WWYD? Need some outside perspective - am I being over-protective?

[onepotatotwopotato]

Sorely need some outside perspective on this, please. It's a bit long.

I work in a small team - our manager has allocated each team member a couple of areas/projects to work on, with some overlap, so that a more senior member of staff leads the project supported by a more junior member of staff. One of our team is currently on maternity leave - she and I had been working together.

The original plan had been not to cover her maternity leave, and somehow muddle through. When it became apparent that this wouldn't work, various attempts were made to recruit someone to the role in the short term. When this didn't work, a more senior (to me) member of staff was seconded from elsewhere in the organisation. They had previously worked in our team.

This was sold to me originally by my manager as they were trying to bring in an 'extra pair of hands to help me' (and the maternity cover was original advertising as at a more junior level) but I'm starting to feel unhappy because projects that were 'mine' and that I have spent the last two years working on have been pretty much handed over to her, almost to the extent that I have nothing much left to do. I feeling pretty edged out, to be honest.

I like the new person well-enough and I don't think that there is any issue with the work I am doing (have had good appraisals and so on), other then not really having enough time to do everything, but that's common to all of us in the team. My organisation has gone through several rounds of redundancies lately, so seeing someone else take over my work probably also touches on some feeling of vulnerability I have about how secure my job is.

I have a childish want to whinge and moan about someone else doing 'my work' and it's 'not fair' that they are edging me out. On the other hand, this is only likely to be until my colleague comes back from maternity leave next spring, and looking at the bigger picture, it's probably for the overall benefit of the team that the work gets done.

What would you do? Am I being ridiculously over-protective? Do I talk to my manager about it? Do I sit tight and let my personal feelings go?

[flowery]

I think any decent manager would want to know if a member of their team was feeling that way. I know I would.

[onepotatotwopotato]

Oh god, you are probably right, flowery. I'm not by nature terribly assertive, so I'll have to give myself a bit of a pep talk.

[theoriginalandbestrookie]

You could phrase it around the fact that the new person has been allocated your projects, say that you enjoyed working on these projects and want to ensure that you are being as efficient as possible for the organisation, so now you have a bit of capacity, what new projects/responsibilities are available for you to take on.

Most managers would, I think, be pleased to hear that, albeit with a bit more grammer in the sentence.

[onepotatotwopotato]

Thanks rookie

That's a good tack to take!