To write an open letter to my board

[JaceLancs]

I am feeling unsupported and unappreciated at work - get no recognition for success but scrutinised for minor errors
Today I just felt like walking out or resigning (not a realistic option as I’ve been here 20+ years with too much redundancy pay to lose)
My own staff team are fabulous and are behind me fully but the board are unrealistic - it’s been a difficult year for most of the world! And are now trying to micro manage me
I increased our income last year by 150+% despite Covid and am worn down with the effort of trying to keep all the balls in the air
Would you:
1 try and ride it out
2 pen an open letter to the board detailing my dissatisfaction
3 go off sick with stress - not as an excuse I am genuinely on my knees with work pressure and stress caused by untenable situation
4 look for other work despite being in an insecure industry
5 resign - I have lots of transferable skills and enough savings to take up to a year out

I wouldn't resign without raising it with the company, no.

If you don't have a reasonably regular review meeting with your line manager / someone from the board, then I would ask to arrange a meeting.
The fact that you can afford to walk, and that you believe you would be able to get other work holds a great sway, as you will have the confidence to know that if you try to tackle the issues and meet a brick wall, then you can go, but it might be that you can stay in an improved environment.

As you will no doubt be aware, going in to the meeting with a list of moans probably won't get you as far as going in to a meeting with some solutions to what the issues are.

Thank you @ BackforGood
I have a meeting tomorrow with chair of the board - who is generally on same page as me but who has to also deal with rest of board and cannot always influence outliers
All my friends and family keep telling me they need me more than I need them and whilst I know they are right I’m wary of rocking the boat

The real question is 'if this is sortable, do you want to stay?'

If it's not sortable and if you wouldn't want to stay even if everything was sorted then resign. That is actually quite simple.

But if you do want to fix things and stay then you have to proceed quite carefully, And really the first thing you need to think about is your current workplace process - is this a grievance? Or is it the performance issue? Do you report to the board? Who is your actual line manager?

Argh sent too soon. If the chair is your line manager then they are going to take a dim view of you going above their head and sending a letter to the whole board.

Noone is irreplaceable, so don't cut your nose off to spite your face. Everyone goes through phases like this at work so: breathe, consider your actual issues rather than the non issues around them; what you want from the meeting and what your bottom line is. If you get a proposal you need to consider, walk away and consider it in your own time, rather than a knee jerk response.

I do want to stay if it’s sortable
I’ve got a staff team who I trust relying on me to keep it all going - and I want to keep them in a job too
We help 1000s of vulnerable people which I’m very proud of who would suffer
I report direct to board - who are in effect my line manager - would be easier if one person
Chair of board is my work based supervisor but only has deciding vote on anything if rest of board is split!
I don’t even really want to start a grievance if can’t be resolved elsewhere
My preferred option is open letter to board but I need to calm down - reflect and step away before responding

At board level you will get more traction with presenting a solution rather than a problem. So I suggest you work out what needs to change in the culture of the organisation, and how.
The less personal you make it, the better.
Eg “because many people - myself included - are finding it very hard to swim against a tide of working in a culture that emphasises the negatives all the time, we need to stem this with some action before it seriously damages our turnover levels. Here are fine things i suggest we adopt….”
Examples in this instance would include staff surveys, 360 degree appraisals, management training, feedback facilitation, light-touch reporting mechanisms to allow people to raise concerns outside of formal grievance processes, and bringing in external consultants to assess the culture. That kind of thing. The pitch of the solution should be determined by the size of the company and if you can assess the cost of your suggestions, even better.
Final thing to put in your pitch will be an indication of how you will be able to assess the value of doing this, in order to determine if this should be a regular (annual, bi-annual) process - what will be the KPIs of doing this, and how can they be measured?

Five things, not fine things.

Ah OK - I'm a trustee of a very similar set up, where the chair isn't officially 'the manager' but does carry out some line management duties for the person who heads up the organisation. And clearly this is a charity/third sector org?

What you need to do here is be a good boss. Reputational risk and service risk (everyone leaves and slags us off and we can't attract funding/do the services we've been contracted to do) are massive red flags for any board.

You need to get a sense of the whole staff team's views, whether that's from your normal supervision or through a more formal route as suggested from a pp. and reflect that back to the board through your normal reporting lines.

So we get an operations update every board meeting, I would expect to see a line here on the risks and issues column that says 'staff team have raised concerns about workload and stress'

You then give a fuller verbal update and outline the steps you want to take to mitigate the risk. Report back with a full staff plan next meeting. So you fix your problem by fixing the whole organisation.

