I'll try and keep this as concise as possible.
Been in job 6 years, been on maternity just under a year. It's an industry where covid has more or les led wiped us out so I'm grateful to have a job at all.
Due to the loss of revenue they didn't get anyone to cover my maternity, they just drafted someone from another department to do my role while I was off.
However now I've gone back they've also kept this other person in our department because they've said she doesn't want to go back to her old role. Which is fine, except literally there's now been 2 of us for the past fortnight sitting at my desk doing 1 workload (which to be fair isn't much but I try and keep busy and drum up business where possible etc).
AIBU to ask my manager if there's a more productive use of my colleagues time? I'm worried if I say 'my time' they'll try and push me to another department which would be a deal breaker for me due to the nature of the business.
I think what annoys me is we've been told we all have to have taken the cut in hours, which I did because as I say a job is a job right now, but I find it weird that I've been asked to reduce hours yet there's two people sitting here being paid to do the job?