals.
There are several massive ironies at play here: the first is that the reason we don't supervise staff at present is because of how the current management structure is set up. As it stands, even the Gr4 team leaders don't have any authority as managers and can't make decisions without going through six million levels of upper management first. I literally do not understand how Gr3 staff are supposed to "supervise" anyone in those conditions.
The second is the thing about doing "rotas". In our case, that's our weekly minuting list, which used to be a Gr3 task within each area team before we all got centralised, until someone high up decided that was Too Much Responsibility and added it to the Gr4 workload instead.
The third thing is that apparently the rationale for the Gr2 staff taking the minutes is so it creates a "whole process", as opposed to the two separate teams we have currently, where G2 staff deal with booking the conferences and inviting everyone, and Gr3 staff do the minutes and associated meeting tasks. Before BSS was a thing, the "whole process" was a CP Administrator task, and - again - they then took the convening aspect off us, to free us all up to minute an additional conference each week rather than actually employing more staff.
So, basically, the outcome of the redesign is what has clinched my decision to leave, but in truth I have been semi-actively job hunting for a few months anway because of other Dickheadery which has been going on in the meantime. I'll try and break this down into a monthly chronology, but apologies that stuff may be the wrong order - honestly, this year, and the past few months especially, has been A Lot.
April
So, this marked the start of Year 3 of working from home full-time, and after two years of being able to do that I am more than happy to do it for the rest of my life. It has massively improved my work/life balance, I am more productive, and I don't have to interact with idiot colleagues nearly as much as before. If nothing else, the ongoing pandemic and various lockdowns have done nothing but cement the fact I am a massive introvert. Commuting is pointless, stressful, and a waste of time and resources.
Actually, I need to go about twelve months further back, to May 2021, when a select few of us (four minute-takers and four Principal Officers) were volunteered to take part in a minuting pilot project, with an eventual goal of streamlining the minutes and making them shorter. This was... kind of pointless, to be honest, because it felt very much like they had made decisions about things and our input was not valid - if we asked questions or pointed out things that could be different, the discussion would just circle back to the original rationale. Also, my working relationship with the business analyst (a former BITSO in the team, and Gr2 admin before that) is problematic to say the least - I find her incredibly triggering, because she doesn't listen properly, deliberately misinterprets what I'm saying, and always needs the last word on everything. We did have a couple of productive 1:1 sessions but for the most part, I found the process very frustrating.
From November 2021 the new minuting standard went live for everyone, to much confusion because Change Is Impossible, but since then we have finally gotten a handle on things and the minutes are much quicker to produce - although (as expected) some colleagues have taken the fact of them needing to be shorter as carte blancheto do the absolute bare minimum.
So, jump forward again to April 2022, when one of our more recent PO's got herself a massive backlog of minutes to sign off and, essentially, decided to take out her stress on the minute-takers. I did not know this aspect at the time, but from my perspective she sent me into a massive rage/anxiety tailspin by telling me to make the minutes shorter, to a literally impossible expectation, and caused me to spend three whole days doubting my professional integrity and my ability to do my job. My TL did not help this situation by basically taking her side, though I now understand she was dealing with the fall-out from two other colleagues at the same time. The thing that sent me over the edge was a comment from the PO that she needed a "summary - not a word for word account", and I will never know how I managed to rein myself in from the email I desperately wanted to send.
The same evening, we found out that Paul's brother Darren had died unexpectedly, to everyone's utter shock. I was off work for two days as a result, and needless to say it put things into perspective a little bit, but I do wonder if my reaction to the PO's stupidity was (again) my brain trying to give me a warning. When I got back the following Monday, my TL informed me I was not the only minute-taker the PO had pissed off with the same tactics, and it had been escalated to her manager.
(Since then she has sent me lots of compliments on my minutes. At this point it just feels like empty noise considering we are obviously not appreciated within the wider context of Business Support.)
May / June
Mid-May, the TL called a last-minute team meeting with no context. In a brief pre-meeting discussion, some of us guessed it was probably about going back into buildings, and that bore fruit.
The Assistant Head was also present for the first half of the meeting so she could share the decision, which was that "some" of the conferences were going to be held in person and there was an expectation of minute-takers attending in person also. We made our grievances about this vocally known, and after the AH left the meeting we continued to offload to the TL and raise various questions.
She promised to compile a list and send it off, and to date none of our concerns have really been dealt with. Bearing in mind, we are dealing with this within the context of our current UK Government "guidelines" being non-existent, essentially placing ourselves, our external colleagues and our service users as risk of Covid through virtue of forced attendance at unventilated buildings, with no requirement to test beforehand. Unsurprisingly, we have since had multiple staff off with Covid.
The PO's had also raised their view that the minute-takers were not needed in person, because we have the technology available to attend virtually, and they were also ignored.
One of the buildings we have to attend is closing at some point, and when they first brought in the decision about in person conferencing, we were told they had no capacity there to set it up for virtual meetings. We asked what the point was of even using it, on that basis, but they ploughed ahead anyway - shortly into the new arrangements they suddenly found the money to buy new screens and conferencing equipment to enable the police and other professionals to attend virtually.
After the team meeting, I attempted to have the afternoon off sick because the whole discussion triggered an anxiety attack, but my TL helpfully talked me out of it. She's supposed to be our Mental Health First Aider, but her response to my anxiety is to tell me not to mither, which is... really not helpful. Luckily, focusing on my afternoon conference did reset my brain a bit, but every time I thought I'd come to terms with the decision, something would change or something new would crop up, and it would set me back again.
As time went on, the communications to us about this situation became increasingly shady and vague, with information in comms emails being completely different to what we were told by our team leader, until eventually things moved from "some" meetings being held in person to "all" meetings, with the continued expectation that we would attend in person to take the minutes.
