My job is awful - how do you cope in this situation?

[popularpopcorn]

I shouldn’t complain because I applied for it and thought I wanted it.

It’s a mid-senior Civil Service role. I report in to someone very senior who has no time to talk anything through. I inherited a ridiculous backlog of work from my predecessor. I had no handover. I am meant to have a team of three but two roles are vacant so I’m having to pick up their work too.

I was told it would be flexible around school pick ups etc which was nonsense. I routinely have to log on at evenings and weekends.

Basically I hate it and it’s taken over my life. Anyone been here and what do I do about it. It’s been six months so far.

I formally handed my notice in on Monday but had a conversation with work about it last week, but yes it's done now. Except I offered to work 7 weeks notice instead of 1 month to give them more time to find a replacement... Because I feel guilty about leaving and this absolves my guilt.

Suffice to say I now have a countdown on my phone which shows my last day. I didn't want to leave but the workload is too much and there is no funds/resource available to help so 🫠 here we are.

Good luck.

Oh my god...I spent a lot of time in my last job feeling like this and my blood pressure went from always being bang on 120/80 to 155/85.

So sorry that it actually resulted in a mini stroke

As others have said:
Stop doing the work of the vacant posts. They won't fill them if you do it.
Rewrite your delivery plan to explain what you can't deliver due to the current vacancies.
Ask the resource issue be added to the risk register. Make sure your concerns and impact on your well being are documented.
Then sit back and just do what you are paid to do. Wait and see if anyone notices and asks questions.

All of this is good advice in theory but it assumes a level of organisation/support from my employer which doesn’t really exist 😆 Other Civil Servants may be able to relate to this!

They’re happy to fill the vacant posts but the catch is that it’s me that has to find time to manage the entire recruitment process from start to finish. Then if there are no suitable candidates it’s me who has to start again from scratch.

In theory we’re all meant to have a delivery plan/objectives but in practice nobody does and we’re all meant to be “flexible”.

We definitely don’t have an up to date risk register for things like this.

Having said that, I don’t have any excuse not to document concerns via email and clearly outline what I can and can’t do and why…and think I need to start doing this.

@popularpopcorn that sounds very badly organised. I have recent civil service experience and it's not been anywhere near that!
I would suggest asking in your email to add to the risk register even if you know there isnt one and also to suggest what you will stop delivering on as you are so short staffed. It's time they noticed the problem instead of letting you try and plug the gaps and wear yourself out

I know exactly how you ferl!

I'm on my last day of my notice tomorrow, its been a hellish 4 weeks!

I had an exit interview today and my manager, who has never actually managed anyone before, asked me if I have a personal problem with confidence because I've basically been left to run the place on my own and my training was rushed and way too short! Obviously I should have just got on with it. Plus the work life balance is non existent and not what I was sold at interview! I'm angry about that.

I raised it do many times and was ignored do I couldn't see a way out other than to leave and I've never been happier!

You do what's best for you, and keep raising it. I'm dropping 30k to retrain but I couldn't be happier.

Money isn't everything.

Are you newly promoted? I would prioritise recruiting your team. Don’t be afraid to push back if you don’t have capacity although we all pick up work in the evenings or weekends if needed. Tread carefully about asking for overtime, especially retrospectively, they may say it indicates you can’t manage your work or approve it but then expect you to take on even more work. Maybe look at the Crossing Thresholds course.

Haha no I’ve been at this grade for years.

This seems to be such a common occurrence, people doing 200% to bridge the gap of being shot staffed. I believe that what you are suggesting is the only option other than leaving. However this is easier said than done when you feel like you are letting people down and others will also suffer as a result.

I feel your pain. Could you perhaps ask for some admin support to get the recruitment process off the ground?

This is brilliant advice! But… does anyone have any experience of doing this and please can you share how you got through the painful period of feeling that you have let people down? I would love to follow this myself but there’s know what you should do and then actually doing it. Would genuinely find it inspiring to hear people’s experiences.

@LemonRoseCat Yes I would also like to know if the outcome was positive.

How is everyone doing?

I’ve been trying to put some of this advice into practice including getting better at saying no (for the first time in my life!)

