No job description NHS

[Maltester71]

I Work in the NHS. Been with the same employer for 14 years now.

in 2019 I started a two year secondment. It was externally funded, and when the funding ended two years later, the department I work in decided to keep me on.

However, the role had changed quite a lot (it was a new role and we found it needed tweaking) so a new job description was written and agreed with the operational manager.

the JD was supposed to go to the job matching panel and I thought it had. After 6 months, I asked what was happening and the ops manager admitted she had forgotten to action it. To cut a long story short, there’s been change of management and this JD seems to be nobody’s responsibility.

i actually think the Matching panel may find it’s a band higher than I’m currently paid. Regardless, a whole year has now passed since it was agreed, but it’s never been job matched or signed off. I’m not sure what my legal position is, or how to escalate it. I’m in a Union but I don’t want to start involving them unnecessarily.

any advice?

So you have a job description, but you think that you should be graded higher and paid more? That’s rather different to ‘no job description’.

I’m racking my brains to think of what might have been happening a year ago, which meant that matching panels for secondments that went permanent weren’t top of everybody’s list. It’s on the tip of my tongue. I know that it was something fairly momentous, globally.

Why do you need to ‘escalate it’? Just ask your manager to make the matching happen.

Incidentally, I was working in the NHS when Agenda for Change came in. The weeks that were wasted by people basically checking out of their jobs in order to write impassioned scripts explaining why they should have been 8a instead of 7, or whatever. It was ludicrous, and all paid for by taxpayers. I was an 8d in finance and I had people coming to me demanding to be given budgets to manage so that they could argue for a higher grade. No. I saw the best and worst of human nature during that spell. Be civilised and nice about your own case. No fuming about your ‘legal position’ and ‘involving the union’. Just talk to your new manager, assuming that’s what you mean by a ‘change in management’.

well Firstly thanks for your reply, though I can only assume you’ve as a bad morning because your reply makes assumptions and your tone is incredibly aggressive.

i also worked in the NHS when AFC came in (I’ve been here since 1994, but only with this particular trust since 2008. So I recognise what you mean, but this isn’t an example of that.

I have a job description in principle but it’s never been through matching panel, and HR don’t have it at all. My manager passed it to the operational manager, she left, passed it to somebody else, they left and then our department was taken over into a different directorate. I’ve followed it up about every six weeks but the reply is always ‘we will chase it.’

The question is, which job description am I working to? The old one (where the funding ran out) or the new one (with the tasks required, which have involved greater responsibility and may in fact turn out to be a band higher).

My line manager requires me to carry out the tasks listed in my new job description, however nobody has lodged this JD with HR and nobody has verified what band it ought to be.

Morning! If you aren’t having any joy with your management team, suggest to them that you help them out and take it direct to HR for their advice. See if that gives them a kick up the arse. Clarify if you are still working under the old JD and if so suggest you shouldn’t be doing tasks you aren’t graded for.

Ultimately I would very politely say to your boss if it isn’t resolved then you will, regretfully, need to take union advice and see if that gets it moving. And then follow through with the union if nothing happens.

I say this as an NHS manager. It’s not good enough (but sadly not uncommon) when this happens.

Thanks Hangry.

it’s very frustrating. Like a lot of things NHS - however I really am losing patience with it!

I’ll do what you suggest