If your board doesn't give AF about staff morale then this won't work, obviously. But even if they don't give AF a) they need to look like they do and b) they are their to govern not manage - which is down to you. The board will sign off on almost anything if it is going to help meet the charity's objectives (for which you need happy, engaged staff) and not spend all the reserves, imo!

Good luck and sorry for the long post.

I definitely would NOT write an open letter to the board. It will just sound like a list of whinges and make you look weak.

Does the board set and agree objectives/targets with you? If they do, and they are focusing on minor errors, then I would ask for a performance review where you can defend your performance vs your targets and set the minor errors in context. If targets are NOT being set, then this is the Board's fault that they haven't communicated what is an important objective and what is not - if they are focused on things that are minor to you but perhaps more important to them.

If they really are harping on about minor errors and not appreciating the big wins, then they are being unrealistic and goh can tell them so. You can point out that a team that risks nothing, achieves nothing.

You give the impression it may be just a few board members who are causing you problems. In which case, I would ask a sympathetic member of the board to have a private mentoring conversation with you for two hours once a month, and use that conversation to do some stakeholder mapping. Is it really important to satisfy the minor niggles of outlying board members? Perhaps not.

I definitely agree with the previous post which says you should take charge of promoting your good work.
Send a regular email bulletin to the whole board, updating them on excellent work done, calling out individuals' achievement and cc senior members of your team if appropriate. When you meet with the board, make sure you ask for 10 minutes to give highlights since the last meeting, and then you can also add in a slide that talks about how important it is to value and recognise everyone in the organisation and talk about morale. Give them some ideas how morale could be raised, and say if the tone from the top was more focused on clearly communicating strategy, focused o major objectives it would be a more positive and engaging place to work. Ask the board to consider doing an all-staff engagement survey, to see how people feel about the workplace and their role.

I do agree that if you get no recognition for success you need to share success more proactively - the board only ever know what you tell them.

But an awful lot of boards only report by exception - that is, you tell them stuff you need them to know/act upon. That often doesn't include success, my board have now explicitly asked to have staff members come in and tell us the good stuff because (actually) it can be very disheartening to volunteer for a cause you care about then spend all your time in the issues. We need the good things too.

But all that aside - reporting to the board doesn't mean the board manage you. You manage the organisation, the board governs the organisation. Two very different things. I'm a little concerned the board is in a management space which doesn't work for staff and means the real issues are probably being missed.

Option 3!
Your health is your wealth.
Time off to recuperate/ reassess/ refocus.
It’d do you so much good.

Raise first, if not taken seriously then 3), 2) and 4) if needed.

Thank you all - you have given me a lot to think about - I do regularly provide written reports on everything from safeguarding to finances including successes
Yes it is voluntary sector - for anyone who is in similar areas you will understand what a difficult climate it is - I’ve personally written successful bids, tendered for contracts etc to the value of £2 million in past 5 years and it’s almost become expected that it’s no longer recognised as any kind of achievement
Some board members do not understand the difference between governance and management
If I had to consult them constantly nothing would ever get done

If you have a good working relationship with the chairman of the board, then have an informal chat with him and ask for his opinion on how best to communicate with the board at large of the positives and gains made so that they are informed of the actual facts rather than misconceptions

Personally I’d look for another job and if the right role was offered, take it.

@JaceLancs

Thank you all - you have given me a lot to think about - I do regularly provide written reports on everything from safeguarding to finances including successes Yes it is voluntary sector - for anyone who is in similar areas you will understand what a difficult climate it is - I’ve personally written successful bids, tendered for contracts etc to the value of £2 million in past 5 years and it’s almost become expected that it’s no longer recognised as any kind of achievement Some board members do not understand the difference between governance and management If I had to consult them constantly nothing would ever get done

Oof that worries me somewhat. Can you suggest a board/management development day? We undertake governance training regularly - I'd say at least once per three year term. It's good to focus the mind on what we're on the hook for as a board member...

I knew a man, long serving in the organisation, who felt himself in an impossible situation, and at the end of his tether wrote to the most senior manager, and chief member of the board detailing his frustration. This involved what he saw as financial mismanagement.

He was simply ignored.

He eventually resigned and left with no payoff and no benefits.

So beware of that route- it rarely works how you think it might.

I met with chair who was very supportive and is one of the few people who does value and appreciate me
I’m hoping that they will try and work with rest of board to improve situation
Governance training is offered but some individuals don’t ‘get it’ and aren’t interested in training to improve
We need more board members to share the load and balance out the difficult ones
I am a trustee of another charity myself and also a director of a CIC so think I have a fairly balanced view
I am keeping my powder dry!

It sounds like one of the best and most constructive thing this chair could do is introduce fixed terms. We're only allowed to serve for two terms... means people age out...