AIBU - to not want to work outside my contracted hours

[Clove76]

Bit of background - I’m a Speech and Language Therapist, work 3 days a week and find I’m unable to do my job in the hours I’m paid for. There’s just so much admin on top of the appointments to get done each day that I can’t help but have to do that bit extra to keep up (just basic documentation and reports, I’m certainly not doing tasks above and beyond what’s expected).

I’ve worked for 3 organisations now (including government and private) and it’s the same scenario in each.

I know for a fact I’m not the only one who’s having to do more to ‘keep up’, as I had considered perhaps I’m the problem and just too slow.

Husband who has been my sounding board on this (and whether to stay in my profession) thinks most professional jobs require a bit of extra time to get things done. I don’t want to believe that’s true. So I pose the question - what do you do for a job and how frequently do you work outside the agreed hours? Am I being unreasonable to expect that some weeks I could just get away with doing my contracted hours?

I’m just so annoyed because I think I could love my job if I just felt the admin side of it was awarded as much time as it needs. As it stands I don’t think I can stay in this job much longer and am considering taking a much lower paid job that I can guarantee only requires me to work within the stated hours. I want to be more present for my kids and husband and not feel constant guilt that I haven’t done something.

I work in finance PT and have agreed overtime payments as working beyond my hours was getting ridiculous. I made over 10k in overtime last year.

Well that's why I think people like SLTs are in a good position to actually take a stand on it because their patients are generally not in life threatening situations (apart from those working in hospitals with swallowing issues etc).

Yes, I think this and others mentioning pay are right. My profession isn’t known for good pay so it kind of hurts being made to feel I have to work so much and am not exactly rewarded for it.

And you are so right; I think I find the responsibility of it all bothers me too.

Unfortunately, I have worked through quite a few CQC commissions, upper management ward visits and similar to say that people on the lower end of the chain deliberately hide the realities of what is going on day to day. Every time we have a ward visit, we would be fully staffed, extra bank nurses would be called and everything would look as if all is well in the world. In reality, most days we would only have one or two nurses running around like blue-arsed flies trying to look after 30+ patients. But does the higher management see that? No, because lower management, for whatever reason chooses to throw all their energy on making it look pretty.
Yes, patient s wait a long time for our service but I cannot hold myself personally accountable for it. I am also a person and if I leave due to burnout, over 100 patients on my caseload will have to wait even longer to get their regular appointments, not to mention the waiting list for new patients will keep growing. So keeping myself well is about the best I can do to improve patient care.

I think most professional roles require a degree of work outside of contracted hours. As a social worker I certainly did because my case load was high and I had very vulnerable families and carried a lot of risk. My current role isn’t practice based but I can still put in extra hours for a particular piece of work. My role is very flexible and well paid and I consider it part of the job. I couldn’t do the 50+ hours I was doing in practice now though.

I'm an AHP in the community and rarely work extra hours. Mainly because I can't because the children need picking up and there is nobody else to do it. But I also manage my own diary. In an emergency it may happen that I do extra but we don't have RTT wait list pressures in the same way so I can manage my own caseload. I do know though that AHPs in other areas have similar problems to you. Plenty of physios in MSK will pray for a patient to cancel last minute so they can catch up on notes.

In this kind of role its not as simple as stopping doing the extra. Notes can't be done any later than 24hrs so if you don't complete your notes within that timescale then in theory you could be reported to HCPC and they will complete disciplinary proceedings.

Is there anyway your manager would reduce the amount of appointments you have in a day? Can you ask admin to book you one fewer a day and see if that helps? Unfortunately if you do the extra unpaid then you don't reflect the true cost of the service and then there is no evidence that further funding/staffing is needed.

On average I do an extra hour each day. It’s a support role in a school. I probably kept more to my contracted hours when I started first as children needed to be collected etc.

Many others at the school do even more than this, teachers especially but also the pastoral support team.

I don’t mind doing the extra - I’ll occasionally need a day off in term time so it’s give and take.

I agree that many professional jobs have an unwritten expectation that people work out of hours. This doesn't mean it's right and you are within your rights to push back. I simply couldn't keep my head above water without working sone hours on the weekend and some evenings but I have definitely cut it down now. I used to spend the whole day on planning on Sundays. I have now trimmed this down.

It’s good to hear some different perspectives. Sad to hear that SLT is one of the better ones in terms of working extra though :-(

We definitely have more extensive paperwork. Been doing this long enough now and worked alongside other AHPs and seen how brief their notes/ reports are. Honestly I think it’s so hard to sum up a person’s communication briefly and clients are always so complex.

I’ve considered acute work and just don’t think it’s for me - I don’t cope well with being around really unwell people, not to mentioned I’d need to retrain essentially as I’ve been in Paeds for 9 years.

Re filling in the gaps and masking how much work there actually is - I’ve tried just doing my hours, and what happens is my reports get months behind and it feels awful. It feels like I can’t change the entire culture of an organisation on my own because the entire rest of the team will continue working extra anyway.

I'm a SALT working 3 days in the NHS. I am VERY lucky to work in a relatively well funded service where we are told not to overwork as it masks the need. Many still do of course, but I don't particularly. I might do an extra hour a week to catch up but that's generally it. I do get that caseload pressures make that tricky.

