Team being taken away/reassigned

[Duckinglunacy]

I am mid-senior in a public sector organisation. I have a small team, 2 direct reports (2 FTE) of specialist resource to deliver a specialist function that has an income target attached.

A couple of weeks ago I was approached about loaning 0.3 FTE to a top secret project, and at that time I objected based on inability to achieve next year’s goals without the full FTE resource. I was ignored by our director and was told 100% FTE would be taken from my team to secret project. Naturally this was my most confident/able team member, who had been made to sign an NDA and was unsure if they could even mention that fact to me.

I returned from leave to find that team member has been assigned at 50% to secretproject, and 50% to total other part of business. Not ideal.

today, my other team member has handed in their notice as they have a wonderful opportunity elsewhere. So I have gone from 2.0 FTE to 0 FTE going forwards. I have made the case to the exec that I need that 50% FTE back as I have no hope of making our goals, though I am not hopeful. It will literally be impossible to do my job without a team.

at this present moment I’m feeling very deflated and just want to walk. Does anyone have any advice how to handle this? Is it a union issue? Ie would this constitute significant change to how I work? Or perhaps constitute a lack of support needed to do my job?

on top of the issue at hand, it seems there have been broad discussions at the top level of seniority about this change and I have not been consulted. In fact, I have been the last to know.

Unless they are preventing you from hiring to full head count, I'm not sure what the issue is?

People have the right to leave, the right to pursue other opportunities inside and outside of the current company.

I would be clear that the targets are only achievable with full headcount and get recruiting.

You can also decide to leave, that is your right. But your team leaving is not a change to your role....

Ah yeah forgot the key issue - it’s a hiring freeze. So with one team member going and the other reassigned (they didn’t actively pursue a different opportunity and weren’t given a choice). I don’t have any headcount.

I don't see that it's a union issue unless you get penalised for you team not delivering, when you have no team.
Someone resigned, someone was pulled elsewhere due to business priority.
You need to sit down with your manager and agree realistic goals for yourself for the next 3 / 6 / 12 months, with reduced staffing.

apologies, I’m a bit wrung out at present and not explaining it well - as yet there is no change to the goals; and we will be penalised for not performing

Forgetting the department structure - the goals were set when there were 3 FTE and now with 1 FTE they expect them still to be achieved? How do they see this working? Are they allowing other work to be dropped/reassigned that are outside these goals?

You are public sector yes?

Sounds familiar. I'd start brushing up your cv and looking at alternative jobs.

@Blanketpolicy - correct. Locked down a couple of months ago, and as yet no view on how to revise these

@Octavia64 - I think you may be right.

I'd also look for another job - I also work in the public sector.

Have they set the expectation you're going to get the work done/bring in the income with no staff? If so - see above: look for another job.

Generally the issue with public sector and hiring freezes is that they still expect the same level of quality and service level to be delivered with no resource.

Are you undertaking a statutory function? If yes, then something will need to be done, if not, the decision may have been made to take the financial hit.

flag it on the department risk register now, if director is not interested make it your line manager problem (head of department?) They will need to look into reallocating resource.

We are on everything freeze at the moment, and can see we are stripping down to statutory service only, so if you're a non stat service id get a new role asap ( redundancy has been reduced down to the statutory amount (fuck all) so not usually worth hanging on for unless you're very close to retirement.

Good luck, it's a very scary fire sale in my local authority at the moment.

I am in similar boat. Look for another job OP ... people are leaving in droves.

This is what you need to hit back on, and the conversation with the union is about workload and targets. No job, no team, belongs to anyone. They are owned by the employer. Nothing will change that. Your conversation is about "it took xxx to do yyy, so with xxx-2 you'll only get yyy-2". You have to pick your fights.

If it is a scramble for resource in your department and you want to keep swinging - I would write an options paper for the relevant board so they make an informed decision formally, at least you won't be left hanging and you'll have the decision noted in the minutes - you'll need your head of departments support with this to present it, and also your directors approval.

These are all really excellent points, and I have a broad skillset (and am often myself seconded on a part time basis across the organisation). It might be that I need to manoeuvre into these side hustles more permanently.

I completely get that I don’t own individual team members, and am actually pretty proactive as a manager at pushing them into opportunities, just in this case I was asked if I could spare resource, said ok but it would be tight and we may need to adjust the goals accordingly, but then this has happened without any discussion.

I suspect they have decided your team is disposable/not needed/not statutory and are just waiting for you to resign.

They aren't redoing the goals because they will just vanish.

I could be wrong but that is my take.

And this is my thought too @Octavia64 - but would such a resignation be potentially more like constructive dismissal?

It's extremely difficult to win a constructive dismissal case, so being pragmatic it's probably immaterial whether it feels like that or not. Though obviously take proper advice rather than following mine as an online random.

@passiveconstellation i know you are right. But it does feel that way at present

Constructive dismissal is an option, but you would need documented demonstrative evidence that you made the executive (or leadership team) aware of the inability to meet the targets based on the loss of resource and hiring freeze.
To prove the impact, you will have to stick it out.
Agree with pp that a new job is best case scenario. But you can do both…. Just document anything that would help a constructive dismissal case.