Desk and office given away

[Proseccoprincess33]

I am due to return to work following maternity leave next month. I am anxious about going back but this has been further intensified by the fact my office has been given away during my time off. This has been my office for 5 years. Not only has it been given away permanently but I have not been allocated another office or even a desk. I only became aware of this because some colleagues alerted me to it and I then contacted my manager to discuss it.

She is off site and very hands off so we rarely see her if at all. In fact I have never met her. So had I not been given this heads up by my colleagues I would have been coming into work to see my office and desk occupied and no place for me to sit on my first day back.

I am part of a multidisciplinary team and I manage one of the departments. Therefore having my own desk and office is so important to supervise staff and the nature of our work is very sensitive so privacy is a vital. But at this stage I'd settle for a desk of my own.

I am having a meeting with my manager about this very soon and have found out she has invited 2 very senior managers along also which is intimidating and not helpful to the anxiety I am experiencing. I think she fears I will be very unhappy and so has her reinforcements ready to tell me tough sh1t.

Her solution so far has been that they'll slot me into a desk somewhere when other staff are off....ie hot desking.

AIBU that I am so upset about this and want to fight for a resolution? Any advice from anyone who has been in a similar situation would be much appreciated.

Thank you 😊

Thank you so much for this. That is so right. When I was organising my return to work if this had been communicated and reasons explained etc I would feel a lot less upset. It's the blatant lack of respect and regard for me as a colleague and a person.

That's awful about your colleague. Glad she challenged this and got a good result. Good for her.

Agree with others
The presence of 2 senior managers could suggest there might be more to worry about than where you are sitting
Speskbto ACAS

This attitude of 'busy workers who are not off on maternity leave' says it all.

I have come across incorrectly. I don't want my own special princess desk. Just a desk. I'm happy for it to be used by others when I'm not there as obviously that's reasonable and a good use of resources. But to have no idea of there will be somewhere for me to sit when I go in, esp when WFH is being actively discouraged is not acceptable.

A similar situation happened to me when I went back after 6 months maternity leave (so quite a few years ago). I was the manager in the office but found they had replaced me with a friend of one of the directors who had lost his job. Apparently it had been decided that this man would stay as the manager. I wasn’t informed what my role would be or where I would work. My first day back I had nowhere to work and no role. My staff were appalled. I was asked if I’d rather be part time and be the new manager’s deputy. I was advised by a solicitor friend that this could be considered constructive dismissal.
I think the advice to contact your union rep and ask their advice is the most helpful comment anyone on this site has made. Hopefully the union will have come across this kind of situation before and be able to advise the best way for you to proceed. The assumptions some commentators have made about your situation are not just unhelpful but cruel. I wish you all the best and hope your return to work is not as fraught as you fear.

Do kick up a fuss, where is all your stuff?
Also why on earth would you lose access to your email when on mat leave? That's not normal at all, very strange.

Also the NHS is on it's knees in part due to the absolutely shocking treatment of staff! Which then leads to horrific staff morale and an inability to do one's job to the standard they have trained to do so. So people then go off sick due to physical and emotional stress. These posts then go unfilled which places further stress on the remaining staff and so this cycle continues.

The morale in my office is rock bottom and it's no surprise given the treatment of staff and the lack of support. And there is a consensus of many that the NHS is on it's knees so give over, accept these sub standard working conditions (throughout the trust, not just work space) and when we don't receive a service to the standard we expect we will be the first to complain!

You are not being unreasonable OP. Ignore the bitchy, petty comments here. Take a union rep with you to the meeting. Take minutes at the meeting. I think if you know what you are dealing with, you will be better able to do it. Good luck.

