Huge pivot in new job role and I’m struggling

[SomeKindOfMeh]

Last year I landed my dream job in my dream company. I’m 49. Lovely team, amazing boss, all good. It used all my skills and I took on extra training in my own time to improve other things.

it turned out there was a gap in our output and my lovely boss suggested I could be the one to do that. I launched myself into it with all my enthusiasm, training myself up on the side. But now the role has changed so much that it no longer uses any of my skills. Instead, it requires totally different skills that I don’t have.

i can’t be too specific but it’s like I was hired to be a plumber, then asked to do a spot of minor plastering, and now my job is suddenly all plastering.

I don’t mind learning new skills but there’s been no mention of training. I’m not churlish enough to use my hours (I’m part time) for all that training, so I’m doing stuff in my own time.

I think what I’m most struggling with is that I no longer feel I’m doing a good job, and no longer think I’m the best person for this role. I look at established plasterers and think it would make more sense for this company just to hire one of them.

What do I do? I’m stressed and upset. My boss is great and doesn’t expect me to be a great plasterer, but how long before he realises he needs a plasterer, and gently gets rid of me? 😢

I’d speak to boss and say that I’m very happy to be responsible for videos, but that there isn’t time in my role for me to shoot them all myself.
Before the conversation get some quotes from a freelancer whose specialism is this type of video for eg 18 a week and ask your boss to sign off on the budget for them. Explain that once they’ve been being done for a year costs will reduce because you can reuse some old videos eg “Throwback Thursday” would let you repost previous content.
If they refuse the budget request then discuss how this would be managed using the assumption that you’re not doing them eg ok, what would be the best solution here if there is no budget? Could we use an apprentice? Or can we have half the budget and just do 9 videos a week? Etc
That gives you an hour a week on this (managing freelancer, setting direction, scheduling the posts) and leaves time for the rest of your role.

Holding responsibility for something doesn’t necessarily mean doing it. I think that you could offer to hold responsibility for all social media if you can get a reasonable budget agreed so that you can delegate.

Push back on it. You can't do what they say as it's impossible, and also it's not what you were hired to do. You might be willing to meet them in the middle and make a realistic number of videos with some training or with the right budget, and delegrate as others have said.

By the way, what is a "pivot"? I don't think I've knowingly pivotted since I played netball. My boss throws random words like this into conversation but no-one has a scooby what he's on about.

You need a young just out of college marketing team member - they will have these skills in bucket loads. Can you move sideways into another role?

They do sound pretty clueless, OP.

What outcomes are they looking for? What metrics are they tracking and how will they know what success looks like? Why on earth have they arbitrarily decided on three pieces of video content a day, with no data at all on efficacy of this approach?

I would definitely push back because it sounds like they have no idea what they are doing. Social media marketing (well, any marketing) should be highly data driven. What is the data telling you and them?

This .Stop being a martyr. Ask for training.

Turn on the spot.

In your situation I’d be seeking a new job: sadly it’s no longer your dream organisation / company.

Would also do as some PPs suggest and take a pause on the videos - say it’s for strategy / quality / resourcing purposes - and try to produce a plan to make it more sensible plan. Doesn’t matter if you don’t know SM, you’re the one in the role.

You don’t have unfair dismissal rights yet. But a reasonable manager / organisation would understand that this has been a huge change and seek to help resolve things to work for both them and you, rarher than leaping to dismissal.

Crikey. I produce video image content on instagram for my business but each one is a lot of work behind the scenes (I work in design). Even if you had the images/video available then doing a reel an hour would be hard work. I'm assuming it's a video an hour because you are part time but they want 'full time' content.

Agree with pp that just having enough ideas and planning that much content is half the job. I'm interested in the job sector you work in that can produce that much content.

One of my clients is a full on design company, working on site daily and they probably produce a curated video a week and other then that a few site photos or exhibition stands but that's it. Surely any more would be annoying as a customer??

If you have produced any video content already I would use that as a test to demonstrate the time commitment to make something and project forward to future work.
Then come up with a a solution, training, more personnel, less but higher quality content etc

If you can show that what they are asking is unreasonable but have a fix in hand they can respond more positively.

Imo lots of companies just want someone to deal with this so they don't have to think about it. You can offer to be that person but you will need more commitment from them to give you the proper resources.

It sounds like a huge amount of production, but is anyone measuring their impact eg on analytics? Boss is being completely unreasonable to expect full inhouse production on part time hours.
’Boss, I am not using the core skills that you hired me for. This isn’t sustainable in the medium/long term. I’m not doing the job that’s in my job description. What you are asking requires resources of x hours and z budget to create y videos, and we need to measure how impactful what we are doing is. On part time hours, I can’t do what you are asking.’

