Tetchy shouty colleagues due to lack of staff what are my options

[OnceRuralNowUrbanbliss]

As I left work on Friday I promised two project teams I'd put in some extra hours over the weekend to try and get them what they need from me.
I haven't as unexpectedly had to drive for 7 hours to rescue a teen from a hotter than hell festival and the other teens came home from their dad's early.

Im in the civil service in a function which all major change work initiatives must flow through. Recently promoted so although I still have my own project responsibilities Im now accountable for the entire teams work.

We are haemorrhaging staff due to poor management and better salaries being offered elsewhere. We keep running recruitment campaigns to fill 15-20+ vacancies with no success.

I spent most of last week dealing with shouty people who want to get their projects delivered before the end of March else their stupid funding stupidly evaporates if not spent.

The organisation has also recently decided to shake up its way of working with new leaders, processes and comms.

My head is spinning with it all and not sure I can cope with endless weeks of unreasonable people expecting unrealistic output from the talented but stretched staff I've got.

What can I do? I've tried asking if there's a way of extending these budget expiry dates and apparently not (it's a daft governmental thing).

There's also a tsunami of new work wanting resources with a current lead time of approx 4-6 months. This news is going down poorly.

It's not my own personal fault the civil service is being run the way it is on the shoestring budgets it is but it is me being shouted at or bearing the brunt of fraught project delivery staff.

I used to love my job but now it's giving me sleepless nights and robbing me of weekends/evenings.

I am a member of the union but I don't think I'm there yet for raising an issue with them.

I’d look for another job. I never did when I was employed and I really should have just changed jobs more often

When did you last have a 1:1 with your manager?

is subcontracting out of the question if recruitment isn't working?

Shouty people are behaving unreasonably. That’s not ok.

Have you talked to your line manager??

I would escalate this urgently up your management chain and discuss how you prioritise and how the work you can’t do is dealt with. Basically your operating model is broken.

I do have some sympathy with those you are dealing with. Of course they should not be rude or aggressive, certainly not. However if their own projects that they have fought for budget for will now fail because either they have been promised resourcing you now don’t have, or you can’t give them resources but they can’t go ahead without your team’s involvement well of course they will be frustrated.

personally? I would be looking to leave rather than manage this long term.

Oh wow I got some suggestions. Thanks so much.

Ok two important things re my line manager: as I left on Friday he was heading off for two weeks annual leave but he set up a call with a the main guys at the brand new outsourcing contract we now have in place to draw down on. I could have kissed him and the contractor liaison guys as I'll get decent data scientists and cool headed thick skinned consultants to work with me on some of the nuttier ill-scoped urgent things. They have a fat wedge to spend it and don't care how I spend it as long as I get costed designs worked up in a fraction of the time I would normally spend even when things are well scoped and not at all nutty.

My boss is part of the reason people are leaving. I nearly didn't apply for the promotion due to my observations of him. He wants to change All The Things All At Once and has a terrible comms style when ranting at his team of 100ish.

My own experience now I report to him directly is that he is a talented genius with a gift for cutting through crap and seeing things I don't plus can talk pragmatically to all the big cheeses imploding with rage as their projects risks of not having the right staff available haven't been managed.

I wouldn't leave now as taken ten years to build a solid network of colleagues and a rich understanding of a complicated gov department about which is very little is written down. But I could I guess. I really don't want to.

It's a valid point that people should actively manage their career by moving frequently. Maybe I should give it more actual thought instead of ruling it out. I don't like the idea of leaving more colleagues im the lurch tbh. I want to help.

I guess I want to have a reasonable convo with project teams to explore the option of later implementations. It's this crappy budget evaporation making everyone's tempers so frayed. Happens every years.

Very many thanks again for further thoughts posted.
My boss is away on annual leave so I'll have a direct chat with the CIO his boss in his absence about the shit the funding deadlines create for everyone.

I really would think more about your coverage model here rather than relying on being able to push matters backwards. And from my corporate experience just expecting your clients to suck it up isn’t going to work - they have their own pressures and they don’t care that you can’t recruit.

Great if you can get more resource via contractors you should use them. But it isn’t the only thing to consider.

for example if the mandate is your team has to be engaged at a particular spend level or risk level how do the projects that come in stack against that? If you raised the minimum higher could you cut down the projects you take on and provide general tools/guidance for those who No longer make the cut. Ask yourself honestly - are there projects that (particularly given resource constraints) where you are more of a hindrance than a help?

If part of the problem is taking in vague briefs why not look at your intake process and not accept projects until they can provide certain baseline information so you don’t have to sort it for them?

This sort of stuff is very standard for any in house service function (eg PM, finance, tech, legal) and I’ve done all of it with my internal clients regularly.

Thanks @AtLeastPretendToCare for your sage words, insights and guidance you are of course spot on.

One of the things recently introduced has been a common work request process with triage assessments as to what looks good enough to work, what doesn't and feeding back to those teams. Part of that brand new process (not yet written down or well communicated) is an embryonic filtering system of siphoning work away from the blocker team with all the vacancies (ours) direct to other teams who can do smaller work items directly as you say 'at risk' and with the ability for them to say whether it needs the input of our lot.

It's a huge oil tanker of an organisation so implementing these new ways takes time and effort outside the day-job.

Rome wasn't built in a day and what I keep telling myself that it's always the challenging hard weeks, projects and people that ultimately provide the best learning and an enhanced CV.

Ill try to imagine myself in an interview in a couple of years time answering the Q 'Tell us about a tricky time and what you did to resolve' that might give me the objectivity I need.