Regularly contacted by employer on holiday...best course of action to take?

lucylucky

pimento wrote: »

What would they do if you were hit by a bus tomorrow? (God forbid)

I think the OP has already answered that.;)


"... without me, my division of the business would fall apart. ...."

So his employers would no longer be in that line of work, whatever it might be

[Deleted User]

pimento wrote: »

What would they do if you were hit by a bus tomorrow? (God forbid)

They wouldn't be able to do the work and their clients wouldn't get the work they've paid for.

It's a really difficult situation and I don't think I'm describing it really that clearly, so I'll attempt to clarify it here:

Basically, I set up my own business in 2008 providing quite a specialist service within online market research and crisis management for companies (particularly NGOs). It's a very small industry/area and there are a few familiar faces, but generally quite a small community.

While I was self-employed I recognised that there's no such thing as a 'holiday' and I would regularly be contacted by clients while away. I accept these things: that's the nature of the beast.

In January, another company offered to 'buy me out' and I became an employee of theirs. They wanted to launch a new division of their business and the easiest way to kick start it would be to hire me as in practice I AM the business, if that makes sense? I go to conferences, speak at events, talk about this sort of work. The idea was that I would be given my own team and tasked with the growth of this business area.

For various reasons though, I've fallen into a crack where I'm a Senior Manager on paper (#3 in the company) but in practice the team around me has never really materialised, so I end up doing all the work myself. I don't really manage - I do and I'm told what to do.

The company have provided employees to support me, but taken from their existing staff roster and to be honest, the skillsets required for my area of the business are very different. For the first 4 or 5 months we had major problems as some of the staff they gave were lacking quite basic writing or presentation skills, so I ended up doing the substantive research side of the work and others just supported me.

At the same time, it's up to my bosses whether recruitment takes place, so I would end up doing the work while they struggled to find people (with my assistance, of course).

The issue is that in the 8 months since I've been an employee of theirs, we haven't been able to train staff up to the required standard. Whenever work gets done, I have to redo it. We've tried recruiting externally, but the standard of applicants has been generally quite low, although we have now found someone to join the team full-time. They will take some time to be trained up though.

So, I hope you can see how I'm a manager on paper, but in practice I'm not. I can't delegate the work because there's no-one to delegate it to, so when I go on holiday, there's no-one capable of doing my tasks and the team remaining suffer. But it's up to my superiors to decide to recruit and provide adequate staff into my division of the business, so until they do (and provide good staff) I'm stuck.

As a result, EVERY time I go on holiday, there's always a crisis and we usually end up losing a client because the work they receive in the days I'm away tends to be below-par.

For comparison, I am paid £45k so accept it's quite a substantial amount to be paid, but at the same time much less than a senior manager elsewhere and certainly for that amount I'm not sure I'd be expected to be 'on call' throughout my holidays. Maybe though?

[Deleted User]

lucylucky wrote: »

I think the OP has already answered that.;)


"... without me, my division of the business would fall apart. ...."

So his employers would no longer be in that line of work, whatever it might be

I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet, but basically yes! I've taken four periods of holiday this year (some for just a few days) - unfortunately my OH works in education so we can only take holidays during school vacation time, which limits what I can do.

Each time I take a break, something goes wrong and I'm contacted because I'm the only one who can deal with it. At the same time, the company won't recruit a #2 for me to avoid this problem.

Each time I go away, we end up losing a client or doing something really stupid. I've got a 'funny' (not for me) example:

In May, I went away for a week with my OH during school holidays. During that break, a research report needed to go to one of my clients, but the report needed to be made up to a particular date (the middle of my holiday).

What I did was write the report and then put very specific instructions in the report explaining to other staff how they should finish it off: I put 'insert this graph here' and 'in this section you need to paste the data from such and such' so they had it clearly demonstrated.

When I came back I discovered that the team hadn't thought to remove that text and so had sent quite a costly report over to the clients with 'insert text here' and 'type your name here' in various points throughout the document.

Pretty embarrassing, but fairly typical when you try and use staff who are trained in one thing to do the work of another.

pimento

45k isn't enough to be called on your holidays.

pimento

Deleted_User wrote: »

When I came back I discovered that the team hadn't thought to remove that text and so had sent quite a costly report over to the clients with 'insert text here' and 'type your name here' in various points throughout the document.

Pretty embarrassing, but fairly typical when you try and use staff who are trained in one thing to do the work of another.

Who's doing the hiring? You?

