Maternity cover bossing me about.

[TonkaBeanFragrance]

Feeling pretty annoyed this afternoon but don’t know if IBU.

Before I went on maternity leave, I essentially managed myself and 1 other person (an admin assistant) I allocated work to this person each day. Admin assistant is okay but she does make mistakes (I flagged this to my boss before I left but a year later, she’s still there and still making the same small errors)

I started back from maternity leave last Monday, I'm part time now, 3 days a week. My maternity cover has been employed in another role in my team, not sure when she starts it properly.

When I started back I said it would probably take me a couple of weeks to get back into the swing of things and she said yeh no problem.

It’s been nearly 2 weeks and my maternity cover is allocating me work and telling me what to do like I’m a toddler. She’s insisted on a shared inbox being set up which just isn’t working as there’s 3 of us trying to work from this inbox and work is being duplicated or neglected as we all think one of the other is doing it. We’re also quiet at the moment so any work that is coming in, we’re all sort of fighting over.

Something has just come into the shared inbox and I said no problem, I’ll action it. She replied ‘no, I’ll deal with it’ I was like errr, okay. Last week she told me that I should not do X task (which makes up half of my workload each day!) anymore as I’m not going to be in consecutive days. I said that doesn’t make an ounce of difference and X task is half my role and I’m not happy to give that up. I thought why on earth does she think she has the authority to tell me what I can and can’t do?

I have a meeting with my boss to discuss this soon, but AIBU? I just feel like the lines are all blurred and there’s no clearly defined roles anymore.

I feel like it would work better if maternity cover went off and did her new role and on the 2 days I'm not in, she be there just for support for the admin assistant if needed and all workload comes to me again to allocate out to the admin assistant on the 3 days I’m there and on the 2 days I’m not, I’ll automatically set up my emails to forward onto the admin assistant. Does that sound reasonable? I basically want to take back ownership of my role.

I don’t know if I’m just feeling low confidence wise and being over sensitive or not.

Discuss with your boss. This is not on.

I don't think you're being oversensitive. I was mat leave cover for someone I worked with and was quite happy to step back to my original role when it was over. Offering last bits of handover info is normal but I'd expect a bollocking for trying to dictate the job description!

I'd just set it up as you describe and then you can see if it works better.

Then you'll have some evidence when you speak to your boss.

I feel like as the shared inbox has now been set up my IT and all of the consultants are now emailing work into it, I’d need to discuss with my boss before changing it.

It’s difficult because I don’t want to come across egotistical and / or difficult, but at the moment, there just isn’t a clear definition of roles, none of us know where we stand and ot feels like there are too many cooks in the kitchen so to speak!

Agree with defining the roles to be more clear. Work up a proposal and share with your boss.

I do think the shard in box is a good idea, but as with anything implementation is the key. Here’s how I’ve seen successful ones work. Try any and all of the suggestions as needed.

1. Designated ’inbox duty’ either assign each person a day and their job for that day is to monitor. - in your case a very strong argument for the admin to be in charge of this every day.
2. if using outlook- each of set up categories in your own client for each person (red =Susan green = Jane Blue =Betty) then if using the threaded view each subsequent email with the same subject will automatically be shown under the tagged category.
3. On the initial reply to the email, add your individual email to the reply. Then move the original email to a folder with your name. Each person does this.

Last bit of advice. Make the job yours again. Don’t ask the cover to change things just change them if she really is moving to a new role.

good luck…

YANBU and certainly not over-sensitive. There's always a possibility that things can change while someone's off on maternity leave and that can be weird for the person who comes back, but this sounds way beyond that - your own mat cover is basically trying to tell you what you can and can't do, and it's not her place to do that. I definitely you need to discuss this tactfully with your boss and explain that it's obviously fine when processes change in your absence, but that this is something different from that because your mat cover is basically not allowing you to do your own job and she needs to step back (especially as she has a new permanent role in the team coming up anyway - she should be starting to prep for that, not trying to manage you!)

It’s difficult because I don’t want to come across egotistical and / or difficult, but at the moment, there just isn’t a clear definition of roles, none of us know where we stand and ot feels like there are too many cooks in the kitchen so to speak!

This is exactly what you need to tell your boss. It doesn’t need to be a complaint - just “I’m sure X is very good at her job, but that job is NOT as my manager and it just causes confusion and tension if she tries to give me direction. I don’t need that; I can manage my own workload and I have you if I need a manager’s support. I’d appreciate if this was made clear to her.”