Need help wording an email - refusing to be moved to different department

[mammabear31]

All,

Please can you help me word an email to my GM? I work in the NHS and have been in my role for approx 4 months. It's an admin role and I am the only support in my department. Yesterday my line manager informed me that I had been "nominated" by a project manager in another department to go and work there temporarily for 6 weeks, to help them with a project that has failed miserably. It has presented to my manager as "we need 1 person per department to come and help this one on a temp basis, please nominate asap and we will get started". My manager has been incredibly supportive and told them in no uncertain terms that I cannot be released. They have come back and said, tough, we need someone, suck it up.
I am planning on emailing the GM this morning to say, in no uncertain terms, that I won't be taking on this role and am staying put. However I am quite worked up/angry/upset about this and I want my email to be assertive and to the point, and to emphasise how disgusted I am with the situation while being professional. I have written the below so far, please can anyone advise?

Thank you!!

GM,

I understand there is a need for support within the *** team on a temporary basis, for which A has nominated me. While I am incredibly grateful to A for her kind words, I am very concerned. I have had many discussions with B regarding this, and I believe she has put forward her concerns to you too. I have only been in my current role for 4 months, and as I?m sure you can appreciate it has been a long road to get to the point where the department are fully supported administratively. To then take the 1 and only support in the building away from the team would have an incredibly negative effect on the service delivered to our patients, as well as increasing the workload of the clinical staff unnecessarily. It would also have a negative effect on me, personally. I have had a sleepless night worrying about how to word this email, how to tell you that I am extremely unhappy with the way this has played out. I am upset not only that this decision has been presented as non-negotiable, but that it was decided without consulting me first.

There are many other A&C workers in the directorate that I am sure would jump at the chance to move into a temporary role, but unfortunately I am not one of them. I am happy working where I am, as I said above I have just become settled and the service is running smoothly for the first time since my predecessor left in March, and I think it?s incredibly unfair that it was run with that I would be taking on the role, without consulting or discussing the role with me first.

To that end, I?m afraid that my answer is no, I am not able to take up this position. Maybe in the future if I am consulted in advance or given an option, I would reconsider. But at present, I have just got settled into this role and it would be detrimental to all concerned if I was then removed for 6 weeks.

I apologise flowery I started writing the post before the OP came back to update, it's nothing to do with not reading the thread.

At the risk of repeating other posts, you are making a good decision not to send the email OP.

Yes it's frustrating but do the role change for 6 weeks and show your ability to be flexible, presumably it does not involve a site change Ie you will be working at the same location just a different office?

Hope it goes well for you.

I actually think the email is good (but I am hotheaded and hate authority etc) and puts across very clearly your points but still gives them a chance to say actually you have no choice and for you to say oh ok then. I think emotional references eg sleepless nights are fine and you are basically giving them a little warning they are causing you stress - something many people will go off sick for. You have to stand up for self now as if you move you will either do a good job and be asked to stay in new role or it is poisoned chalice then you get tarred with the it's not working brush.
This is allow with the caveat that I am self employed and rubbish at dealing with bosses!

Good decided soon not to email. It would have probably been what's known as a career limiting moment. Try and focus on the positives and what you can get from my he 6 weeks (new contacts, experience, good examples for future job interviews). In my experience the more you take every opportunity offered and move around the easier it is to get promoted etc. We think it was a really great move that you shoed initiative and set up a meeting to find out about the role. I know it isn't what you want to do, but if you can show them you are flexible and easy to work with you will do yourself a big favour. Careers are made or broken on reputations, make sure you get a good one. Good luck OP, and you never know, you may enjoy it.

I think you really must be bored, bored to give such unsound advice!

Probably. I am 48 hours into being induced...

Plus as I said I am self employed precisely because I hate this kind of employer behaviour!

Maybe best not to post unsound advice when people are relying on proper guidance Hope everything goes well for you though!

Thanks for the best wishes.

Nevertheless advice is advice and always subjective. This isn't an expert forum of employment lawyers etc. I think just because you disagree with my advice doesn't make it unsound and doesn't make your view 'proper guidance'.

I don't think the advice is subjective. Quite the opposite. The OP has no grounds for refusal. None at all. The only way to deal with this situation in a constructive way is to get on with it and make the most of it.

When I go to work (nurse) I don't get to choose which patient I work with. The nurse in charge considers the skill mix, the needs of each patient (ICU) and says 'I'd like x to go to bed 1, y to bed 2, Lougle to bed 3....'. Then I do it, because it's my job.

Lougle - my situation is slightly different, giving a lot away here but I'm an administrator and PA. I go to work, have my own desk and office and support my team as required. We are in a different building for the main hospital so quite isolated. I am being moved to a different directorate, to do an entirely different role to what I am used to, for which they were advertising via FSS as Band 2 (I have been assured I will be paid at my current banding for the time I am there).

However, after a weekend of talking through with my husband and a friend who works elsewhere in the trust, I am feeling a lot better about the situation and am not dreading it anymore. I was being far too negative and am now ready for trying something new.

And yes: I will DEFINATELY name change once this thread is done with!

I'm glad you're feeling better about it.

Take it as an opportunity to expand your knowledge.

It's a Catch 22 - if you do it well you will find it even more difficult to extricate yourself in six weeks' time, but if you refuse or do it badly it will count against you even more.

The key thing is to make sure it really IS for six weeks, and I would be making sure you have a list of very defined tasks to carry out. Make clear to the project manager you understand the need to 'take one for the team' but you also have a department to keep ticking over. Your manager needs to keep the pressure on, be the bad cop on your behalf.

This has all the hallmarks of a classic NHS 'throw bodies at the problem' solution - so everyone can look like they're doing something to solve the crisis when in fact nothing can be achieved because everyone is falling over each other's feet. This won't be the project manager's fault (unless he/she has realised a large team = more power and is pulling the strings to get bodies, although I would assume it is coming from higher up). He/she is probably stressed to the eyeballs with the catastrophe project - but may well not be able to magic stuff up for everyone to do all of a sudden. Be helpful but keep it very focused.

Are you still on probation? Make sure you visit some pain on your manager by pointing out your probation needs officially to be suspended or your objectives revised in the light of the aforementioned crisis.

Good for you mammabear. I admittedly don't work in the nhs but from a future cv/interview question perspective, stuff like this is gold dust, whatever happens you can spin it to reflect well on you. In 6 weeks you can't be expected to effect real change, so anything you do to help the new dept is a bonus. If it's hell then it's a future answer to 'describe a difficult situation you had to work in' type questions. For your current dept does well without you then it's a demo of how well you've got the place running that it can run with you temporarily absent. If it goes to pieces then it shows how invaluable you/your role is that they can't manage without you.

Good luck with the placement, in advance!

Lol x-post with tribpot, we are clearly opposites

The difference is, I work in the NHS Giraffes. You're not wrong, there is future interview potential in the work, but in the here and now the OP needs to get in, rearrange her share of the deckchairs on the Titanic, and get the hell out again!

LOL that phrase is excellent Tribpot - and one I shall use with pleasure when describing my sitatuon in the future!