How would you sort this out?

[chattysoul]

Please help as I am feeling rather desperate!

To cut a long story short after 4 years extended time off I moved up to the midlands from London to (eventually) find a part-time job in my sector which is housing (homelessness). I took great pains to build my career up there over 8/9 years involving a great deal of effort and highly relevant training courses throughout and they were all full-time then as I didn't have a child.

Anyway the long and short of it is I managed to get this job in a city less established in this particular sector - I had planned to get a job in the other city but wasn't lucky enough as I was unsuccessful at an interview there and jobs were scarce.

The main issue is I find the job alarmingly different from how things are done 'properly' that I am used to. I do not know how to put this across when I get supervision (in three months no supervision, still waiting for the opportunity!) - we as staff members of a team there in all my jobs hhave always been permitted and indeed even encouraged to think of ideas to improve the team/organisation etc. but I do not feel they wish that there - unless I am imagining it - my other two colleagues are more than happy with the job as they have only local experience and only very little experience too. They are however perfectly good at the job.

How do I broach the issue of wanting to share ideas to improve and develop what we do better or should I just shut up and bear with it until the job market picks up it just feels quite a tinpot job to be frank and the problem is nobody else is from London where the jobs are a lot more different and unfortunately initiative does not appear expected in this job.

Forgive the rambling but this is really stressing me out. The other thing is it sounds like I am potentially 'showing off' which is simply not the case but it may come across like that - should I ever get any supervision session that is!

Jobs are scarce as everybody knows and I don't want to talk myself out of a job! I just feel a cog in the wheel, first time I ever felt that in a housing job where initiative was always required.

Thanks in anticipation and sorry for woffling!

Don't you at the very least have team meetings?

And if you do, can you not toss in a couple of ideas then?

No the team meeting is very much centred around catch up pieces of information it is not at all about improving the policies and procedures and is only held once a month. It is chaired constantly by the same person and the secretary is also the same. The chair is the head of services for our whole department. About 25 people go. It is by no means a forum of any kind for discussion.

Help!

I work for local authority and I think you need to do your research into evidence informed practice in your area and have a discussion with your line manager about your concerns.

Things should not be done badly 'as they have always been done that way' but I know you are usually bound by policies and procedures in this sort of job.

Sounds like you should go into management

I can't see there being anything wrong with saying to your line manager that you may have some suggestions that you think could result in improvements. You haven't had a meeting with your line manager in three months? Have you requested one? Make sure you do, even booking one into his/her diary yourself if you can do that.

You can raise your ideas positively and you will soon get an impression of whether suggestions from you are going to be welcome or not. Make sure you can explain how you think the changes you are proposing will result in improvements, rather than it just being your opinion that doing it x way is 'better'. Be able to explain what the positive effect on the bottom line will be, either in terms of money saving, or making things easier, or tangible improvements to service.

Thanks for the views. Keep them coming if you can.

Supervision has been both mentioned and also requested. It has been cancelled twice already by my manager owing to time pressures. My colleague has also had to go without supervision and she has been working there about one month longer even!! Unbelievable!

Also right from day one did no manager sit down with me and discuss the job properly - right throughout all my housing jobs there was always an initial introductory discussion about the nature of the job. I have done about 7 different jobs previously in total prior to this one in this field.

Bizarre I know!!

Perhaps it is just a question of waiting until the actual supervision to mention both positively and diplomatically?

Thanks in advance for any help!

I would just like to add both the managers are very approachable there is just a need to bring it up to a better standard paperwork-wise and certain ideas that would benefit the team generally indeed the whole floor as there are two teams for the same client group. They are not highly ingenious ideas just things that have been done before iin many other jobs as well as a bit of creative suggesting on top for good measure.

It is horrid just feeling a cog in the wheel with no voice!! I felt that when I was doing legal secretarial in the old days but at least the pay was enough to live on unlike this job ..... All I could get - welcome to the recession of course!

Thanks again.

Could you set up a forum yourself? It dosen't have to be anything too complex, maybe use google docs to post documents/suggestions and ask all the others to contribute (including management).

I have found in the past that just going ahead and implementing good proceedures for myself, then showing the others what I have done, works quite well. Often people just don't know where to start.

I work with someone who thinks her way of doing everything would improve our team. I disagree with many of her ideas and find that she tries to implement them on me constantly, despite my work output and quality being high. She simply thinks she is better than me.

Be very wary of how you come across with this, I would steer clear of telling co'workers I had a better way of doing everything than they do, just because you have done it differantly in previous jobs. It also sounds like you are very new to the team, is 3 months (the impression I get) long enough to really be able to critisize long term staff who have probably worked to put systems in place, that work for them.

I would agree with the suggestion of asking for a meeting with a line manager, and making suggestions to them.

Thank you so much for your suggestions.

The team is a growing one, previously the 'team' consisted of two managers and one volunteer on a Thursday. Now we have 1 full-time and 2 part-time, 40 hours and 20 hours respectively all of whom are newly employed Dec/Jan time. Thus it is a growing team.

Cannot implement procedures without getting go-ahead, feedback from managers first as it would be going over their heads e.g. interview form needs revamping (which the main manager has mentioned unprompted). I know good suggestions to partly improve it.

There are also ways of improving our time management that a fair distribution of client care is offered to all clients as some are getting completely overlooked.

In fairness I think the managers did fairly well to cope alone for so long, yes there was the other half of the team but they were doing a different element of the work.

Now we have a fuller complement of staff we have sufficient numbers to potentially make it quite a smooth running enterprise now and far more rewarding and thoroughly done than before simply just because there are more of us.

As always fully appreciate your views!