To refuse to do this work?

[Timeforabiscuit]

I feel absolutely trapped and cant think of a way out of this without wrecking my work reputation or leaving.

Ive been nominated to lead on some departmental work, but after two days working on it its become apparent that senior leadership have sat on this for months and its only since a key deadline passed that its been passed to me. Its a beast, the work area has been neglected as a whole and it means getting lots of senior heads of department engaged in a very short space of time.

The role was meant to be voluntary and absorbed as part of existing grade, but apparently i was given as the person responsible at a meeting, but i was just told later in the day that this was now my responsibility.

IF I do a proper job on this, it will take masses of time but as its a compliance area it dosent directly impact our key deliverables. Its also working well above my pay grade which has been frozen for five years.

I had a formal meeting with my manager who said while its unfair, we can just take off some of my objectives (the bits I really want to do!) knowing full well i'll do my best to do all of it. He also made it clear there is no possibility of a payreview even though its warranted.

I cannot suck this up, i feel either look for a new job or just have it out that im not happy taking this on with no change to my job description/pay - job suicide.

To add insult to injury, individuals in the department are thrilled that im working on this as i'll do an excellent job - but i know i wont get any senior management support,recognition or uplift - its the work equivalent of a siberian gulag.

Is there a magic way out of this?...

Thanks strawberry philodox - it feels better not to be alone!

boopear put like that it doesnt seem so bad!

So they want you to be a “voluntary champion”? Except you can’t actually turn the role down so not really voluntary at all? That sucks.

Thats the size of it jessie, DH is advocating a scorched earth approach emailing the director while in full rage mode.

That would be career limiting...

Need to run. Do PM me if you would like any more info! Best of luck.

Hello, I work in a complaince and assurance role and project managed our organisations crossover to GDPR as our DPO didn’t have the bandwidth to do so. Neither did I really. PM if you want, I feel your pain. Ours was nightmarish but we got the minimum done.

Thanks Boopear

ruby sorry youve been here to, to be honest i aspire to the minimum, im just looking at a patchwork of amber and red risks and muttering bugger.

We are green for one - everyone is aware of the letters GDPR and that change is upcoming - this is organisational readiness!

I guessed GDPR too. I also got landed with it (when the designated person had ignored it for months - and left soon after!). It's also a "voluntary" role where I am. Public sector??

If you are DPO for a whole organisation you have my sympathy, I'm only doing it for a department. There was a thread in the Employment board with lots of good links for people who were starting from scratch like you. Just make sure everybody else pulls their weight. No one person can do this: there will be many "data owners" and they have a heap of work coming their way. You, on the other hand, get to manage, issue actions, set deadlines, check they're on track etc etc.

Oh and report back regularly to senior management so that it stays on their radar. Keep a tally of the time you spend on this bugger of a job and make sure you tell senior management (in your reports).

Hadn’t even clocked it was GDPR given the deadline has somewhat passed. Personally I would scope the work out and come up with a proposal, scoping out high/ low priorities, timescales, resources required and risks of not doing so. I would then make sure it was signed off by senior management. When senior management start to moan you can refer to it and point out timetable/ lack of resources/ the fact you told them it wouldnt work. I might even come up with two - the one I didn’t want to do and a realistic one or alternatively a heavily risk weighted one which would make external advice seem worthwhile and a necessary expense. Bad luck though.

It seems to me there are 4 options open to you here:

1. refuse to do it, and threaten to leave. And mean it. If you're as well-regarded as you sound, are they won't want to lose you over something so trivial.

2. agree to do it for more money, or you leave. See above.

3. Agree to do it, but document via email how late the project passed to you. List the barriers to successful completion, and the kind of cooperation you'll need to get it done in time. Reiterate strongly that you will not be able to complete if the above dependencies aren't met. If it's genuinely impossible, say that, and give them a soonest possible completion date. At least this way, they won't have a leg to stand on if they try and blame it on you.

4. see 3, but insist the responsibility is shared between you and another colleague(s).

At least you have a DPO. GDPR compliance is multi-disciplinary and affects all levels of the organisation. Someone needs to be pull all the strands together and give momentum to the project i.e. this needs a project manager.

Can the DPO be the project manager rather than you? Seriously, shouldn't the DPO be sacked for allowing the 25 May deadline to pass without running around like his/her hair is on fire?

I can see why this is a poisoned chalice to inherit it at this stage. Sympathies.

Thank you so much for all the excellent advice,

I'm going with curt email tomorrow re-iterrating non-voluntary nature of work, request for additional resource, addition of this role to my job description and request for reporting line to senior manager for this project (not my line manager!) - i'll also add in section 3 of lemons advice (although i work in a no blame organisation, there is decided lack of accountability too )

Book in meetings every two weeks with whichever senior manager I get, log time spent on this, risk matrix on the milestones and emerging areas of non compliance and pass as much as I can to service area leads while maintaining a cheery demeanor.

I can't thank everyone enough, i was genuinely panicked earlier.

Time to apply for a new job OP. And I hope you are offered one; IME even very rigid employers pay attention to that.