Now, to provide some fairness, it has been nice to finally meet some of the new PO's actually in person having only supported them virtually so far, and the ability to make eye contact and build that rapport is a definite bonus. Some immediate issues that I raised from my first in-person meeting were dealt with fairly quickly. Unfortunately, other shady shit in the background has sadly dampened any positivity we might have been able to wring from the situation.
Firstly: travel costs. I no longer have a bus pass, and if I use my debit card I don't get a physical bus ticket. It works similiar to an Oyster card where it caps the price at the cost of a Daysaver (£4) regardless of how many journeys you make On that basis, my plan was to pay for a 10-journey Swift card to use for work purposes, which is actually cheaper per ticket (£3.40). My TL then informed me I couldn't claim that back because it counts as a "travel pass".
Quite frankly, HR need to update their travel costs guidance to reflect the multiple options now available through the Swift network. I could have saved them 60p a journey but whatever, that's their loss.
My TL subsequently agreed that I could submit a costs claim using a screenshot of the relevant transactions from my bank statement. Later, my colleague (K) was told she could not claim her bus tickets at all. I am not in the habit of causing drama so on that basis, I have never bothered to claim any of them back, even when I had four journeys in a week (£16). The issue has now been resolved for K, thankfully (I am still not bothering), but this has been just one of many incidents of late where the TL has told people conflicting information.
I'm not unsympathetic, because this situation must have been a nightmare for her as well - some minute-takers are being even more difficult than usual, as it turns out - but she has not done herself any favours by telling us all different things.
To make things even better, we then had a directive that all of our travel should be in our own time, not work time, i.e. we should be clocking out to travel and then clocking in on arrival. This was never the case before so we requested a meeting with HR, which then also did not get anywhere. The crux of this issue is that they are treating our first journey to the office as our "commute", even if it's after lunch, because they will not officially state that we are now home-based. The reason for that is because the WFH arrangements were "temporary" during the pandemic, and they are treating our ongoing situation as a personal choice.
Our TL's manager also joined the meeting with HR; she clearly did not have any understanding of what we do or why we were going into buildlings, constantly arguing that "other teams" (and herself) were going into the office and not claiming their travel time. We have still not found any resolution to this issue but (for the summer at least) it has been a moot point.
To sum up why this has been such a nightmare: everyone in the team has worked more flexibly and more productively during the pandemic and WFH arrangements, providing ongoing support to one of the key service areas for the Trust. Part-time staff have worked outside of their usual hours. We have risen to the challenges of virtual working, and continued to provide our usual standard of excellent support. Then they threw all of that back in our face. We have no reason to be flexible if nobody will offer us the same courtesy. Then, just to rub salt into the wound, they made us all pay for petrol/bus fares in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and caused us to have longer working days into the bargain whilst not gaining any benefit in the form of flex.
It's not difficult to understand why everone is feeling persecuted and angry, but obviously, as soon as we try and raise it as a concern, we get ignored or shouted down.
Oh, and all of this came about at the same time as Jacob Rees-Mogg leaving friendly little messages in civil service offices and Boris Johnson being distracted by cheese in the fridge, making the plight of home workers being forced into unsafe situations seem petty and entitled.
This is the thing which pushed me into job-hunting in the first place. I am under no illusions that things have "gone back to normal" (LOL) and that I will inevitably have to work in an office again. I would even have been happy with actual "hybrid" working arrangements if that had been offered, like two days in the office and three at home, with an expectation of covering a meeting in the building if I was there. The current arrangements are not hybrid, they're just stupid. Everything we are asked / told to do is so underhanded, sneaky and uncommunicative. This has always been the case, but for a short while it actually felt as though our well-being was being prioritisied... until it quite obviously wasn't.
July
The consultation meetings started taking place in July. There were multiple sessions across a single day, all of them in person at a venue in Aston, and again we were told we could not claim back the travel time. There was initially no option to attend them virtually, and because they were not mandatory I refused to go - not least because it's a mile walk from the bus stop and I still couldn't walk properly at that point. The TL then had the unenviable task of feeding back to everyone via 1:1 meetings.
(A virtual session was then arranged "following feedback" but with very little notice given, and in my case it clashed with a conference I had to minute, oh the irony.)
The TL's knew about the outcome two weeks before we did, and were sworn to secrecy on pain of disciplinary. (Because the threat of unemployment is always a good way to ensure compliance, obviously.) I had a sneaky suspicion that the outcome would be "get back to the office you bunch of skivers", with how things had gone so far - and whilst that was not actually the case, it's definitely implied seeing as our "expressions of interest" have to state a preferred location also.
On the plus side, throughout the school summer break we have been allowed to provide virtual minuting support because of people's childcare commitments, thus proving that the concept works. I fully anticipate they will make us start attending in person again from September even though we've managed to do it effectively from home for the past six weeks.
Oh, and the latest thing is that they want us to cover reception at our South venue, where we now have a meeting room allocated, because apparently having a security guard on both floors is not enough? I was on leave when the meeting about this took place so have only heard second hand information from colleagues and the TL's emails, but allegedly the reason we were asked is because we have "friendly faces".
They have clearly not seen my face of late!
Just Because You're Paranoid...
Right, so. Bearing all of this in mind, several things have started slotting into place for some of us, and there's more context here so brace yourself...