The problem is that some elements of my job can’t just not get done as it would be embarrassing e.g. we have a big event coming up and I can’t just not do the work or on the day it would be a disaster and very embarrassing.

However there is other stuff which is easier to push back on and I’ve told my manager it just can’t be delivered. I think she was a bit annoyed and surprised.

I’ve completely reached breaking point now which is in some ways quite helpful as I no longer care about feeling like I’m letting people down. Just trying to channel those feelings into something positive.

Oh and they also agreed to buy back some of my excess hours which is a win 🎉

Your manager wants solutions.

Draw 6 boxes: absolutely essential with time commitment
Nice to have but not/essential time critical
Things that can be dropped.
(Include in each box the hours that are required).

In the three boxes on the right the impact of things not being done or benefit of them being done - a mini risk analysis.

You could repeat this three times: Gold service, silver service, bronze service. Make clear what is currently being provided with the resources you have. You and one other.

Why is the hiring process so daunting. If you know the grade get a proforma ad/jd (Google similar roles if necessary), post the ad in appropriate places, enhance with Linkd in, close the job, short-list/interview. I appreciate it is a tight market with more jobs than people. What can you add to make it attractive: wfh/hybrid, pension, condensed or flexible hours, etc.

Give it 12 months and we'll be back to 50/60 applications for every job as the recession cuts so don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

Your manager wants solutions

Really? I think the solution she wants is for me to absorb the workload and stop saying it’s not possible, to be honest! Although your suggestion of gold/silver/bronze is a really good one and I hadn’t thought of presenting it like that, thank you.

I think the recruitment issues and the time-consuming/bureaucratic process are quite specific to the civil service (except the fact there are no good candidates which is obviously widespread).

Make a massive list of everything you do. Everything. Relate it to the business outcomes /deliverables your department is responsible for.

Put these in what you believe is the correct priority order.

Work out which ones you have time to do.

For the rest, put down succinctly the risk and implications of that work not being done.

Schedule a 1 hour meeting with your boss and take her through the list.

Ask her to

• validate that the priorities are the right ones
• acknowledge the risks of the other stuff not being done.
• acknowledge that you won't be able to do the other stuff from now on
• ask what help she can give to get you better support - eg a secondment of someone to fill in ahead of the new recruits arriving.

Seriously it's not worth killing yourself for a job. It really isn't. And if your just get told to get in with it, get job hunting.

Good luck.

You are not your

I have successfully used a similar approach to suggested by pp. I made an excel table with tasks and hours needed to complete them. At the top of the table I had the total of my hours available (normal working time only, no overtime).
Hours needed was triple the amount of time available... I then arranged a meeting with the boss to work out how to resolve the misalignment. She reassigned 2/3 of the work.
I made sure there was a written record of the meeting and also invited a colleague to attend (as a witness to be honest).
I wouldn't overcomplicate the list, you don't want the boss to get bogged down in detail and it will also take a lot of your time to draw it up. I would assume the boss knows the business enough to decide on priorities.

@RosesAndHellebores Sadly if it was as easy to recruit as that in CS the op wouldn't be facing these challenges. Instead during my time in CS it was a total nightmare - you could actually turn doing recruitment into a full time job. You not only had to take a job vacancy through multiple boards before even starting recruiting you then had to fill in lots of inexplicable forms and you were often sent the wrong ones. Once you've filled them in forms disappear into the ether for days on end or are lost and you are often given conflicting or inaccurate recruitment advice. You then have to navigate a complex computer system to look at applications, sort out the interviews yourself and marking before beginning the process of pre employment checks yourself - all on the same inexplicable computer system. the whole process takes months and then only if it's going smoothly

@LemonRoseCat
I have followed my own advice in the past, on one occasion I was at breaking point.
It felt really scary and I ended up involving a deputy DG as my own manager kept saying things would be ok when I knew they wouldn't.
I had literally worked out what could not be delivered on the resource I had.
My experience was positive: the senior manager actually took notice and I got some additional support. My same grade colleagues who were also killing themselves to deliver mission impossible actually started saying no as well.
I do think I was fortunate to have a solid senior management team however I'd got to breaking point and I knew I had covered myself with the approach I had taken and knew I wouldn't be staying in the role (by choice) if they didn't listen