Covering colleague's work whilst she is on maternity leave *overworked*

moneypuddle

Hi

I'm 24, female, work for a very well known national company, which in reality actually employs far fewer staff that most people would guess.

I've been at the company for 3 years and work as a Campaign Manager, overseeing advertising campaigns through the design, print, production and supply stages. When I first started at the company in 2007, there were 4 other Campaign Managers, and we shared the workload five ways, each taking different areas of the country. My rough estimate at the salaries at that point was around £100k (two people on £15k, two people on £20k and one person on £30k).

By 2008, the number of Campaign Managers had fallen to three as one retired and one left. Then in April 2009, one was made redundant. This was NOT because the workload dramatically reduced, but because (long story) she had a vested interest in one aspect of the company and accepted voluntary redundancy. So then there were two.

My colleague has now gone on maternity leave for four months, and I am on my own, with the whole country. Yes the workload has eased from when there were five of us, but there is absolutely no way it down to a fifth, and I feel absolutely worked into the ground.

My working hours are 9am-5pm Mon-Fri but for the last three weekends, I have also worked unpaid on a Saturday. I never get to leave the office before 7pm on a weekday. Part of the reason the workload is so high is because the colleague who has gone on maternty leave was not very good at her job and has left things in an awful mess, which I am trying to clear up. Also our MD decided now was a great time to bring in a new system/database which holds all our information, which means I am currently running two systems in parallel until we can fully moved over so that effectively doubles everything I do

For all this extra work, I am receiving no extra basic pay. My wage is £18.5k, with approx a 3k bonus each year. For the four months my colleague is off, I have requested her bonus too as it is her campaigns I am looking after and this was approved, so I am receiving an extra (roughly) £250/month gross on top. I'm not wanting to sound greedy but for hours I am doing/level of work I am putting it, it just does not seem worth it. To do her work too, I am doing at least an extra 50-60 hours a month minimum, so am being paid the equivalent of £4/hour, and its very demoralising.

Part of what troubles me is that I feel taken advantage of. They used to at one point employ five people to do this job. Fair enough, workload fell slightly, but I would say it was comfortably three people's work, and certainly not one, not just me. I am allowed no holiday until next February and haven't taken a lunch hour since the start of October. I could genuinely work until 10pm each night and still have things left over to do the next day. It's never ending!

I've approached my boss about it and she laughed it off and said "In an ideal world we would get you an assistant but we don't have the money" and that was that.

My other colleagues work in finance, which is an entirely different job, and are busy too.

Hmmmmmmm rant over I think. Sorry, just had to vent that somewhere!

Googlewhacker

what would happen if you worked to rule? The problem is is that you ARE copying by doing the extra work so whilst you are doing this the company are going to do little about it.

moneypuddle

Because I set the workloads for other employees (ie advert fixers) and am required to see all campaign through on time to hit their start date etc, they woudldn't hit, which in turn would mean a lot of angry clients calling me and giving me earache, and it would be 'my fault' as I hadn't got their campaigns though on time. Sadly clientss couldn't care less that I had a lot of other work to do as well, and rightly so. You wouldn't believe the anger that flies around amongst clients/agencies/specialists if campaignd don't hit their planned start dates.

It would also mean we had idle employees, ie the staff that I arrange to 'fix' the adverts would no longer have the right level of work to do, and would begin the complain.

Nightmare. Thanks for replying.

Googlewhacker

What about emailing your boss at the end of each week the extra work you have done and requesting that you get this time of in Lieu and if you are salaried then accept maybe 5 hours extra overtime as part of the salary and then anything over that you request as TOIL and then when the woman comes back from Maternity leave you take it all off.

Prob not likely to happen but would be nice.

Also be prepared that the woman may not come back which then stuffs you up for another month or two!

Tigsteroonie

Refer your angry clients to your manager (the one who laughed it off). It is her problem, not yours.

You only have one pair of hands. You can only do so much.

If you keep working at this rate, you risk ending up off sick with stress. Then your boss will have nobody to do the work.

moneypuddle

Thanks Googlewhacker. To be honest, Im not actually sure they want her back after its become clear what a hash up she's made of he job, on a pretty important contract.

I will try talking to her about it again. The time off at the minute just isn't feasible, as there is no-one to do my job if I did tke the time off and I would be so stressed at the thought of the barrage of emails and phone calls I was going back to, it wouldn't be worth it.

I've had five days off so far this year, as usually I take all my holidays in October, Nov and December as its the best time to see my family, but my colleague didn't announce her pregnancy until late on, so I had very little time to get my holiday in. I'm now left with around 15 days that the company have said I can 'sell' to them at the end of the year, so at least I don't lose them I guess :S

Savvy_Sue

Tigsteroonie wrote: »

Refer your angry clients to your manager (the one who laughed it off). It is her problem, not yours.

You only have one pair of hands. You can only do so much.

If you keep working at this rate, you risk ending up off sick with stress. Then your boss will have nobody to do the work.

I would point all this out to your manager, also that they seem to be in breach of legislation on paid leave: they can't buy back holiday! Well, not unless you've taken your statutory minimum of 5.6 weeks and they give more than that, in which case you can 'sell' them the excess.

Join a union, too.

ERICS_MUM

Apart from the points mentioned in earlier posts, it's also in your manager's interests to deal with this situation before you become ineffective through spreading yourself too thinly over too many clients and through stress and fatigue. They could then start losing clients and/or not gaining new ones.

You mention that you need to keep other staff supplied with their work, could you get one of them to help you with other work, a sort of temporary assistant ?

Please take care of yourself - I've been in your shoes and ended up with severe depression.

Linda xx