Whilst all of this has been going on, obviously our current appraisals have been running as well. My colleague F and myself were nominated by our TL to be "Process Champions", namely go-to people in the team who can train new starters and offer advice, etc. This has apparently happened in all service areas. The only reason I agreed was because it got me out of having Eclipse as my additional objective (after two years of trying to support and guide people only to have them wilfully ignore me, I am absolutely 1000% done with), and because it would involve doing a "train the trainer" course. I thought this might be helpful, because on the few occasions I've tried to deliver "training" to colleagues they just not taken it on board - I'm not sure how much of that is my approach, or the fact that they just don't perceive it as being official training, but every little helps.
To date, the "train the trainer" course has yet to appear on our internal training website. In addition, we are both now very suspicious about the objective being there at all, considering how long the redesign has been in the pipeline, as we feel as though they just wanted to use us to train up incoming Gr2 staff in local processes, rather than it being purely a developmental opportunity.
Now, onto the new minuting standard, the aims of which were to make the minutes shorter and more succinct. This is threefold.
Firstly: I argued during the pilot that it would benefit staff to learn some report writing techniques, because a lot of the complaints about the old style of minutes was that they were overly long and repetitive. They offered us some "meeting outputs" training, which was more focused on things like team meeting minutes, not the complex safeguarding minutes we produce that are more detailed and analytical in nature (that might be just mine, whatever). My suggestion was basically shut down. I wouldn't let it go, so I asked to put the report writing training on my appraisal, with a view to going on it to see if it was suitable for the team as a whole.
Such being the case, it finally rolled around again in May and turned out to be a 7-hour seminar. Much of it was not really relevant, but I put some training slides together outlining the pertinent points and was due to share them at a team meeting. We haven't actually had one since the "in person meetings" announcement, because our TL likes to avoid conflict. Anyway, I sent the slides off to her and she was due to get them signed off by the Asst Head before I shared them. I am now completely disinclined to share them at all, given that none of us will be using the knowledge in a few months anyway.
Secondly: as part of our 2021-2022 appraisal, four of us were tasked with putting together guidance notes for new starters. Only three of us actually put any effort into this, but during the course of trying to itemise our process from start to finish, we all realised just how many different things are involved - the job is certainly more than "just minuting". I used my phased return time to collate everything into a final version (updating to reflect recent changes) and am still waiting - again - for sign off from the Asst Head before they can officially go live. At the time, we did have a lot of new agency staff join us to help cover all the meetings, so we thought nothing of it. Now it's evident there was a greater, overriding reason for wanting the guidance notes.
Thirdly: it very much feels like we spent all those weeks hashing out the new minuting standards so they could be simplified for incoming, less skilled staff. So, once again, they are more than happy to exploit our expertise and knowledge for their own gains, but don't give the remotest shit about us using them to improve outcomes for children.
Finally, regarding the new reception duty at our South venue... They are currently in the process of refitting the venue so we can use it as a meeting and contact centre. We used to use a building up the road over the Co-Op, which is now a Morrisons, the lease on which ended before I even started, and for that entire time they've dithered over an alternative venue. As it's currently mostly empty, the building works have now started. The conferencing part will use the back reception rather than the main, front reception.
So, at this point, I very much suspect that rather than employing new reception staff, they will just expect us to carry on doing it. (At the old venue it was Area Admin who manned reception, as it always has been.) Except, you know, it won't be us, it'll be the Gr2 staff. Small mercies.
At this point, it honestly feels as though they are setting our service up to fail. CP has been in the firing line for years; our former Chief Social Worker had it in his crosshairs for the duration of his (thankfully brief) stay in Birmingham, the Tory government would rather starve deprived children than safeguard them, our current incumbent-but-doing-fuck-all PM once decreed there was no point in investigating child sexual abuse, and now - and now - Business Support have decided to shift a whole team of dedicated, skilled and passionate staff out to other areas and replace us with lower-paid colleagues who will certainly not have the same level of initiative and flexibility. In particular, the fact that the other admin tasks were taken off us so we could cover more meetings does not bode well at all for the new staff being able to provide the same level of cover.
I am still regularly requested by the PO's, by name, to minute particularly complex and difficult meetings, because they trust me more than some of my colleagues to understand what's happening and capture the information accurately. I anticipate that whichever Gr3's get lumbered with overseeing the new team will continue to be go-to in the team for such meetings. I've had run-ins with Gr2 staff myself over the years and they are belligerent and unable to think outside the box, to say the least. Literally everything about this decision is wrong.
As of yet, I have no idea if any of the PO's have been informed of the restructure. The one PO colleague I usually offload all of this stuff to is currently off sick, but I can't imagine any of them will be happy with the decision - especially those who were around "pre-Covid".
The worst thing is that apparently, the Head of Service has known this was in the pipeline since 2020. I have a lot of respect for her as a professional, but I am so disappointed in her over this because she has always been our greatest defender, and I can't believe she's allowed this to happen. I imagine her hands are also tied, to a degree - the decision about in person conferences was made by her manager and she was evidently unable to fight back against it, and I suspect this is similar.
I think that's everything.
As you can see, this has been brewing for some time. There were a couple of moments during the pandemic where I half-heartedly looked for other jobs, because the nature of this one is that we go through phases where Everything Is Awful and then it all quietens down for a bit. What I always forget is that when it's quiet, something even worse is probably lurking around the corner.
As for the job-hunting itself... I've managed to apply for one, so far, and nearly applied for another but the interview is while I'm away and apparently they can't be bothered to facilitate a virtual interview. The one I have applied for is a legal secretary post with a private legal firm, which is very local to me, but they don't seem to be in any rush to move things along. I was really hopeful about it because the fee earner seemed to remember my name from my Legal days, was impressed with my brief job history from our chat on the phone, and when I asked our Asst Head for a reference it turns out she knows the other firm partner... and now it's gone quiet. I rang them up a fortnight ago (for the second time) for an update, the current secretary doesn't know what's happening either, I emailed the solicitor and I've heard nothing back.