Hello OP, I've namechanged for this but I hope it helps.

I'm an internal audit manager and am fairly senior. The team I work on audits a number of organisations - say 15-20. Every single one of those organisations has a GDPR audit review scheduled, which will test preparation, awareness, roles, responsibilities and compliance.

Each of those reviews will start with the CEO and then the Senior Responsible Officer for GDPR, usually a member of the Executive Team. It is not enough to delegate this work down to somebody else in the organisation and assume that it's job done. The SRO remains responsible regardless of delegation.

In your email OP I would ask who has ownership on the corporate/strategic risk register for GDPR related risks and mitigating actions and who the designated Senior Responsible Officer for GDPR is. And clarification of roles, responsibilities and escalation routes for when you are undertaking your duties.

If they want you to do this job you need to have full understanding of the GDPR governance framework/landscape in your organisation.

That's brilliant auditbird thank you, I dont know who the SRO is, is it usually the data protection officer?

ethylred unfortunately i know we are under significant pressure to reduce headcount, so actually my leaving could be a silver lining as a redunadancy saving, its pretty grim.

Under GDPR yes. The Information Commissioners Office has some really useful info ICO

I suspect your managers might not have read it.

Have you got a union?
Have you made it explicit you are looking to leave because of this?
I wonder if you could have a meeting with somone more senior if you need to get lots of senior staff involved and work out a way to actually get them to do their bit? I don't know if it's just my workplace but one of my concerns would be getting 'buy in' and actions from senior staff. Good luck

So, I sent the "i'm not doing it without it being added to job description and pay regrade" email.

Direct manager politely asked if I had lost my mind, was I sure I meant to come across that strong? - I said yes, needed to be said, happy talk through.

We have a lengthy chat on business direction of travel (downward), funding (downward), upcoming job loses meaning everyone needs to take on more (upward). I point out there is no recognition or reward process (been in design for over 3 years) and there are no promotion or development opportunities in the department - manager again confirms this is the case and will continue to be so.

I get on with the day, and a more senior manager then asks for a chat. They apologise that the work was passed in the way it was, no need for me to do the work - and it will be passed to the admin lead to sort out. I point out the risks, lack of resourcing and the senior manager basically confirmed what I thought, it was only ever going to be a paper exercise, no compliance work will be prioritised.

I'm glad I spoke up, but I'm gutted they aren't taking this work seriously enough to actually pay for it - it's highlighted to me just how frightening it is in my work now.

As there is no chance of progression in the role, clarified again by senior manager, I said I would be looking for career options elsewhere (and I mean it). This really shocked the senior manager, I then got called into another meeting with my direct manager asking if I was sure I wasn't backing myself into a corner (no, actually I feel relieved) and couldn't understand why I would want to go as I work part-time on an ok wage - was it because of feminism? (we spoke alot about principles and fairness, but it was still a bit of a swerve I wasn't expecting!)

Luckily I like him , so I said yes, setting an example for my kids on being pro-active and achieving in work as a mother was important to me ( I've slogged the last 3 years getting my masters, so where he got the impression I wanted to put my feet up I have no clue).

So the result is; 1 startled senior manager, 1 direct manager muttering bugger and doesn't want me to go, 1 director with a headache, an admin lead who I have no doubt will want to kill me come Monday and me needing to work out what the heck I can do outside the public sector.

Thank you to all of you for the advice, I built a proper case for the work but there just isn't the appetite.

In hindsight, I should have kept my powder a bit drier on the progression front, but I wasn't going to get another proper opportunity to say it in an up-front way, and it's all been very matter of fact with no histronics.

Wow, well done. GDPR can’t just be a paper exercise, that’s just daft so more fool them.

Good luck on the job hunt - it’s sad but loyalty counts for little evidently.

Have a read of this before you volunteer (or accept being volunteered) again. It's a very interesting article on women volunteering, and being expected to volunteer, for tasks that don't lead to career progression.

On the back of that, I have (very nicely) refused to take on the current poison chalice at work. Following advice from senior management about priorities, blah, blah, blah. Luckily I kept good notes on the last review I had so was able to regurgitate his words back at him

I think loyalty went out the window in 2010 to be fair, but I have had substantial perks like training and flexibility - it cuts both ways. But no GDPR is not, and never will, be a paper exercise I'm so very glad I'm not the DPO.

theymademejoin that's a depressing read - especially as the solution relies on organisation recognition that this is a problem rather than women just saying no. Very much worth bearing in mind.

And the problem is, they generally don't realise there is a problem so it will never be fixed.

I work in academia and we have recently ben awarded Athena Swan Bronze (an award that basically says they have started to do the bare minimum to make some efforts to deal with the gender inequality here).

Problem is, they have simply made cosmetic changes and put sticking plasters over the issues identified at the previous attempts to gain the award. So boxes ticked. Yahoo.

However, the actual endemic problems and institutionalised bias have not been addressed (or even recognised as existing) so it's just a paper exercise to get the award in order to ensure research funding is not affected. The day-to-day reality is still that the women still get the crap while men get to do the high profile, high reward stuff.