OP it looks like alot of the comments on here come from people who don't work for the NHS and understand its limitations. Not covering mat leave is normally really standard and cost saving. It's just picked up & managed by the team. I assume.you have big old fashion desk top computers? Do you have a trust laptop or would you have to provide your own to WFH. Please take rep to the meeting your manager is escalating this. List the issues not having dedicated desk space will cause, for u and yr job share. Ask where confidential records will be stored, quote trust stoage and confidentiality policies at them. Ask for direction on maintaing confidentiality during appropriate phone calls and if they can agree you can book meeting rooms for whole days months in advance to allow this ( bet they won't let you do that) . Ask for all arrangements in writing. If they still want you to hot desk that's when the datexing starts . Unable to do x/y/z as unable to access patient records on line , phone etc. After several weeks of this I think they may change ther mind but it shouldn't have to come to this. All you want is the basic space / equipment to do your job

@Jetstream thank you so much ❤️

@jamimmi they are all amazing points. And I will address them all. Thank you so much. We are being told WFH isn't to be accepted going forward sadly. And yes it is the big old fashioned desks and horrific computers lol

I think organisations are totally confused what to do post covid. My nhs team has gone from wanting teams in (including moving my office so I had to be half a week in my original office and half a week an hour away). They then realised that because I claim mileage for the hour away location, it’s expensive and maybe they don’t need me there so much (I literally sit on teams calls all day because colleagues are at different sites). The main office has an area for my team that has 15 desks for a team of 20.

i don’t have an answer but post covid office life is so messed up. They don’t want you to wfh but there’s also not enough desks and this is our problem. My manager approaches it by ignoring the issue and saying oh it’ll sort itself.

I have come across incorrectly. I don't want my own special princess desk. Just a desk. I'm happy for it to be used by others when I'm not there as obviously that's reasonable and a good use of resources. But to have no idea of there will be somewhere for me to sit when I go in, esp when WFH is being actively discouraged is not acceptable.

@Proseccoprincess33

Well I'm not in HR, let alone a senior, and understood perfectly what you've been saying.

Don't be upset by cutting remarks from people who either can't comprehend, or have wilfully misconstrued, they're clearly cut from the same cloth as your (absent) manager. If she had better understanding of your team and your role within it, she could have handled the whole maternity leave and return to work for two of you in a manner that would have ensured a smooth continuation of your service with minimum disruption to working hours.

I wouldn't normally call Union at this stage, but think it would be wise given you'll face a manager who is inexperienced and remote from your workload and two seniors, who will have been briefed beforehand. I think it fair and wise to have someone at your side for support and to ensure you have an independent to witness what's said at your meeting.

Honestly I’m shocked at the amount of employer bum-licking that is happening on this site at the moment. There have been several threads lately where someone has had a (valid) issue with work and they are piled onto and called entitled, workshy, and all manner of other things.

The attitude prevailing in MN that employees should put up and shut up, are silly little women who should do what the big boss man tells them to and not complain, is honestly disgusting.

You are doing the worst kind of HR it seems. I'd hate to have sometime like you as a manager.
The fact place A is shit for employees does not mean all places have to be equally crap. I hate the "things are bad everywhere so just pipe down" attitude, we should strive to be better rather than force people to accept the worst and grind their teeth. Maybe your company could have done better and you came up with wrong solutions, or maybe your solutions would not work in ops situation.
The fact you don't understand how people may feel coming back after a long absence indicats maybe you're in the wrong job or need retraining. Or just developing minimum empathy.

@Wherearewe2001 the big boss man pays the salary. Therefore employees are required to render their contractual obligations in return.

Employment is about to get sticky. Jobs are likely to become more scarce and unemoyment will rise. It will not be helpful to be regarded as a high maintenance employee. Those who are at the top of their game and bring in hundreds of thousands might get away with it. The foot soldiers not so much.

Life is about to get very very hard for many.

This!
So many people here either are bitter because they have shit jobs or are armchair experts in HR seeing it in a tv show once.
It's not unreasonable to want to have decent working conditions!

How would she access her work emails? Majority of NHS staff don't have laptops or remote connections. So unless she goes in, finds a free desk/computer to sit at, she can't access them. Never mind the fact that likely her log in details have expired and it will take IT a week to reset them.

yanbu for being uncomfortable with the prospect of hotdesking. Hope the meeting goes reasonably OK.

@Wouldyouguess my role is to advise the senior management team how to get the highest performance as competitively as possible and within the prevailing law. We have a portfolio of benefits and wellbeing initiatives alongside and the bells and Whistles are trumpeted.

Behind the scenes there has been significant suppprt for vulnerable staff which I won't go into because it's potentially outing. The staff concerned know. Ultimately, however, HR work to deliver organisational strategy.