The thing is, they're a very small firm with a very busy court diary, so I get it, but it's frustrating because I'm used to applying for internal posts which have set deadlines!
I am going to put job hunting on hold now until I get back off holiday, because anything with an imminent closing date is going to have the same issue of interviews being whilst I'm away, but the situation is making me antsy. I am keeping my options open - the restructure might not be a total disaster, even though everything feels dire right now - but I really just want to get out of local government completely. I've served my time, I've given them my sanity and my physical health, and got nothing in return except stress, anxiety and (quite probably) trauma.
(I'm only half-joking about that last one...)
Anyway, yes - apologies again for the length of this and the dearth of posting of late, but maybe this serves as an explanation in its own way.
I'd like to say I'll update again before Christmas, but... yeah, that's a lie.
I have mentioned this mostly via threaded rants on Twitter, but I feel like I need to hash this out more fully, because it's helpful to put things into context to get them out of my brain.
Long story short: I am in the process of job-hunting again because my current job has finally sent me over the edge. This is, quite frankly, the cherry on top of the shit cake that has been 2022 so far, and I will probably have to save the rest of its many joys for the annual Year-in-Review Meme, sadly.
I realise I have not actually updated in a while, and I didn't want my first post in ages to be a work-related offload, but this is what the universe chose to throw at me so here we are. I'll put it all under a cut, because it got long - so, fair warning, it's very wordy and probably full of jargon, sorry.
I'll have been in this job for ten years come March 2023, which is the longest I've been in any job so far. I was at Legal for six years before I moved on. Many of my colleagues have been around much, much longer - decades, in some cases. That is some of the context in which this all takes place.
I should also point out that, outside of work, all of this has been happening within a maelstrom of injury, bereavement, and relentless energy supplier fuckwittery, as well as the current political hellscape overriding all of our existences, because Life likes to make things as difficult as possible.
The main, overriding context is that there has been a Business Support Redesign slowly bubbling away under the surface for the past two years. This was initially scheduled for 2020 but then *gestures to Covid* happened so it got put on the back burner until everything was more stable. The outcome of the redesign finally got shared with everyone at some recent consultations. In brief, that outcome is this:
Part of the Grade 3 job description includes "supervision of staff" - not so much direct line management, but things like dealing with leave/sickness, monthly supervisions and duty rotas. The issue is that none of the current Gr3 staff are actually doing this. On the other side of the coin, they have decided that Grade 2 staff can take minutes of "any meeting". Currently Gr2 staff can generally be expected to produce things like team meeting notes, whereas Gr3 staff have responsibility for more complex meetings.
The upshot of all this is that essentially, all of the Gr2 and 3 staff will be redeployed across the service, with Gr2's providing minuting cover and Gr3's being responsible, from what I can tell for dealing with all the pointless bits of management that the current Gr4 Team Leaders don't have time to deal with. (Or, in the alternative, they will become PA's.) The Gr4's would then be responsible for the more complicated things like dealing with ongoing sickness absence, appraisals, disciplinaries, etc.
In short, what this means for us is that our team of highly skilled, dedicated and long-serving minute-takers will be uprooted and shifted to different service areas, and the Gr2 staff will be brought on board to provide minuting cover instead. We can request to remain within CP as part of our expression of interest, but there are no guarantees.
Allegedly an example of our minutes was sent off as part of the consultation, upon which basis they decided that Gr2 staff would be more than capable of producing them. Frankly, the minutes are only a very small part of the process, and not a reflection on what actually happens within the meeting and beyond, but they have no way of knowing that because they haven't actually spoken to us.
They have reassured us there are "no job losses" and that we won't be in comptetition with our colleagues, but that's obviously nonsense. Yes, we are not physically losing our jobs, but we are not going to be doing the jobs we applied and interviewed for (most people started before the PSS takeover, when they would have been separate jobs in separate service areas, although technically they still are even under the Business Support umbrella). We are very likely to be in competition with each other if we all want to work for the same teams. I'm not denying that some people might want a change, but equally there will be people who have been in post for aeons, and there's a bloody reason for that!
The deadline for completing the consultation (I use that term loosely because they have not really consulted us) is 22nd August, with a deadline of 23rd September for submitting our expression of interest. This is not the "six months" they initially told us it would be, because they want to get all the Gr3's in post before moving the Gr2's, which also begs the question as to who is going to train up all the Gr2's in the relevant processes if there's nobody in the team who understands them. As of yet we have not been sent the new job / team descriptions in order for us to decide where we want to work, and I'm really hoping they get circulated shortly after the August deadline, because I'm going away in September and don't want this hanging over my head for my entire holiday.
Needless to say, nobody in the team is happy about the decision, and at least three of us are job-hunting as a result. We have just had our appraisals set up for the year and everyone is completely demotivated to fill them in, because it seems pointless. "Supervision Skills" training, specifically for Gr3 Business Support staff, has recently dropped on the internal training website - so that will likely end up on all of our appraisals.
There are several massive ironies at play here: the first is that the reason we don't supervise staff at present is because of how the current management structure is set up. As it stands, even the Gr4 team leaders don't have any authority as managers and can't make decisions without going through six million levels of upper management first. I literally do not understand how Gr3 staff are supposed to "supervise" anyone in those conditions.
The second is the thing about doing "rotas". In our case, that's our weekly minuting list, which used to be a Gr3 task within each area team before we all got centralised, until someone high up decided that was Too Much Responsibility and added it to the Gr4 workload instead.
