Capability proceedings against me - should I really welcome this???

[mousiemousie]

I have been trying to improve my relationship with my boss for 9 months and it has been an awful time for me. She is a bully and is constantly insinuating that I am incapable of doing my job but will never say what problems she has with my performance or how I can address them when I ask her. My support has been reduced from a full time experienced and qualified person to half of a temporary inexperienced trainee and this is affecting my ability to meet deadlines but my manager claims that my job is adequately resourced. I am working significant unpaid overtime but still cannot meet deadlines with my current resources.

A director from a different department has advised me that a capability charge now would be in my interests and that I should press for one. Prior to changing boss under a restructure 9 months ago I was very well thought of for the previous 9 years and it is only my line manager who thinks I am lacking in capability now.

I was suprised by this advice but I do need to resolve the problem as fast as I can - it has gone on too long. Is pushing for capability proceedings really sensible? I would also potentially have a bullying case to make but would be reluctant to persue it asI think it is unlikely to help me.

Does anyone have any advice or thoughts? I work for the NHS.

Oh Mousie,so sorry.Only read last post so don't know if its been suggested but do you belong to a union?You boss sounds awful and bullying should not be tolerated.I would make notes of all negative comments made.Is there an anti bullying policy in situ that you could cite,or some kind of grievance procedure you could initiate?They should be able to provide you with a reason they are not happy,not fob you off.I too work for NHS pt and have recently got new boss who I have not sussed yet but is stating they cannot promise set hours etc which may mean I am looking for another job.....FLIPPING NHS,for such a large orgnisation their childcare/family friendly facilities are atrocious.

thank you cat64

wrinklytum can a new boss really make you change your hours? . I am trying to join the union and I think grievance may be the only way forward

hi mousie

sorry to hear the meeting was worse than expected, but the fact that you have tried to resolve it informally and constructively and your meeting was hijacked really does add to your case. stick to your guns - raise a formal grievance and insist it is investigated by a manager outside your current dept. also think about how you will work/where you will work while it is being investigated.

good luck and keep posting!

Mousiemousie, having read what is going on with you, it is very similar to what I went through. I had a boss who lumbered me with so much work that it was unbelievable. He kept calling me in and critising me, saying, as I was a new mother, that I would be better off leaving as I was obviously, after having a baby, not the same woman and not capable of doing the job I did before having a baby.

I went to see HR and said to them that I thought it was constructive dismissal. All the evidence pointed to that as well. My employers settled out of court with a nice agreed sum and that gave me a few months safety net to find another job.

I think your boss is trying to get rid of you. Mention Constructive Dismissal, it will make them very afraid!

I work in the NHS and am a Unison rep. I clicked on this thread because I have to sit in a capability meeting this coming Monday.

Dig out a copy of your capability policy.. it should be available on the intranet. It should say that at your first informal meeting an action plan should be drawn up between you and management to agree where improvements need to be made. Then they should give you 6 to 10 weeks to work on this. Then review it again.

That is our policy anyway... I should imagine most NHS trusts are similar.

Unison will not take this on if you are not a member. Your membership would not become active until 13 weeks after your first payment too. Also, they will not take on cases that have been pending prior to you joining.... in the same way you cannot insure your house after it has burned down IYSWIM.

Hello there mousiemouise, you are being very strong. I work in HR for an organisation very similar to the NHS.

My advice (apart from raising a grievance) is to start keeping a work diary that records your manager's bullying attitude and expectations of you. If you are able to do this retrospectively this might also be helpful but you should make it clear which bits are retrospective.

UNISON may well support you regardless of the 13 week rule - I have certainly had experience of stewards waiving this rule, particularly where membership is low.

By all means speak to HR; the more senior the HR person the better. Beware of newly qualified/inexperienced HR officers - they will mean well but you really need someone who has had plenty of experience of resolving workplace conflict. Many NHS/public sector organisations will have some sort of workplace counselling - see if you can access this as it can be very useful in supporting employees through grievances.

The most important question you need to ask yourself is what you what to achieve from the grievance route. How can this be resolved? What would a successful outcome realistically look like?

I will speak to our ~Union rep; I am very sorry and a bit worried too to hear that they may not give me any support.

llareggub the awful thing is that I think there probably is no possible successful resolution.

One option is that I may have a tolerable work situation but no better until I find another job - hardly a great result.

Another is that I leave with a reasonable pay off - I doubt this is likely and it still leaves me unlikely to get another job with comparable pay and hours that fit...cue selling house, relationship breakdown etc

Maybe the best is that several bullies are held to account and stop bullying other people, again I probably have to leave. Maybe there can be a big nhs expose on this and other stuff you can't speak about whilst you work there

Maybe other people will also raise grievances and the culture will have to change...and I can stay...in my dreams...

Maybe the job of my dreams will sneak up on me...well again I can dream

I think I am going to pay the price for all of this that I lose my family, my wobbly realtionship is unlikely to survive me losing my job.

I would rather keep my family together at any price but I feel there is no option that is likely to achieve this.