What I have said, frankly, here I would never say in real life. I've given a reality check.

FWIW I am regularly tapped up by NHS Trusts via Head Hunters for Chief of People roles which is what they are now called. I always say no. I would never work for the NHS because I would not suppport the hierarchical and bullying culture. I also wouldn't want to manage an NHS HR team. Occasionally we have hired a Business Partner or Adviser from the NHS. They have either been managed out during probation or been on formal performance management within a year of scraping through probation.

You know what l mean 🙄. People are either at work or they are not. My maternity leave was busy but l wasn’t at work

The behaviour of your manager/workplace is unacceptable.

I can understand empty office space being used during your absence. The nature of your job requires that you have it back. It sounds like the current occupants manage events can sit anywhere.

Old fashioned public sector rules gave guidelines for grades and their expected office accomodation. Now, the idea is that everyone except the CEO hotdesks.

Are their expectations for someone of your grade and role to have their own office space? You should be back in your office or WFH. If you can work from anywhere, why not from home? 2 days WFH and one in the office with dedicated space for calls and meetings of a confidential nature seems like the least they can do.

I would never treat anyone I manage on maternity leave this way. It is wholly unacceptable for your manager to not communicate with you. Not sure why you don't have access to your work account. In any case they should be sending information to your personal account as per your request. It sounds like your workplace does not value your work, at all.

There seems to be a lot of race to the bottom buttercups here. Ignore them.

Luckily employees are protected by laws regarding constructive dismissal and discrimination, amongst other things, which even Mr Big Important Boss Man has to follow or risk being sued.

Regardless of organisation, redundancies, job security or hierarchies, good communication and respect are crucial. I am at the ‘top’ of my career and ensure that I speak to everybody with respect and if I make a mistake, I apologise. (Including patients and relatives) I try and accommodate requests and listen and if I have to say no, I offer decent explanations.

Nobody gets to treat other people poorly just because they should be grateful they have a job. if your organisation works on that principle, then it is not a healthy work environment.

Hotdesking has taken over the NHS. At least where I work they allow wfh. It must be distressing to find out from colleagues that your desk and office have gone when on maternity leave, and no manger has communicated that with the employee. It is disrespectful and poor management.

There is a different between not being a doormat, and being ‘high-maintenance’

Jobsworth HR staff add little value to any organisation. They are also replaceable.

Can you not hot desk - it’s the norm where I work and at our clients. No one has a specific desk or individual office regardless of their seniority. There are small hubs which can be used for confidential calls or meetings.

I'm going to come in and say I believe that @RosesAndHellebores is in incorrect in some of her points. I am not "senior" in HR but I do have quite a bit of experience in this area around the application of equality legislation.

A few things jump out at me:

1. If only you are being asked to hot desk - and it is only you so eg. if you have to shoehorn yourself around the other staff rather than everyone collectively managing who gets desks on what days - then there is a 'disparity of treatment' there. Given you are returning from mat leave it is reasonable to assume this is a factor or that you have been inadequately considered in the application of the policy.
2. If a second member of staff is also returning and being expected to hotdesk under similar circumstances - this does not lessen your argument, it actually strengthens it as you have a common protected characteristic.
3. You must ask for a return to work DSE assessment - if the hotdesking scenario is finalised they must be able to outline how they will comply with that under those circumstances.
4. Are you still breastfeeding or expressing? If so, can they provide a private room that you would be able to do that? Would it have been 'your' office under other circumstances?
5. There is a limited time window in which to raise grievances (Maternity Action can provide more information) so you need to challenge this sooner rather than later.
6. Take a Union rep with you
7. The NHS should have a Womens Network of some sort - contact them for advice - they may have someone with specific expertise on this sort of issue who could help or support you.
8. You might not be able to avoid hot desking - no one is entitled to a desk anymore - but you should not be the only one forced to do it.
9. As others have said be cautious about the prevailing wind on this - it sounds like they aren't investing in your service. If, and I hope it doesn't, come to a redundancy point - make sure your period of maternity leave doesn't work against you.
10. Also check your pay - if there have been pay rises recently make sure you've had any pay adjustments done correctly while you have been off.