The third thing is that apparently the rationale for the Gr2 staff taking the minutes is so it creates a "whole process", as opposed to the two separate teams we have currently, where G2 staff deal with booking the conferences and inviting everyone, and Gr3 staff do the minutes and associated meeting tasks. Before BSS was a thing, the "whole process" was a CP Administrator task, and - again - they then took the convening aspect off us, to free us all up to minute an additional conference each week rather than actually employing more staff.
So, basically, the outcome of the redesign is what has clinched my decision to leave, but in truth I have been semi-actively job hunting for a few months anway because of other Dickheadery which has been going on in the meantime. I'll try and break this down into a monthly chronology, but apologies that stuff may be the wrong order - honestly, this year, and the past few months especially, has been A Lot.
April
So, this marked the start of Year 3 of working from home full-time, and after two years of being able to do that I am more than happy to do it for the rest of my life. It has massively improved my work/life balance, I am more productive, and I don't have to interact with idiot colleagues nearly as much as before. If nothing else, the ongoing pandemic and various lockdowns have done nothing but cement the fact I am a massive introvert. Commuting is pointless, stressful, and a waste of time and resources.
Actually, I need to go about twelve months further back, to May 2021, when a select few of us (four minute-takers and four Principal Officers) were volunteered to take part in a minuting pilot project, with an eventual goal of streamlining the minutes and making them shorter. This was... kind of pointless, to be honest, because it felt very much like they had made decisions about things and our input was not valid - if we asked questions or pointed out things that could be different, the discussion would just circle back to the original rationale. Also, my working relationship with the business analyst (a former BITSO in the team, and Gr2 admin before that) is problematic to say the least - I find her incredibly triggering, because she doesn't listen properly, deliberately misinterprets what I'm saying, and always needs the last word on everything. We did have a couple of productive 1:1 sessions but for the most part, I found the process very frustrating.
From November 2021 the new minuting standard went live for everyone, to much confusion because Change Is Impossible, but since then we have finally gotten a handle on things and the minutes are much quicker to produce - although (as expected) some colleagues have taken the fact of them needing to be shorter as carte blancheto do the absolute bare minimum.
So, jump forward again to April 2022, when one of our more recent PO's got herself a massive backlog of minutes to sign off and, essentially, decided to take out her stress on the minute-takers. I did not know this aspect at the time, but from my perspective she sent me into a massive rage/anxiety tailspin by telling me to make the minutes shorter, to a literally impossible expectation, and caused me to spend three whole days doubting my professional integrity and my ability to do my job. My TL did not help this situation by basically taking her side, though I now understand she was dealing with the fall-out from two other colleagues at the same time. The thing that sent me over the edge was a comment from the PO that she needed a "summary - not a word for word account", and I will never know how I managed to rein myself in from the email I desperately wanted to send.
The same evening, we found out that Paul's brother Darren had died unexpectedly, to everyone's utter shock. I was off work for two days as a result, and needless to say it put things into perspective a little bit, but I do wonder if my reaction to the PO's stupidity was (again) my brain trying to give me a warning. When I got back the following Monday, my TL informed me I was not the only minute-taker the PO had pissed off with the same tactics, and it had been escalated to her manager.
(Since then she has sent me lots of compliments on my minutes. At this point it just feels like empty noise considering we are obviously not appreciated within the wider context of Business Support.)
May / June
Mid-May, the TL called a last-minute team meeting with no context. In a brief pre-meeting discussion, some of us guessed it was probably about going back into buildings, and that bore fruit.
The Assistant Head was also present for the first half of the meeting so she could share the decision, which was that "some" of the conferences were going to be held in person and there was an expectation of minute-takers attending in person also. We made our grievances about this vocally known, and after the AH left the meeting we continued to offload to the TL and raise various questions.
She promised to compile a list and send it off, and to date none of our concerns have really been dealt with. Bearing in mind, we are dealing with this within the context of our current UK Government "guidelines" being non-existent, essentially placing ourselves, our external colleagues and our service users as risk of Covid through virtue of forced attendance at unventilated buildings, with no requirement to test beforehand. Unsurprisingly, we have since had multiple staff off with Covid.
The PO's had also raised their view that the minute-takers were not needed in person, because we have the technology available to attend virtually, and they were also ignored.
One of the buildings we have to attend is closing at some point, and when they first brought in the decision about in person conferencing, we were told they had no capacity there to set it up for virtual meetings. We asked what the point was of even using it, on that basis, but they ploughed ahead anyway - shortly into the new arrangements they suddenly found the money to buy new screens and conferencing equipment to enable the police and other professionals to attend virtually.
After the team meeting, I attempted to have the afternoon off sick because the whole discussion triggered an anxiety attack, but my TL helpfully talked me out of it. She's supposed to be our Mental Health First Aider, but her response to my anxiety is to tell me not to mither, which is... really not helpful. Luckily, focusing on my afternoon conference did reset my brain a bit, but every time I thought I'd come to terms with the decision, something would change or something new would crop up, and it would set me back again.
As time went on, the communications to us about this situation became increasingly shady and vague, with information in comms emails being completely different to what we were told by our team leader, until eventually things moved from "some" meetings being held in person to "all" meetings, with the continued expectation that we would attend in person to take the minutes.
Now, to provide some fairness, it has been nice to finally meet some of the new PO's actually in person having only supported them virtually so far, and the ability to make eye contact and build that rapport is a definite bonus. Some immediate issues that I raised from my first in-person meeting were dealt with fairly quickly. Unfortunately, other shady shit in the background has sadly dampened any positivity we might have been able to wring from the situation.
