Notice for changing offduty in NHS?

[angel1977]

Looking for some advice really.
I work in the NHS and throughout the pressures of covid for the last year my team has been decimated by absence, sickness, unfilled posts and staff being taken to work elsewhere. This has resulted in a skeleton staff of 15 where there used to be 32 to do the same work.
Management have also decided to change work hours from 9to5 to 8-4, 10-6 and 2-10. Thus covering more work hours with less staff.

Now we do twice as many of these shifts than previously ie I used to do 1 10-6 shift a fortnight, now its 2 or 3 a week. We have been through the grievance procedure with the Unions and got nowhere and our contracts have been changed.
My problem is now that there simply isn't enough staff to cover the shifts and management is now changing rotas and off duty at a moments notice. Previously offduty was made up 3 months in advance with set rota for working weekends. Now this has been scrapped and we are being told we will be working 1 weekend in 4 instead of 1 in 8. We are often only told the day before what shift we will be working as they are constantly changing. (4 versions of offduty for March). When someone phones in sick another person has to stay on to cover the shift as there is no one else. Very few requests for annual leave or days off are being honoured currently. One boss threatened to change our rota to that of the police where you are allocated days off and annual leave with no discussion.

I guess I'm wondering what we can do if anything. When we complain about work life balance we are told we must meet the needs of the service. The unions are powerless. HR department said in a teams meeting if we didn't like it we could just leave.
Staff are leaving in droves and new starts only last weeks before leaving again... Is there a rule about notice periods for work and annual leave allocation?

I'm just pondering this. How many hours a week are you contracted to work?

37.5hr for me but other people seem to gain and lose hours with no mention of how it is to be accomodated.

So you work 5 days a week and have 2 days off?

The current set up sounds horrid and annoying but i'm not sure what you can do about it. How do people with kids manage with one days notice of shift changes?

I have had a similar (but not as bad) experience myself and in the end I set up an automatic message/voicemail on my phone, basically saying

"I am unable to take your call right now. I am back on shift at 9am on Monday 15 March and will attend to your query then. If you have an emergency, please hang up and dial 999."

The problem I had though was that management kept contacting me outside of work hours for shift changes. The automatic message/voicemail DID work though - they got the message quite quickly.

Are they contacting you outside of work for shift changes etc etc?

Other staff do contact me off shift because the bosses are never there.
Often staff work 7 or 8 days straight then 2 days off then back on for 3. Often asked to work overtime on days off aswell.

You are under no obligation to liaise with staff when you're not on duty, regardless of whether the bosses are contactable or not. Just set up automatic messaging on your phone. What reason are they contacting you for anyway?

Usually told during the day that someone is off and so someone will need to work x. Its not so much being contacted off duty, its the fact you cant book annual leave around a weekend because it keeps being changed umpteen times.
There is also no skills mix so inexperienced staff on themselves under pressure just leave the service.

I know this is just stating the obvious but why don't you just look for another job? What is it about this job that makes you want to stay there even though you have no control about when you work?

I've just got my 10 years service in NHS and 15 years pension and cant leave to go back to the bottom elsewhere (new pay deal does not honour previous paylevel or experience in NHS.)
Why should I leave what is otherwise a good job when management is the problem? So many staff have left to go to PIP assessor or NHS24 and came back so there are worse places!