How to discuss a role shifting away from the original job

[Freeflight]

I've been in a new role since the start of the year and have struggled a bit with the overall setup. The team and company are great, but it's a largely remote environment and, due to differing office days, I can sometimes go weeks without seeing colleagues. I find that quite isolating and it has made it harder to feel fully integrated into the team. It's actually led to some mental health issues returning (back on medication).

Training has also been quite inconsistent. I had a good start initially, but since then a lot of the learning has been through process notes and being handed tasks with limited guidance or shadowing, particularly in areas where I have little prior experience.

More recently, I've been discussing my role with management and have been told the main responsibilities that attracted me to the position and aligned with my experience are now unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. To their credit, they have recognised that things haven't developed as originally intended and we're now looking at redefining the role and putting a clearer training plan in place.

My challenge is how to position myself in those discussions. I'm open to learning new skills, but the focus of the role appears to be shifting further towards areas where I have less experience and which, if I'm honest, weren't really the direction I had planned to take my career.
The areas that originally attracted me to the role and that I was hoping to continue developing seem to have moved to the back burner.

My concern isn't that I can't learn the work. Rather, I want to be realistic about expectations. If the role continues to evolve in this direction, I'll need considerably more support, shadowing and structured training than may originally have been anticipated. I'm also someone who learns best by seeing processes carried out and understanding the context behind them, rather than simply following written process notes.

Has anyone experienced a role evolving significantly away from the original job description? How did you approach conversations around career fit, expectations and support while remaining positive and professional?

what was it doing to what your likely to be doing ?

as long as someone can train you and be patient while you learn, in my opinion new skills are very much worth having,
another string to your bow

Yes, i started in a role where I was leading a team and there was a quite specific skill manager role reporting in to me that was vacant, they decided not to replace it and give it all to me instead, despite ne not being technically skilled in this area and it's not something you can learn in 5 minutes either. Then they moved another random function into my role that I had no experience of or interest in. Junior people in these functions now reporting in to me but they needed a lot of support and direction I couldn't give as its one thing managing/ overseeing someone at manager level quite another someone very junior.

I raised a grievance but knew it was never gonna change so job hunted hard and quit for something else.

@PenelopeJoanSterling It's moving from one area of Finance to another, and not one that I want to solely specialise in. The initial role was focused elsewhere with some support in another area, I envisage the new role will now very much be weighted towards this other area.

@HoraceCope I'm happy to get knowledge in it, and get some skills for wider understanding but it's not where I want to end up and not why I took the role. I want to make sure I can professionally share with them that I lack the exposure and experience they would probably have been looking for had they be hiring for that area (I think I'm going to be pulled into it because the initial area of focus has fallen through). But I also don't want to come across as to eager as I will be looking for something that more aligns with my goals as this is no longer on the same path I was on.

@IDontHateRainbows thankfully this won't be that extreme. I am not responsible for anyone but I do hope they don't expect more from me than I am capable of as I was honest in my interview that I lacked experience and exposure in this area but the focus of the role was something else which I did have and I was just to be supporting on other things.

Good luck. Yes, it's totally different when you are then responsible for managing people who need a lot of support and you know nothing about what they are doing... I felt not only angry at my employer but guilty I couldn't give them the support and direction I needed. For me it was the right thing to quit and I did have a period of unemployment (as i left for a contract role - had to get out and only thing I could find, when that ended we were just entering the horrible job market period) but eventually got another role and relatively settled now.

Hopefully your experience will be better than mine!

@IDontHateRainbows yes I can imagine and I'm glad you are now settled elsewhere.
Sadly I felt fairly quickly that this wasn't going to be the right fit due to the lack of team interaction which was downplayed. I was told certain teams were in on certain days so I knew id have crossover, but it's actually way more varied than this (which is good for staff, but means I find I am in the office a lot alone which wasn't what I wanted).
I wanted to quit after the first month but also wanted to give the role time in case I was overreacting and I could find the right balance. But this has just thrown another disappointment in as now the role won't be what I wanted either.