Firstly: travel costs. I no longer have a bus pass, and if I use my debit card I don't get a physical bus ticket. It works similiar to an Oyster card where it caps the price at the cost of a Daysaver (£4) regardless of how many journeys you make On that basis, my plan was to pay for a 10-journey Swift card to use for work purposes, which is actually cheaper per ticket (£3.40). My TL then informed me I couldn't claim that back because it counts as a "travel pass".
Quite frankly, HR need to update their travel costs guidance to reflect the multiple options now available through the Swift network. I could have saved them 60p a journey but whatever, that's their loss.
My TL subsequently agreed that I could submit a costs claim using a screenshot of the relevant transactions from my bank statement. Later, my colleague (K) was told she could not claim her bus tickets at all. I am not in the habit of causing drama so on that basis, I have never bothered to claim any of them back, even when I had four journeys in a week (£16). The issue has now been resolved for K, thankfully (I am still not bothering), but this has been just one of many incidents of late where the TL has told people conflicting information.
I'm not unsympathetic, because this situation must have been a nightmare for her as well - some minute-takers are being even more difficult than usual, as it turns out - but she has not done herself any favours by telling us all different things.
To make things even better, we then had a directive that all of our travel should be in our own time, not work time, i.e. we should be clocking out to travel and then clocking in on arrival. This was never the case before so we requested a meeting with HR, which then also did not get anywhere. The crux of this issue is that they are treating our first journey to the office as our "commute", even if it's after lunch, because they will not officially state that we are now home-based. The reason for that is because the WFH arrangements were "temporary" during the pandemic, and they are treating our ongoing situation as a personal choice.
Our TL's manager also joined the meeting with HR; she clearly did not have any understanding of what we do or why we were going into buildlings, constantly arguing that "other teams" (and herself) were going into the office and not claiming their travel time. We have still not found any resolution to this issue but (for the summer at least) it has been a moot point.
To sum up why this has been such a nightmare: everyone in the team has worked more flexibly and more productively during the pandemic and WFH arrangements, providing ongoing support to one of the key service areas for the Trust. Part-time staff have worked outside of their usual hours. We have risen to the challenges of virtual working, and continued to provide our usual standard of excellent support. Then they threw all of that back in our face. We have no reason to be flexible if nobody will offer us the same courtesy. Then, just to rub salt into the wound, they made us all pay for petrol/bus fares in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and caused us to have longer working days into the bargain whilst not gaining any benefit in the form of flex.
It's not difficult to understand why everone is feeling persecuted and angry, but obviously, as soon as we try and raise it as a concern, we get ignored or shouted down.
Oh, and all of this came about at the same time as Jacob Rees-Mogg leaving friendly little messages in civil service offices and Boris Johnson being distracted by cheese in the fridge, making the plight of home workers being forced into unsafe situations seem petty and entitled.
This is the thing which pushed me into job-hunting in the first place. I am under no illusions that things have "gone back to normal" (LOL) and that I will inevitably have to work in an office again. I would even have been happy with actual "hybrid" working arrangements if that had been offered, like two days in the office and three at home, with an expectation of covering a meeting in the building if I was there. The current arrangements are not hybrid, they're just stupid. Everything we are asked / told to do is so underhanded, sneaky and uncommunicative. This has always been the case, but for a short while it actually felt as though our well-being was being prioritisied... until it quite obviously wasn't.
July
The consultation meetings started taking place in July. There were multiple sessions across a single day, all of them in person at a venue in Aston, and again we were told we could not claim back the travel time. There was initially no option to attend them virtually, and because they were not mandatory I refused to go - not least because it's a mile walk from the bus stop and I still couldn't walk properly at that point. The TL then had the unenviable task of feeding back to everyone via 1:1 meetings.
(A virtual session was then arranged "following feedback" but with very little notice given, and in my case it clashed with a conference I had to minute, oh the irony.)
The TL's knew about the outcome two weeks before we did, and were sworn to secrecy on pain of disciplinary. (Because the threat of unemployment is always a good way to ensure compliance, obviously.) I had a sneaky suspicion that the outcome would be "get back to the office you bunch of skivers", with how things had gone so far - and whilst that was not actually the case, it's definitely implied seeing as our "expressions of interest" have to state a preferred location also.
On the plus side, throughout the school summer break we have been allowed to provide virtual minuting support because of people's childcare commitments, thus proving that the concept works. I fully anticipate they will make us start attending in person again from September even though we've managed to do it effectively from home for the past six weeks.
Oh, and the latest thing is that they want us to cover reception at our South venue, where we now have a meeting room allocated, because apparently having a security guard on both floors is not enough? I was on leave when the meeting about this took place so have only heard second hand information from colleagues and the TL's emails, but allegedly the reason we were asked is because we have "friendly faces".
They have clearly not seen my face of late!
Just Because You're Paranoid...
Right, so. Bearing all of this in mind, several things have started slotting into place for some of us, and there's more context here so brace yourself...
Whilst all of this has been going on, obviously our current appraisals have been running as well. My colleague F and myself were nominated by our TL to be "Process Champions", namely go-to people in the team who can train new starters and offer advice, etc. This has apparently happened in all service areas. The only reason I agreed was because it got me out of having Eclipse as my additional objective (after two years of trying to support and guide people only to have them wilfully ignore me, I am absolutely 1000% done with), and because it would involve doing a "train the trainer" course. I thought this might be helpful, because on the few occasions I've tried to deliver "training" to colleagues they just not taken it on board - I'm not sure how much of that is my approach, or the fact that they just don't perceive it as being official training, but every little helps.
To date, the "train the trainer" course has yet to appear on our internal training website. In addition, we are both now very suspicious about the objective being there at all, considering how long the redesign has been in the pipeline, as we feel as though they just wanted to use us to train up incoming Gr2 staff in local processes, rather than it being purely a developmental opportunity.