I had to do sm videos as part of my last role and totally hated it so in your shoes would
probably run a mile tbh

do you have to video yourself? That would be a red line for me

anyway if you are very unhappy about doing them you need an honest chat with your boss

I know very little about social media, but I know enough to say that is a ludicrous target, and depending on what type of business you’re in it’s an OTT volume as well.

Perfectly reasonable to push back on the volume- I mean they want quality output surely- without seeming churlish. “Boss I have worked out that creating one video, freshly filmed with content, takes 3-4 hrs. Therefore max that can be created is 5 per week.” But you need to have the deeper conversation “Boss I agreed to take on this task to increase my skills and help out the team. However I was hired to pickle eggs and I am not doing this anymore, and I don’t want to lose my core skill set. Perhaps we could look at me training up other members of the team on the content creation, to reduce key person dependency.How do you envisage my role developing over the coming months?

I feel your pain. I took on a new job recently in something I have a bit of experience in but we are currently in implementation phase so suddenly I'm a project manager which is not my skill set at all! Plus my manager left just after I started.

I've reached out to networks for help and used AI to help me come up with project plans, documentation ect. I like others idea of getting an apprentice in to help. There are also t level students that need placements and you dont have to pay them (although great if you can) I have done a little bit of video planning and shooting and it's so time consuming- sounds like your doing a great job.

Hmm in my original post I missed the quantity you had to create and no stock footage either is very tough. I was thinking it was just simple videos!

It may be they just think it is easy/fun and don't know what is reasonable.

Ideally you'd be able to have a conversation with them where you say it takes at least a day to make a good video (one that's part of a strategy), if not more.

Is it worth talking to someone like ACAS about whether this all constitutes a change to your contract? Would you rather just look for a new role?

Actually you need to reposition this when you speak to your boss. You are so apologetic for everything OP, but the correct framing is that as a great team player you took on this task to support the business needs and develop yourself. If the business wants you to solely focus on this you will need proper training and for your boss to manage his bosses expectations so they are more realistic and/or train up others or get in alternative resources.
However you are concerned that through your helpfulness in meeting a gap, the nature of your role has substantially changed. Can your manager clarify what the requirements are for what you were originally hired for so you can make a decision about how you want to proceed .
put the onus back on them, you have done nothing but good here, don’t let yourself be screwed over because you’re too shy or self effacing to tell the truth.

If you like your team, your boss and the company then I would be really honest with them and say - this is a bigger task than anyone originally anticipated. Let's have an open conversation about how it can be tackled. It could be more training and support for you, it could be outsourcing, it could be moving you to a different role and hiring in a new person.

You are catastrophising that you are going to get fired but they hired you, they have invested in you and they seem to like you!

Also, you are not too old at 49 to pivot, but if you don't have a talent for this it doesn't make sense for it to be your whole job.

Im assuming the video is for social media? Is video what's actually required? Has someone (you?) Written a social media strategy that will help to meet the company's overall objectives? And video is a key part of that?

Sounds as though if video is important then you should be hiring someone to do video

And absolutely you do that retraining on the company time and dollar. Do you want to increase your hours or keep the PT hours?

Sorry to ghost all of you - you've been so helpful. I have to crack on now but I'm going to think about all of this tonight.

Thank you SO much.

How did you get on @SomeKindOfMeh

Sometimes the secrecy on here is ridiculous. Do posters really think out of the hundreds and thousands of people on this forum we will identify them if they just say their job or hobby. It’s not names/addresses!

Politics wise, if it’s tricky, in this situation I’d seek a stooge/third party input. I have done this many times - most recently when I was asked to launch a podcast series with no budget or decent speaker access or topics from a know-it-all about comms (but actually knew nothing) boss, where I set up meetings with people who had done it and knew the pain points. I‘d get an expert along (one who this org will listen to, hopefully someone you know a bit) to a meeting with you and your boss to discuss social media/video pivot plans, and ask them to lay out how much it costs, time taken to make videos, skills needed etc. that way, you can be really ‚helpful‘ while showing politely that your boss‘s plans are fantasy island. It’s a more neutral basis to discuss realistic next steps

Could you suggest bringing in an intern to assist with content while you focus on the plumbing? A friend did this for a start-up, and the intern provided valuable input on how to create content effortlessly, whilst they gained the experience they needed to progress into a professional role, making it a win-win.

An update on this…. It’s actually been going really well. I just hurled myself into learning how to make videos, and it’s gone really well. I recently had my annual review and received glowing feedback and a bonus. ?!?! I didn’t expect things to go this way 😂