HATE the thought of upsetting and uprooting dd.

Despondancy City right here

mousiemousie - please don't be so despondent.

Do not under any circumstances lose your positive attitude. You've talked at some length earlier in the thread about your excellent track record.

I would not advise going straight into the grievance route just yet. Capability procedures are stressful enough without getting mixed up with grievances. Keep your diary, and continue to raise your feelings during the formal capability meetings.

If your boss and your boss's boss our at the meetings they cannot be decision-makers at any formal hearing.

If things become unbearable then go down the grievance route - I would suggest that doing it now looks like a tit for tat reaction to the capability stuff.

Any chance of getting in touch with some of the former colleagues who were bullied? Can you access staff counselling?

What position do you hold?? Can you approach anyone else, rather than this particular line manager? I'm thinking when I was badly bullied by my line manager a few years ago, I went to the Medical Director, who was wonderfully supportive.

ok m, well done for keeping your cool, the unfortunate thing is when pressed your boss's boss had to support her mgr, not you, privately she may well be kicking your boss up the arse (sorry) there is only 1 deadline that is outstanding, if i was her i would be most unhappy about a mgr of mine being unable to resolve this situation which she has labelled possibly as a personality conflict....... i would definately speak to hr as you plan, but hold off on anything formal just yet, they will obviously come up a plan for you to meet your deadline, so i would calmy (hard i know) wait for them to make the 1st move. the calmer you azre the more unerved your boss will be, and the more likely her boss is to realise that this isnt just a member of staff unable to cope with her workload,,, we are all with you here and on your side

llarregub - the thread title may have mislead you as there are currently no capability procedings and no inclination for these at all from my boss's boss.
The extent of the problem is that my workload is double what I can deliver and this is not recognised, and that my boss is bullying me and using me as a scapegoat. I am not sure if I could contact any former colleagues who left because of my boss...that might be interesting

themoon66 I will think if there is anyone else...I have already had advice from the director of another dept which was to press for capability or to instigate a grievance. I could go up another level to the acting director of my dept who likes me but I think he would resent being involved in a problem which should have been resolved a couple of levels of management down by my boss.

robbosmum - thanks, it was good that I avoided being angry or aggressive in that meeting even though I felt ganged up on. I am now wondering if I am going mad in thinking my boss bullies me and constantly puts me in an impossible situation since her boss seems to think she has been reasonable with me...except that HR and other experienced people I have spoken to have said that I am not at all mad...and she is still making it impossible for me to do my job.

Unfortunately my boss is the calm ice maiden and I am the one who gets visibly distressed by the situation and struggles to disguise those feelings.

Thanks for your support all of you, you all help me to see things more clearly and not to collapse on the floor like a jellyfish!

have you written it all down mousie .. with times and dates?

it is not you,,,bullied people often think that, and that it is them that is mad! it isnt....
it is easier for her boss to think it is a local problem as then she wont have to do anything

mousie - I too have worked for the NHS and unfortunately witnessed the bullying of a colleague. I felt so powerless to help her and the situation was only ended when she left to get a new job. The bullies then turned on me, I was pg at the time and left soon after but having seen what had happened to her I probably would have tried to leave anyway. It's such a horrible situation to be in and youu feel so small in such a large organisation.

3 years on though as you can imagine I've had a lot of time to reflect on the situation and if I was there again I'd behave very differently. Despite that feeling of being lost in a big organisation the NHS does have very clear guidelines about how to deal with bullying. I would suggest that you get a copy of your trust's guidelines and read them carefully before starting a case. You should also contact acas for advice since unison will probably not represent you unless you can hold out for another 3 months.

Document everything (all meetings, conversations and your workload and how much you manage to do, how much you have to drop etc) and ask if any of your colleagues would be willing to at least support you in saying that you have always been very competent up until recently.

It may also be worth your while going to see your GP so that you have it documneted that this bullying is causing you undue stress and is affecting your health. You will then be able to go to occupational health who may be able to put it in wirting to your line manager that she should only be giving yu a realistic workload.

You also say that your support has been reduced a lot recently - were you given a reason? If not, or the reason wasn't adequate, you may be able take that up and put a bid together for extra help - again, you need to have good written evidence for this so make sure you keep good records of your workload.

In my limited experience, I have never heard of anyone starting a case who hadn't decided to leave already, but it really does sound like you have nothing to lose. You could win, it sounds like you have a good case. If you win things may improve or they may not, but if you do nothing it sounds like it will just get worse.

Whatis happening to you is not uncommon. Something similar happened to me and essentially ruined 4 years of my life. You may find \link{http://www.bullyonline.org/this} helpful.

Two approaches you could make. Firstly, is the manager also bullying others? My situation was only resolved when the whole department took out a collective grevience against my tormenter, who was bullying them too. The way many of these people work is to isolate and pick off victims. There is strength in numbers. Also do not be afraid of taking it to the top. Years of complaining did no good for me at all. However, when the big boss was confronted by an entire department with a think file of incidents refusing to work with this man any longer, something happened pretty sharpish.