Now, onto the new minuting standard, the aims of which were to make the minutes shorter and more succinct. This is threefold.
Firstly: I argued during the pilot that it would benefit staff to learn some report writing techniques, because a lot of the complaints about the old style of minutes was that they were overly long and repetitive. They offered us some "meeting outputs" training, which was more focused on things like team meeting minutes, not the complex safeguarding minutes we produce that are more detailed and analytical in nature (that might be just mine, whatever). My suggestion was basically shut down. I wouldn't let it go, so I asked to put the report writing training on my appraisal, with a view to going on it to see if it was suitable for the team as a whole.
Such being the case, it finally rolled around again in May and turned out to be a 7-hour seminar. Much of it was not really relevant, but I put some training slides together outlining the pertinent points and was due to share them at a team meeting. We haven't actually had one since the "in person meetings" announcement, because our TL likes to avoid conflict. Anyway, I sent the slides off to her and she was due to get them signed off by the Asst Head before I shared them. I am now completely disinclined to share them at all, given that none of us will be using the knowledge in a few months anyway.
Secondly: as part of our 2021-2022 appraisal, four of us were tasked with putting together guidance notes for new starters. Only three of us actually put any effort into this, but during the course of trying to itemise our process from start to finish, we all realised just how many different things are involved - the job is certainly more than "just minuting". I used my phased return time to collate everything into a final version (updating to reflect recent changes) and am still waiting - again - for sign off from the Asst Head before they can officially go live. At the time, we did have a lot of new agency staff join us to help cover all the meetings, so we thought nothing of it. Now it's evident there was a greater, overriding reason for wanting the guidance notes.
Thirdly: it very much feels like we spent all those weeks hashing out the new minuting standards so they could be simplified for incoming, less skilled staff. So, once again, they are more than happy to exploit our expertise and knowledge for their own gains, but don't give the remotest shit about us using them to improve outcomes for children.
Finally, regarding the new reception duty at our South venue... They are currently in the process of refitting the venue so we can use it as a meeting and contact centre. We used to use a building up the road over the Co-Op, which is now a Morrisons, the lease on which ended before I even started, and for that entire time they've dithered over an alternative venue. As it's currently mostly empty, the building works have now started. The conferencing part will use the back reception rather than the main, front reception.
So, at this point, I very much suspect that rather than employing new reception staff, they will just expect us to carry on doing it. (At the old venue it was Area Admin who manned reception, as it always has been.) Except, you know, it won't be us, it'll be the Gr2 staff. Small mercies.
At this point, it honestly feels as though they are setting our service up to fail. CP has been in the firing line for years; our former Chief Social Worker had it in his crosshairs for the duration of his (thankfully brief) stay in Birmingham, the Tory government would rather starve deprived children than safeguard them, our current incumbent-but-doing-fuck-all PM once decreed there was no point in investigating child sexual abuse, and now - and now - Business Support have decided to shift a whole team of dedicated, skilled and passionate staff out to other areas and replace us with lower-paid colleagues who will certainly not have the same level of initiative and flexibility. In particular, the fact that the other admin tasks were taken off us so we could cover more meetings does not bode well at all for the new staff being able to provide the same level of cover.
I am still regularly requested by the PO's, by name, to minute particularly complex and difficult meetings, because they trust me more than some of my colleagues to understand what's happening and capture the information accurately. I anticipate that whichever Gr3's get lumbered with overseeing the new team will continue to be go-to in the team for such meetings. I've had run-ins with Gr2 staff myself over the years and they are belligerent and unable to think outside the box, to say the least. Literally everything about this decision is wrong.
As of yet, I have no idea if any of the PO's have been informed of the restructure. The one PO colleague I usually offload all of this stuff to is currently off sick, but I can't imagine any of them will be happy with the decision - especially those who were around "pre-Covid".
The worst thing is that apparently, the Head of Service has known this was in the pipeline since 2020. I have a lot of respect for her as a professional, but I am so disappointed in her over this because she has always been our greatest defender, and I can't believe she's allowed this to happen. I imagine her hands are also tied, to a degree - the decision about in person conferences was made by her manager and she was evidently unable to fight back against it, and I suspect this is similar.
I think that's everything.
As you can see, this has been brewing for some time. There were a couple of moments during the pandemic where I half-heartedly looked for other jobs, because the nature of this one is that we go through phases where Everything Is Awful and then it all quietens down for a bit. What I always forget is that when it's quiet, something even worse is probably lurking around the corner.
As for the job-hunting itself... I've managed to apply for one, so far, and nearly applied for another but the interview is while I'm away and apparently they can't be bothered to facilitate a virtual interview. The one I have applied for is a legal secretary post with a private legal firm, which is very local to me, but they don't seem to be in any rush to move things along. I was really hopeful about it because the fee earner seemed to remember my name from my Legal days, was impressed with my brief job history from our chat on the phone, and when I asked our Asst Head for a reference it turns out she knows the other firm partner... and now it's gone quiet. I rang them up a fortnight ago (for the second time) for an update, the current secretary doesn't know what's happening either, I emailed the solicitor and I've heard nothing back.
The thing is, they're a very small firm with a very busy court diary, so I get it, but it's frustrating because I'm used to applying for internal posts which have set deadlines!
I am going to put job hunting on hold now until I get back off holiday, because anything with an imminent closing date is going to have the same issue of interviews being whilst I'm away, but the situation is making me antsy. I am keeping my options open - the restructure might not be a total disaster, even though everything feels dire right now - but I really just want to get out of local government completely. I've served my time, I've given them my sanity and my physical health, and got nothing in return except stress, anxiety and (quite probably) trauma.
