Hi looking for some work advice if anyone would be kind enough. I work for a small ish business, been here 6 years, no HR, I was promoted to senior mgmt in January 2025 and had a good run at that with no complaints or issues.
Until April of this year they effectively decided to cut our outsourcing costs, they wanted me to start doing some external appointments (which I am trained to do) but my manager was very clear it would be on my terms so I agreed to pick up a few.
It then became ‘we are going to remove your company car if you don’t start doing all of the external appointments’ and I said no, they then hired an administrator that I could delegate to, to help me go out during the day (sometimes it’s 3-4 hours at a time out during the day). So I couldn’t really argue and they implied we’d be going down the redundancy track if I couldn’t agree. I am sort of the mind that they aren’t serious as outsourcing these appointments I’m doing was costing £5-8k pcm, and previously they were covered by 2 staff members who have since left, so effectively they’ve tried to pile 2 people’s work on me and said ‘yeah but it’s fine cause you can delegate your work’ and obviously that doesn’t work as the admin is untrained, constantly asks me questions when I am in the office so I can’t get my own work done, and I’m still responsible for whatever the admin does.
In my appraisal last month I raised this as a concern and was told it’s a performance issue not a capacity issue and they expect more from me. Not in writing unfortunately. Now the inevitable has happened as I’m too tired to keep doing unpaid overtime - emails that I can’t delegate are being missed and buried in my inbox, I have no chance of ever getting my emails under control and getting all my tasks done. It’s not that I’m incapable either as things were going fine when I was doing just my contracted role.
There is another layer to this - I am being investigated for gynae issues, my periods are so painful I will throw up and need strong opioids to cope, spotting and pain between periods, and random hormonal flare ups. Standing for long periods is very hard at certain times of the month and these appointments I’ve been basically forced to do aren’t helping.
Just in the last year I’ve had an accidental codeine overdose where a director was messaging me at 5am whilst still in hospital asking me to hand my work over if I’m not coming in. A hysteroscopy that left me bleeding but I was expected to come back into work and carry on. An awake uterine polyp removal (no anaesthetic just gas and air) and was told I’d have to use holiday for it as they wouldn’t authorise the absence, yet someone else was given paid leave for an operation last year. Ten days after that procedure I was in terrible pain and called in sick and the director just replied ‘send X a list of what tasks he needs to do for you please’ - no are you okay, what can we do, etc.
Anyway things came to a head last week, I’m away on holiday with DP now but messaged my manager saying I am completely overwhelmed, mentally burnt out, in utter pain most of the time, and obviously something needs to change. She replied encouraging me to enjoy my holiday and she will think about how we can do things moving forward but I know the business is cost cutting and very against outsourcing or hiring for this work they’re trying to make me absorb.
They have also threatened to deduct a not insignificant chunk of money from my pay for a mistake the admin made on my watch that they had to reimburse a client for, but deducting it would put me below minimum wage for that pay period so I’m really hoping they don’t follow through on that.
DP has told me to go home, get to the GP, get their opinion on whether my change at work is contributing to my pain, and maybe get signed off with stress for a week to extend my holiday. And then if I go back and things aren’t going to improve or they’re going to continue to
blame me for not being able to do the job of 3 people, go the constructive dismissal route and contact ACAS. She thinks they’re basically trying to push me out due to my health or some other reason.
I’ve been looking for another job for a few months now and desperately trying to hang on here but it’s draining the life out of me. Equally I don’t want a random CV gap. I have always worked and prior to this even with gynae issues I only have like 1-2 sick days per year.
Thoughts?