Returning from furlough question

CurlySue2017

I was placed on furlough at the end of March and returned to work in early June which is great, however since returning it has become clear that other people have been covering my job in my absence (one of them being my line manager) and have made a complete mess of it.  I don't want to be too specific about my role for privacy reasons, but it involves cash handling and reconciliation.  It has now come to light that there is a discrepancy and the records are incorrect, so I am being asked to rectify this.

This will mean me picking through over two months of work that someone else has done in my absence to try and work out what has gone wrong.

If I have to do this then of course I will, but it seems very unfair to put this responsibility on to my shoulders when I was not working at the time and I just wonder if I have any grounds to challenge this?

KatrinaWaves

Why would you challenge it? I can’t imagine this is outside your remit. 

General_Grant

CurlySue2017 said:

I was placed on furlough at the end of March and returned to work in early June which is great, however since returning it has become clear that other people have been covering my job in my absence (one of them being my line manager) and have made a complete mess of it.  I don't want to be too specific about my role for privacy reasons, but it involves cash handling and reconciliation.  It has now come to light that there is a discrepancy and the records are incorrect, so I am being asked to rectify this.

This will mean me picking through over two months of work that someone else has done in my absence to try and work out what has gone wrong.

If I have to do this then of course I will, but it seems very unfair to put this responsibility on to my shoulders when I was not working at the time and I just wonder if I have any grounds to challenge this?

Well, if the others got into the mess, would you really think they are the right people capable of sorting it out?

I can see no grounds for you to challenge being requested to do your job by getting things in proper order.

theoretica

You only have so many hours in a working week.  If your employers want you to spend many of them on reconciling the past months, rather than dealing with the present that seems reasonable.  If they expect you to miraculously double your workload then that needs to be discussed.  Showing how much of a mess they got into without you and how much they need you seems a good thing.

CurlySue2017

I understand it would be my job normally, but the circumstances have not been normal.  When I was placed on furlough, my job was redundant so why was someone else doing it?  If the job needed to be done, I should not have been forloughed at all is my understanding.

If the information was there and I was being asked to tidy up the mess then that's one thing, but how can I begin to work out what happened two months ago when it was not recorded at the time?

I'm not sure how I can be held responsible for discrepancies that occured when I was not there, that seems very unfair.

JReacher1

Unfortunately this is your job so you need to do it.

Your job wasn't redundant when you were put on furlough.  You were put on furlough as the company wanted to save money and they thought they could save the cost of your salary by getting other staff to do your normal role.  This has turned out to be a mistake and you need to fix it.

Who else do you think can fix this issue?

Marvel1

I'd be worried if they try and blame you for the past 2 months mistakes.

General_Grant

CurlySue2017 said:

I understand it would be my job normally, but the circumstances have not been normal.  When I was placed on furlough, my job was redundant so why was someone else doing it?  If the job needed to be done, I should not have been forloughed at all is my understanding.

If the information was there and I was being asked to tidy up the mess then that's one thing, but how can I begin to work out what happened two months ago when it was not recorded at the time?

I'm not sure how I can be held responsible for discrepancies that occured when I was not there, that seems very unfair.

From what you have written, your employer is not "holding you responsible" for discrepancies that occurred when you were not there but they are asking you to review as best you can what happened. 
If you do your best to reconstruct the situation and present them with a report on what you have and have not been able to achieve, your employers will need to decide how to deal with the situation.
Were there full office notes/instructions on how the system should work?  Who was responsible for keeping such instructions up-to-date?

TBagpuss

It doesn't sound as though you are being asked to be responsible for things which happened when you weren't there. It sounds as though you are being asked to identify and fix the errors. 

If you are worried about being blamed, then document. Something now (an e-mail to your manager, which you keep a hard copy of) to confirm that there is a discrepancy which you ill try to identify and resolve, and a further e-mail when you have identified what happened or narrowed it down.

And as the previous poster says, if it is so time consuming that you can't do all of your normal work as well,then let you manager know that you will prioritise this and that will mean that 'x' and 'y' won't get done as quickly as usual.

I think for most people who are furloughed and returned to work, the issue isn't that the job was suddenly redundant in March, it's that many businesses saw work / income vanish and the scheme preserves jobs during a (hopefully temporary) reduction . Where the job is redundant people will be made redundant rather than returning. In many workplaces, the rea;lity was that many jobs had reduced amounts of work, but the scheme didn't let employers partially furlough someone, so instead what happened was some people got furloughed and others continued to work, in many cases doing their own normal job (but often at reduced capacity) plus the work of another person (also at a reduced capacity) 

CurlySue2017

Marvel1 said:

I'd be worried if they try and blame you for the past 2 months mistakes.

 This is my worry but it appears I have no choice.

Thanks everyone for your input, the answer seems clear.

JReacher1

On the plus side it’s shown how important you are which must be good for any future job uncertainties