They sound a right shower. Perhaps you're not paying enough.

Pete111

Deleted_User wrote: »

They wouldn't be able to do the work and their clients wouldn't get the work they've paid for.

It's a really difficult situation and I don't think I'm describing it really that clearly, so I'll attempt to clarify it here:

Basically, I set up my own business in 2008 providing quite a specialist service within online market research and crisis management for companies (particularly NGOs). It's a very small industry/area and there are a few familiar faces, but generally quite a small community.

While I was self-employed I recognised that there's no such thing as a 'holiday' and I would regularly be contacted by clients while away. I accept these things: that's the nature of the beast.

In January, another company offered to 'buy me out' and I became an employee of theirs. They wanted to launch a new division of their business and the easiest way to kick start it would be to hire me as in practice I AM the business, if that makes sense? I go to conferences, speak at events, talk about this sort of work. The idea was that I would be given my own team and tasked with the growth of this business area.

For various reasons though, I've fallen into a crack where I'm a Senior Manager on paper (#3 in the company) but in practice the team around me has never really materialised, so I end up doing all the work myself. I don't really manage - I do and I'm told what to do.

The company have provided employees to support me, but taken from their existing staff roster and to be honest, the skillsets required for my area of the business are very different. For the first 4 or 5 months we had major problems as some of the staff they gave were lacking quite basic writing or presentation skills, so I ended up doing the substantive research side of the work and others just supported me.

At the same time, it's up to my bosses whether recruitment takes place, so I would end up doing the work while they struggled to find people (with my assistance, of course).

The issue is that in the 8 months since I've been an employee of theirs, we haven't been able to train staff up to the required standard. Whenever work gets done, I have to redo it. We've tried recruiting externally, but the standard of applicants has been generally quite low, although we have now found someone to join the team full-time. They will take some time to be trained up though.

So, I hope you can see how I'm a manager on paper, but in practice I'm not. I can't delegate the work because there's no-one to delegate it to, so when I go on holiday, there's no-one capable of doing my tasks and the team remaining suffer. But it's up to my superiors to decide to recruit and provide adequate staff into my division of the business, so until they do (and provide good staff) I'm stuck.

As a result, EVERY time I go on holiday, there's always a crisis and we usually end up losing a client because the work they receive in the days I'm away tends to be below-par.

For comparison, I am paid £45k so accept it's quite a substantial amount to be paid, but at the same time much less than a senior manager elsewhere and certainly for that amount I'm not sure I'd be expected to be 'on call' throughout my holidays. Maybe though?

Holidays/work etc aside, I would suggest that if what you write is even half correct in terms of you 'being' a substantial chunk the of business you have sold yourself far too cheaply!

45k is not peanuts certainly, but lets be honest, it's unlikely to reflect your value. If they need you as much as you say they do you are probably worth rather more than that....

If I were you I would be approaching this from the angle that they need you massively and you feel underpaid for the expertise you bring . To continue working at teh current rate (and accepting that you will be on call a bit) you need at least a xx% bump

(The extra cash may mollify the Wife to Be also!)

[Deleted User]

pimento wrote: »

Who's doing the hiring? You?

They sound a right shower. Perhaps you're not paying enough.

I'm doing the hiring, but they're deciding what they're willing to pay.

The salary is enough, I can assure you, but the applicants have been 'interesting' to say the least. We're advertising on Guardian Online and other relevant places, but quite interestingly of the 26 applicants we've had so far, 24 were international applicants from outside of the UK.

[Deleted User]

Pete111 wrote: »

Holidays/work etc aside, I would suggest that if what you write is even half correct in terms of you 'being' a substantial chunk the of business you have sold yourself far too cheaply!

45k is not peanuts certainly, but lets be honest, it's unlikely to reflect your value. If they need you as much as you say they do you are probably worth rather more than that....

I hate talking about money as I'm aware that this is a LOT of money for most people - me too - but I would tend to agree with you. Either they need to adjust their expectations of me, or else they need to pay me more!

lucylucky

Your employers cannot run their company.

Perhaps it would be better if your division was to be closed down and you went back to being self employed.

You appear to be in a "lose/lose" situation.

Pete111

Deleted_User wrote: »

I hate talking about money as I'm aware that this is a LOT of money for most people - me too - but I would tend to agree with you. Either they need to adjust their expectations of me, or else they need to pay me more!

Good. So we have finally got to the nub of your ire!

This is your argument and it may well be a valid one - the holidays stuff is flim flam in comparision