Handing over my work to colleagues and other departments and frantically applying for internal jobs. in Work

The title says it all really. The previous restructure in 2013 saw me and other engagement professionals be placed within organisational intelligence. Not a good fit as although some of our work evidenced outcomes, it was pretty well all qualitative and anecdotal evidence. Organisational intelligence is all about big data and quantitative work.

So whether or not the above makes any sense, three colleagues and myself found ourselves without a role in the next round of restructures. I could say “my face didn’t fit” or “we weren’t supported” or any number of reasons, but the truth is none of us had the right skill set for the new department. The role name change from “Community Engagement Officers” to “Citizen Insight Analysts” rather gave that away.

About 50% of my work was with the county’s youth council. A project I had never wanted to run, but ended up doing anyway because nobody else in the team had the knowledge, background or work capacity to do it. Very much about involvement and engagement and not much at all to do with citizen insight or analysis. The decision was made (following a tokenistic consultation) that the project would return to the youth service, which in all honesty was a better place for it. However, my job didn’t go with it (I’ll refer back to this in a future entry) so I was probably already 50% condemned.

I missed out on a job in the new team by just two interview points which was probably worse than if I’d spectacularly failed.

The council gave me three months’ notice of redundancy and in that time I (unsuccessfully) applied for other jobs in the council. I also applied for and was accepted for a Level 7 project management qualification course. The course cost over £2K and paying lip service to their promise to support employees at risk of redundancy, the council paid for it. I applied with the rationale, “I’ll get as much as I can out of them” and for no better reason than that.

Although the council paid for the course any other support, both practical and emotional, for me and the others was conspicuous by its absence. My manager had left a few months previously and we hadn’t been “given” to another manager, so had absolutely no management support whatsoever.

I handed over my youth council work to youth service colleagues. Most of them I knew from my days in the youth service. I prepared a handover report and budget and made sure that absolutely everything was up-to-date. I even met one of them in my own time, while I was using up leave days, so that I could get everything handed over on time. My other tasks were easier to hand over as they were either being taken over by current colleagues or were being run down.

The worst bit about handing over the youth council work was that, as an engagement person, it really rankled that the young people themselves had not been consulted about the future of their project and all this was just being “done to them”. My last session with them was our Christmas 2015 Sitting; ruined by youth service employees coming as well, so to “get to know the young people”. In the end, the youth service made such inroads into the young people’s agenda that our (planned with the young people) Christmas celebration activities were badly cut back.

Hugs and tears all round.

In the last two weeks of my employment, I applied for two jobs in the youth service. One was as a District Youth Work Community Commissioner and the other as a Functional Skills Tutor. Both were roles I was qualified to do and I had been encouraged to apply for them both by the relevant youth work managers. I didn’t get short listed for either of them which did surprise me because one thing I know I do well is writing applications.

Shortly after this, I was taken into hospital (another entry), so I didn’t follow up for a while.

Later, mostly recovered, I phoned for feedback for one and was told that I didn’t have enough experience. I didn’t even get an acknowledgement for the other one. I had been very keen to stay employed by the local authority for a number of reasons, mostly financial and to do with my Teacher’s Pension, but at this point I gave up.

Last updated January 02, 2017