A few thoughts:

• we don't write reports other than for EHCP (and occasionally for other purposes at special request). We write targets, sometimes on a written form, sometimes via email. That's the main thing people e.g. schools want.
• can you shorten the length of your clinical appointments to free up admin time? Hard I know if they have waited ages. We aim for a 'therapeutic hour' where we have planned, delivered and documented in the hour, although I am terrible at it and talk too much!

I know this needs to come from the top though.

Could you consider working privately? You can charge for your admin time too.

I am also an SLT for the NHS. I've worked for 4 different NHS trusts over my career and in 2/4 of them the expectation was that we worked over our hours to complete our admin, which is unsustainable and leads to burnout!
In my current job I am a team leader in community paediatrics as well as still working clinically and my trust are really hot on staff wellbeing.
We actively encourage our staff to keep to their hours, although many still do work over. Personally, I probably work over by 3-5 hours some weeks but not all the time (I work 3 days a week) by doing things like working through lunch and staying up to an hour over some days to complete notes. However, I'm forced to leave relatively on time due to childcare pick up and I'm very strict with myself on not picking my laptop up once home after my experience in previous jobs. My opinion (and what I tell my team) is that working over our hours masks the need for more staff and we need to have for commissioners to prove we can't cope with current staffing. Also, even if you did all your admin every evening our waiting lists will still be long and you'll end up burnt out and off sick, which makes things worse in the long run.

Completely agree about the looking after yourself, for me getting up early a couple of days a week is how I do this. I’m an early riser anyway and this way I can feel that I’m doing the best I can for my patients, not interfering with family life and keeping on top of what needs doing.

I realise that not everyone feels the same and that’s OK, I discourage my team from doing this and they all know that I don’t expect it from them. All I ask from the is that they are compassionate and dedicated in the hours that they are paid to work. I’m lucky and our patients are lucky, they’re fricking awesome.

Solidarity with you. I know teachers have it so much worse than most professions, you work ridiculous hours in a role with huge responsibility and the pay simply doesn’t reflect this.

Yeah but OP’s husband is taking about professions.

Anyway, yes it is OP, sorry to say. I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t, across a huge variety of industries

admin is part of your role
if it takes more time then you must have a meeting and reduce your caseload to allow for proper admin time

DP works full time in education administration (so doesn't get the long holidays that teaching staff do). He works an extra three hours outside of his contracted hours every single day.

I’m actually currently working for a private practice (employed) but was NHS for years before. Unfortunately report writing is required for all children both where I currently work and in my previous role, and is unlikely to change as parents demand it in the current role. When I was in the NHS I would have found a therapeutic hour impossible tbh! Unless they had a speech sound difficulty perhaps. Most of the cases I saw were social comm, complex needs etc.

Yes, this has been hugely useful to see it is actually quite commonplace amongst people in professional jobs.

Speech and language therapist. Work my hours. If it doesn't get done today it gets done tomorrow. No one died because a report wasn't wrote - plus shorten these as SLTs have a habit of going on and no one wants to wade through so much stuff.

Band seven excellent appraisal reports part time. I work flat out when there. It can be done but takes extreme displine and being comfortable with a. To do list

Yes and it also takes jobs away from other people as they can get away with not having enough staff.

I'm about to leave a role due to the level of extra work required to get the job done.

I wouldn't have minded, I've done a lot of volunteering over the years so used to giving my time for free, but working extra has become an expectation and when I raised my unhappiness (and how it was impacting me, my sleep, my home life) my current boss was pretty rude about it.

So I'm off! The grass may not be greener, but I sense my new role will include the time I need to complete my job, fingers crossed!

Re. The therapeutic hour, it depends how often you are seeing them. If it's an assessment then I agree no chance unless it is straightforward speech sounds! If I am doing blocks of therapy I aim for them in the room for 40mins rather than an hour (manage it probably 50% of the time!). But yes, there will be different expectations where parents are paying and want their money's worth understandably.

Forgot to add, to add insult to injury I'm currently on MW too, so working extra means I'm really paid under MW - not on!

I used to work in the corporate world as an officer of the company (large multinational). I often didn’t start “my” work until around 4pm as I was always needed here, there etc. my contracted hours were Monday to Friday 9 to 5 with an hour for lunch. I cannot tell you how many “working lunches” I had, breakfast meetings at 7:30. As I started “my work” so late in the day, my “usual” hours were until 7:00/7:30 pm. Plus I had to be on my mobile phone checking that when not at work. On holidays, I’d have a dedicated hour for work to contact me.

this happens in many types of jobs and many different roles.

so no, not unreasonable to move jobs.

ask about this in interviews. Years and years ago, when my children were younger and I relied on a child minder, I let people know during interviews (this was admin role) that I had to leave by X time ever day due to child care and that I was doing an evening further education class to not available in the evenings. It worked.

but I did have to leave there to progress and then that required the crazy hours.

if you can take the lower pay, do so. Be clear in the interview process that you’re not available outside your contracted hours. Ask about others’ working hours and if they have a procedures manual. This can help you make your decision to accept or not.

can you minimise your work by copy and pasting certain aspects of your reports

get some short cuts