I’ve really messed up at work

[ohbuggera]

I’ve name changed for this and I’m deliberately leaving it vague to avoid being outing.

I have worked in my public sector job for just over a year. I’ve bedded in and worked between multiple different departments in that time.

I’ve recently been given what is essentially control of the smallest department. I’ve been doing this for a few weeks and it’s not really a full time job. I can work at it for one day a week and it would be done. I feel I could work in at least one more department and still be fine.

I’ve raised this to my manager who completely agrees with me and raised it to our big manager.

The big manager is fuming. My concern is that if jobs were to be cut mine would be the first to go because of how small my role is. I’ve heard her talking all morning, in earshot of me, pretty unhappy that I’ve raised this. She’s agreed to meet with me but now im terrified.

AIBU to think raising this wasn’t actually an issue?!

I’m definitely doing it all. I was basically doing it before plus helping others.

Welcome to the public sector @ohbuggera . I now work in a role where I am much busier than I was before. It is a more meaningful, enjoyable role that pushes me, but only after about 8 years of me writing business cases and trying to show upper management how us as staff can benefit the public sector more using our skills and experiences.

It can be very frustrating at times trying to push against the "this is the way we've always done it" type of people who seem to make up a huge number of public sector workers. Thankfully now I've moved to a more efficient and professional team (within the same public sector company) I can see how much of a difference being on the same page as your manager and wider team can be. See if you can get your manager to have a meeting with her manager with you there to reassure her you aren't trying to rock the boat, just make efficiencies.

Great, no wonder nothing useful ever gets done in this country. The DVLA, for example, is hopeless if you have any sort of issue.

Contact Acas, immediatly.
Or get your self into a union, you were well within your rights to be updated about your job security and it is looking like they are using this against you.

You have not messed up OP, your employer has.

I guess she might have spent hours in meetings defending against job cuts and then saying this undermines her. Only reason I can think of

Yikes - it’s always dangerous saying essentially you’re not doing much ….and it depends how you phrased this.
Yes they should restructure and give you more responsibility on the other hand they could make you redundant and let someone else take over your tiny job.

Seems a very odd thing for them to be mad about unless they were the one doing it previously

Often in all jobs, but particularly in the public sector, your importance is signalled not by your results but by the number of people in your team. I've never seen a manager going to their manager and saying "we can do this job with fewer people" unless they are directly tasked with doing so.

My point is there’s a lot to do, which ends up with everyone doing it on a Friday and usually me picking up a ton of it on a Friday afternoon! So I’d much rather just be doing it across the week

Absolutely agree. Do not draw attention to the fact that you don't have enough to do. Just look busy. Re-arrange your paper clips or something. People ard fearful of staff cuts and reshuffles so as you are new you should keep quiet.

I think the issue is that you've effectively talked yourself, or someone else, out of a job, unless you know there is excess work to do?

Are you local government OP. I have worked in local government my entire life and this is so common. People employed in roles there is not enough work for but managers want to keep that role in their team as the number of staff you have is part of manager's own status.

I have currently taken on the work of one and a half colleagues who have left, on top of my substantive role. I still don't have enough to do to fill my time. And I am NOT a fast worker. The full time person I took on all the work from, handed me on only one piece of work that typically takes me between 0 and 1 hours work a week. She was a young and ambitious person who left the job within a year, after realising it was a dead end. The other person I took work on from had not looked at any of her files on our system for four months. My manager keeps talking about how busy we all are but we are not. Its utterly bogus.

I once investigated a manager who was reported for watching tv at work. He did. In the investigation it became clear that his entire team had nothing to do as their entire role was taken over by another government agency. Their manager knew about this, at a time the council was looking to make job cuts, but never offered them up as a cut (they could easily be redeployed to another team given their profession) as I presume he felt this would decrease his own status.

I once worked for a manager who had a vacant post for YEARS. This post was not needed. When cuts came around he filled the post just so that it would not be needed. The post holder, a manager, arrived to find that no job actually existed.

So yeah, it exists OP, but this is a culture within Local Government ( or your bit of the public sector) that I have experienced a lot. This mentality, the lack of management of managers to make sure they are actually using their staff productively (let alone develop them to their maximum potential) is, imo, on the biggest areas of public sector inefficiency.

There are LG teams working to capacity but there are others with vanishingly little to do.

Too late for a union. They won't represent someone with an existing issue.

It's because you're exposing the big manager as not actually having enough to manage in reality. Sounds lilke typical public sector where a lot of people do as little as possible but pretend they're very busy! You've gone against the grain 😂

Underemployment is not spoken about much, but it is actually corrosive to self esteem

There absolutely is excess work. That’s my entire point

That is so weird. I would be thrilled if someone I manage told me there wasn’t enough to do and asked for more work.

Presumably there is something going on behind the scenes that you are not aware of. Just volunteer to pick up work for others and make yourself useful while this plays out.

I get my work done within around 2 hours. I am paid for 8. Have I flagged it up?Have I feck.

I think this is more like it. I'd be bloody annoyed if someone who'd been with us for 12 months across several departments decided that a post was under-utilised.

Why does she think this, though? She’s surely said? And how does this equate to her being ‘fuming’?

That would make more sense.

I had something similar: things were changed from On High which resulted in me having all my work coming in on Thursdays instead of spread over the week. I told my line manager the new system wouldn't work, and he said "Let it not work. Then they'll find out, and change it." He was right, but boy was it frustrating for a while!
So you could just go along with it, or you could do as a PP suggested and do a business case for changes. But you really shouldn't worry about having spoken up, I don't think. You were thinking of the good of the company.

You have flagged up you have capacity for additional tasks. Manager seemingly having an unprofessional response. Weather the storm. Not your problem. You have provided information with best intentions. Hold your nerve. No need to soak up their panic.

My manager who has been here for 15 years agrees with me! It really is a tiny post.

In that case I would think she has taken your suggestion as confirmation that you think she is doing a poor job in deploying her team effectively and feels that you are not in a position to comment on her abilities as a manager. It’s not my view, I work in the charity sector where we are all massively overworked and under paid and dream of a time when my teams don’t feel over stretched. But from your explanations that is the conclusion I would come to. If you are new, young and ambitious I would also perhaps think she is worried you are on your way up to her job and that makes her feel uncomfortable too.