Hi, Please forgive the length of my question - I wanted to paint the full picture...
I have enjoyed a senior, solid career in public relations and communications, having worked for some great global companies and championed some really super campaigns. However, in the past three years a couple of things happened. I took a senior role that required me to fly around the world for events almost every week. It was not sustainable, so I resigned after six months. And, both parents passed in a slow and distressing way from dementia. There was a lot to do practically and emotionally, and it took its toll on my mental health and my career. While organising my parents, I spent two years taking on unremarkable freelance roles and my career took a nose dive.
Emerging from all that, I am recovering well and four months ago got a 'great' job at a sports tech company. I am four months in, overseeing a team of three serving EMEA. Huge job expectations and little resource. It gets worse, since I started, they took away my budget for external PR agency support and made one of my team redundant.
I now have only one strong team member who is brilliant but very unhappy as his talent and achievements have not been recognised or rewarded by the company. I value him immensely but know he is looking for a new job. The other team member has been at the company for two years and is woefully underperforming. The expectation is that I can mentor him up to speed. He needs constant attention and we are redoing all his work. It is exhausting and frustrating and I just don’t have the time. Maybe in a bigger team, these things would be possible.
The company has a wide portfolio of products with five key business units with demanding stakeholders and expectations. It is US driven, which means that if you can’t delivery despite lack of resource, somehow it’s your fault. Added to that my immediate boss, who handed these two reports to me when I joined, is not very 'present'. She is often off sick and for hours of the day we do not know what she is doing or achieving. This is again demoralising and frustrating for us all and I dread going in every day now.
This is not my 'first rodeo' so I know things are going to end badly one way or another. Either my mental health deteriorates or I am told I am not delivering. Here is the rub, I would not think twice about resigning but my recent three years of job roles have been flaky, having resigned from one senior role and then taking freelance positions, filling in here and there.
One might say find another job while in this job, but at the end of each day I am totally frazzled, demoralised and exhausted and the job marketing is not buoyant at present. Plus, I have to work through three months’ notice. If I leave, I am set to lose a lot of dosh (healthcare, bonus, pension) but I have paid off my mortgage and have some savings.
Should I stay and ride it out in the belief things will get better or cut my loses, resign now, work through my notice and trust in myself that I will find something else that makes me happier. I am 53 so I feel worldly wise but I am of course scared of the unknown and worry about being unemployed. Annax