Sorry this is super long but don’t want to drip feed.
I've been fortunate enough to have a 3 month handover period with my maternity leave cover before I go on leave in March. To set the scene, I work in the UK, but remotely in a global role in marketing - my colleagues are all over the world. I am subject to UK employment laws.
My concern is that a lazy/underperforming mat leave cover may look really bad for my role while I'm away, and given it is a known thing that restructuring is happening, I'm worried about my position. If the cover doesn't perform/makes my position look bad/redundant (i.e. not producing anything of value) I worry my role will be made redundant. A lot of my job is self directed but what I produce adds value.
My cover is someone from an agency our company uses (rather than a maternity contract position). I had no say in my cover, my manager went for this option as it was cheaper than hiring a contractor.
She lives in another part of the world. When I come online at 9, it's the last two hours of her day (3-5pm). I asked her at the start of Nov whether she was 100% allocated to this role, and she said yes. I've been handing over and training up the cover for almost one month. This involves a 2 hour meeting where I go through work that I do and she shadows/I talk her through it, or direct training with training decks and documentation, and sometimes joining meetings I attend. That would lead me to expect that she has another 6 hours to fill in the day - 4-5hrs if I'm being generous with multiple breaks in the day. At first I was a bit daunted as I didn't know how I was going to fill her other 6 hours. But now I'm very much feeling on the other end of the spectrum...
I share a list of bite size tasks, exercises, training videos, documentation for her to do that is the outcome of our daily meetings, with the expectation that she can EASILY complete these in the 9am-3pm window she has the next day before our meeting. I am not exaggerating when I say most of these activities should not take more than 30 minutes each (a VERY generous estimate - some are 5 minute jobbies), maybe in total over the month there have been 2-3 activities which could take roughly an hour (as in, watch a training video or a recorded meeting). I would ask the next day how she went with X,Y,Z activities, did she have any questions, and most of the time, nothing has been done for a few days. This pattern of behaviour consistently for a month! At any given point, there would not have been more than 3 activities to do. We end up doing some of the activities together in our meeting, because I'm actually stuck and can't move forward with a piece of work until it's been done, and I want to harness the teaching opportunity/get her to get get hands on, rather than do it myself which might take me <5 minutes (think editing a Facebook post from "2023" to "2024" or something small to this effect).
It's not even that she attempts to do it and is stuck - that is not a problem, I genuinely love teaching and helping my colleagues. I want to see her succeed. I am despairing because NOTHING has been done because she has been busy 'running errands', or going to 'appointments' (6 hours worth of appointments in one day??) , or sick kids. I get it with the sick kids and had empathy for this (have my own), and in my head I've written them off as a Carer's Leave days, but why are you running errands or decorating your house for Christmas (yes she told me this!?) on company time? I'm in an awkward position because I'm not her manager - I'm just the person who is handing over to her. I am not here to performance manage.
I am 100% sure that this attitude will continue over into the year I'm taking out for maternity leave, and not even the bare minimum will get done without lots of reminders and prompting from others.
My manager is super hands off, trusts me to get on with my responsibilities, and doesn't really like to get involved in performance/conflict/confrontation etc. He will probably ask me when we catch up how the handover is going, and I plan to tell him that it's slow going because of the various disruptions, and that I'm struggling to understand why she is unable to complete (VERY generously estimating) 1-2 hours worth of tasks, when she has 6 hours to spare in the day. I want to say that I'm concerned about how this will reflect on my role when I'm away. I don’t think he will do any performance management whilst I’m away, it is just not his style.
I would be grateful to MN to give any advice on
- Whether there is any law in the UK that would protect my role from being made redundant whilst I am on maternity leave, especially if it is related to the performance of my cover?
- Any thoughts on how to approach (and continue to communicate) this issue with my manager?
- Any ideas on how to protect myself/role (e.g. I've just started to try and keep a log of the 'busy running errands' and 'decorating' comments - which feels really petty from me but not sure what else to do)
- Anything else would be really helpful.
I really like my job, and really worried it's all going to turn to sh*t when I'm away and my cover makes my role look useless. The main thing is, I don't want to role to be made redundant because it looks like it isn't contributing anything of value for a year. Thanks in advance!