Back to work woes

[Satpal]

So I’m in week 3 back to work after maternity leave and am seriously thinking of quitting.

During my Kit days I asked for a structured return to work. I expected to have retraining and have found that I am being assigned work without this which means I have no idea what I’m doing and I have to request the training myself or go and find the answers.

I had been asking my colleague about a specific process with no response and only found out the correct way because she had flagged the process in her shared Outlook calendar and I went off and did some reading on the intranet about it.

It’s also frustrating because all my workload is visible in a shared inbox and it looks like I’m not doing anything when for every query I answer I get assigned more by this colleague.
I have let my manager know because I think it’s my colleague assigning me the work. I’m so overwhelmed that I’ve started working outside work hours to catch up.
I took a sick day today because I feel sad that I’m deliberately not being helped by this colleague and it’s only 3 weeks in. I logged in and saw she had assigned me more work today when I wasn’t there.

I have also started bcc’ing my line manager into all communications because surely she’s the one who should be assigning me work?

What would you do in this situation? I’m already applying for new jobs.

If someone who shouldn't be is assigning you work, and you've told your manager- what did your manager say about it?

Nothing so far - she’s only 2 weeks into her job herself (not that is an excuse).
I don’t know if she’s aware of the extent that my colleague is assigning me work to be honest and I don’t know if someone more senior (ie hr director) is asking my colleague to assign it to me.
Should I mention it to my manager again?

Ask your colleague? If she's not supposed to be assigning you work, why aren't you telling her so?

That’s a fair point. Thankyou both.

Has much changed while you’ve been off? Honestly most places expect you to basically pick back up, particularly 3 weeks in.

If you're doing your work then doesn't it make sense for you to then do more work? I'm missing something. How is your work tracked?

I expected to have retraining

Is that usual? In my job, you were expected to be back up to speed by about 9.30am on day 1!

@Piccalow everything is now sent to a shared inbox and we get assigned emails. I have about 40 in my queue which is more than anyone else.
Apparently it’s because it’s all my region. I just get more and more added to my queue which means I’m in a constant cycle of catchup. If I ask for help from senior colleagues on specific processes my emails get ignored

I think I’m just going to get out of there for my own sanity because clearly they don’t value me.

I'd bring it up with your manager that your region is getting more queries in case they want to allocate more resource. Just keep doing them at your pace. If they back up that's not your problem.