Secondly, it's always worth turning the tables on them. Your excessive workload is the result of incompetent management, not your own inadequacy. Simply refuse the extra work (difficult I know). I found it incredibly empowering to refuse work on the grounds that he was paid to do that, not me. It wasn't in my contract so I (and my colleagues) refused to do his work for him. I simply stopped being polite and accommodating to his demands. I did my work and refused to speak to him except on a professional level, and never without a witness as he was an awfully convincing liar. Every insinuation was met with me stopping, turning around and challenging the comment, asking exactly what he meant, asking for further definition until he had talked himself into a corner and started to shout after which I would just point out I didn't have to put up with agression and walked away. It takes a lot of courage to do that, but what are your options?

Twiglett - I have kept a daily diary recently of all the significant meetings I have had and the interchanges with my boss. There is quite a bit of email documentation from earlier as I have foreseen the possibility of big problems for a long time and put some things deliberately in email form - which annoys my boss.

liquidclocks

• sorry to hear that you have been through a really bad experience too. I may well speak to my GP, I don't have the most robust mental health in the world and know it is particularly important for me to try to avoid high stress situations. I am strongly considering removing myself from the situation by getting signed off for stress for a week or two and just speaking to HR in the interim. I am not sure if this would make things any worse for me than they currently are and I am sure this would infuriate and inconvenience my boss. Any thoughts on this?

My previous manager has told me he will tell my boss's boss that in his opinion I need a full time person to support me and he is not suprised that I am currently struglling with my workload - also that he thinks I a very competent and that he was always receiving compliments about me including from directors of other departments.

Slug, so sorry to hear you have gone through bullying too. In answer to your question, my manager has bullied previous staff who have left. She told me that she is having trouble currently with one of her other direct reports - I don't know who or whether they feel unfairly treated. 2 other managers in my dept at her level are also bullies though so the problem of bullying in my department is wider than just me. Strength of numbers may not be something I am able to capitalise on.

RE refusing work - I did that 3 weeks ago when asked to do some new work and said I had never done that particular task as that had been done by my old manager, and I didn't have time to take it on. My boss was furious and basically emailed me to say you now have to do this job whatever you say about it. I don't know where this leaves me - will I now be in trouble for not doing it do you think? My contract would not preclude me from doing this work. I am guessing I need to try to do it so it will be added onto the list of things I fail to achieve.

Re ACAS, I had a look at the website, will perhaps call them later, thanks for that and also for the bullying link.

I cannot express how grateful I am to all of you who have posted on this thread with your support and advice

mousie
x

m, re: new work, e-mail her and ask her which job you are currently undertaking that should wait whilst you do this more imortant task!
gosh i hate working in the nhs

robbosmum her answer will be a highly irritated "you should be able to prioritise your own workload, you have plenty of notice to schedule this work in ,your overall workload is not excessive, nobody else has a problem, get on with it." ...and I just don't know how to make progress against that

oo--er ............ M

Actually I would email

I would list all your current projects together with estimated time for completion in manhours and required delivery date. I would include an allowance of 10% additional time to deal with unexpected elements that always slip in

I would include a total of estimated manhours in your team: you plus your team member

I would make a point that team-member is inexperienced and put in an allowance for management / training of said team-member

I would then ask her which job you should prioritise

in this way you have documented your workload and raised the issue

and you will have her reply

really there's nothing else you can do

and when she says you should prioritise you could calmly state

"I have made you aware on numerous occasions that I believe my team to be under-resourced and the pressure placed upon us to deliver to be untenable. I am requesting your help as a manager to prioritise this workload as you believe it is workable. I would very much appreciate your help in this matter and look forward to your response. In the meantime I am prioritising x, y and z and will inform all relevant people of this fact"

go goran.....

MrsGoranVisnjic - you really rock.

I did a list exactly like this in Dec. I will do an update on Maonday morning, although my boss will moan at me for bad prioritsation of spending time on this rather than on the overdue stuff itself.
I feel 100% better to have this approach ratified. This approach infuriated my boss but is helping now to show that I have anticipated the current problems. At the time I showed that thework didn't fit the hours and she said how was I going to solve the problem? I said I could cancel my planned training day and negotiate with a director not to do one project at all; beyond that I could not fit the work into the hours still be some way. She told me this was not acceptable as I had not solved the problem and did I expect her to do the extra work? I said I have no more solutions.

Of course I didn't come up with the stuff at the end "I have made you aware on numerous occasions that I believe my team to be under-resourced and the pressure placed upon us to deliver to be untenable. I am requesting your help as a manager to prioritise this workload as you believe it is workable. I would very much appreciate your help in this matter and look forward to your response. In the meantime I am prioritising x, y and z and will inform all relevant people of this fact" Love it - that will go on the next work plan to be issued on Monday.

I have just come back from Charlotte's Web with dd which inspires me to ask her to be friends and tell her it's OK to be less than perfect at man management and ask for help with it

...dream on, mousie