(I'm only half-joking about that last one...)
Anyway, yes - apologies again for the length of this and the dearth of posting of late, but maybe this serves as an explanation in its own way.
I'd like to say I'll update again before Christmas, but... yeah, that's a lie.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-08-21 01:00 pm (UTC)The fact you've managed to explain this so lucidly and to chain together complex overlapping series of cause and effect which impinge on each other, in a way that I can understand despite only ever having been a bystander to office life, and only having been in a service user relationship with social services, tells me everything about your minute-taking skills. The snark about not needing a word for word account sounds like the product of a mind that does not appreciate that your processes need to be accountable, with clarity regarding not just what actions were planned or taken, but why.
The bottom line is that you lot, front-line or not, collectively save children's lives and protect their welfare. This is something our country should be investing in, not endlessly rejiggging as if they were trying to save a failing business. After my concern for the wellbeing of you all and your service users from a human point of view, I find it alarming that so much institutional knowledge will be dissipated and lost. People and roles aren't so interchangeable as the powers that be seem to think.
I hope that your holiday is restorative, and that you get some good news about the legal secretary interview soon.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-08-21 09:24 pm (UTC)We have all said, from the very outset of Professional (now Business) Support Services coming into play, that the concept would never work. The idea was for us to have generic job descriptions so staff could move around if they / the service needed it. It's never worked, because each area has its own specialist knowledge. We can train someone how to take minutes to a set standard, and teach them the process from start to finish, but that's only half the job; the rest we learn through experience (caveat: there are still some in the team who play the "not my job" card, but that's a different issue). This is the bit that BSS just doesn't appreciate or understand. They literally think we are robots that they can just reprogramme or plug into a new service at will, and that's exactly what they're doing with the redesign. They are giving us the illusion of choice, but I doubt we will get much say over what eventually happens.
The one good thing amongst all this is that, for once, I can actually recognise the skills I have, whereas previously it felt as though we had all been systematically deskilled/trapped, and job-hunting was even more of a nightmare. So thank you for your second paragraph above, because it's reminded me that I am actually good at analysing and communicating complex information!
(NGL, I might have had a little cry when I read that.)
Sadly, CP Conference support (and other admin support) jobs in other LA's pay significantly less than in Birmingham, as it turns out. I imagine a lot of my colleagues are going to get a massive culture shock if they do decide to move on!
(no subject)
Date: 2022-08-21 11:53 pm (UTC)I have a tendency to over explain because otherwise people don't understand what I'm saying
Dear god, do I know that feeling, from the autistic epistemic injustice angle. When my anxiety is severe, as it has been lately, it manifests in rewriting emails of all kinds over and over again, and I can't afford to get into any kind of conflict or controversy on social media because it sets it into overdrive. There's always that terror of being, wilfully or otherwise, misunderstood, because people seem to do it so often at the best of times.
That situation with moving staff about sounds a bit like similar issues in healthcare - in theory nursing is nursing, and of course bank and agency nurses move around a lot and are used to it, but in practice you can't just smoothly swap from one type of specialised ward to another and work equally well there without experience. There's always a lot of things that are specific to the context of specialist units, and often they'll be counter-intuitive (there are patients for whom the normal instruction to "drink plenty" is dangerous, etc.).
I remember being incredulous one morning while in hospital, on overhearing a nurse who'd been subbed into the GI surgery ward phoning her husband for a leisurely chat. None of the ward nurses did that (I'd never even heard an agency nurse do it before!). They often stopped to chat among themselves or with patients, but I realised that even when they were being friendly they were also being professional and doing relationship-building (which built trust and helped them work better with each other and with us), and picking up a lot of subtle stuff about how we actually were - our movement, our affect, how we looked and sounded. Things the doctors don't catch on ward rounds. She just found herself unobserved by colleagues at the end of the infection control corridor, and thought she had time to slack off.
And if you create a system that constantly moves staff round, then it's hard for them to feel invested either in the work or the relationships - after all, they can't expect to be with the same people all the time.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-08-23 09:48 am (UTC)(Oh, and I am the worst offender for signing things off with "hope that makes sense" even when I know it bloody well does. How very dare I own up to knowing something. Our former manager, Mr Corporate, was also terrible for mansplaining - he even well-actually'd me one day and I was not having it!)
My team leader has the same issue in that people just don't listen to her. When they brought in our new email encryption solution, we had (and still have) issues with some agencies not being able to access the attachments we sent, which is potentially linked to the fact we're sending stuff from a shared mailbox. I raised the issue with the TL, she escalated it, the IT representative sent back basically a standard response and then said "We don't deal with this now, send it to this other team instead", and then it got nowhere. Still not resolved nearly two years later. This is why we just give up, because those of us who are proactive and observant just get ignored or shouted down. Then a bit later on, someone less observant accidentally messes up, and we all get it in the neck and suddenly the issue gets dealt with.
This is, of course, another perfect example of why moving staff around doesn't help, because when we do have issues like that which take months (or years, or never) to resolve, there's no continuity of staff available to follow it up. The cynical part of me suspects that the reason they like to move staff around so much is because it stops anything having to be dealt with - they'd much rather we do as we're told rather than raising queries and causing more work. God forbid we actually make sure our processes are safe without being perceived as trouble-makers.
The fact that it happens in settings like nursing is baffling, in all honesty. Admin and support staff are fair game sadly, but I'd have hoped something more specialist was safe!
(no subject)
Date: 2022-08-23 09:27 pm (UTC)I suspect you're right about that being a feature rather than a bug in your work: there seems to be a clear agenda to avoid actual listening, even when they're allegedly doing a listening exercise, and you have to conclude that they don't want to do the work of implementing meaningful change.