The First Quarter: A new kind of calendar

My new position began on the 1st of January.

For the last three and a half years, I have been working as a supervisor in the customer facing advice team for the local office of a charity here in the UK. The charity is a household name and working for them has been the realisation of a mid-life dream.

As a supervisor, I helped our team of volunteers navigate the stresses and strains of everyday life in the advice service - from checking their benefit calculations through to managing clients in emergency situations, it was never the same day. This massive variation meant for high stress levels but also a huge sense of reward when things came off well for clients. I worked hard and developed strong bonds with my team, each of us sharing the experience of having faced down an untameable and unpredictable wave of issues every session.

After a while, though, the stress won. I had taken calls and managed the team throughout the pandemic, giving advice during lockdown and facing unprecedented levels of distress and despair from our clients. Frankly, the amount of emotional weight on my shoulders was not balanced adequately by the salary I was receiving. So, begrudgingly, I started to seek out new opportunities. Not long into this process, my current role, within the same organisation, in the very same building, opened up for applications.

The pay increase was substantial enough that I was keen to explore the position and, while the role would take me away from direct contact with the team of people I had worked with since day one, the challenges seemed sufficiently enjoyable that I decided to throw my hat into the ring.

My interview went well and my boss, brimming with pride, offered me the job the same day. It felt like progress, something which can be hard to experience in the third sector. In its 2020 paper 'Building the younger generation of advisers,' the ASA addressed this issue as one of the central challenges facing charities today - retention is difficult because staff, many of whom are starting out on their careers, aren't able to access any meaningful structure for progression within their role, so remain static and, ultimately, leave. 

This is where I had gotten to, so the offer of the management role came at a perfect time. No huge upheaval of moving to a new role in a new organisation, no complications with extensive job searching and applications. Just growth.

~

I am now into my fourth month in the role and finally, having stabilised after the initial shock of the incredible workload now in my hands, am in a position to reflect on how things have started and what I feel about the job. And while I am still very new, there is a lot that has proven problematic.

Part of the issue is that this all comes at a time when there is growing discontent with the traditional structures of work. In the post COVID world, we constantly hear stories of employers and their staff butting heads over home working, flexible hours and the growing support for a four-day week. I am part of the generation of workers who are at the front of the debate, asking whether we can help to usher in a new era of work.

To enter into a role, then, that is as high demand as this one is acutely highlights the need for work-life balance.  While the immediate stress of the role is lower than my previous, the growing feeling of burnout is more present than ever, now highlighted by the staff I line manage as well as my own experience of work. 

I have also encountered some disappointing perspectives within the management team. There is a distinct lack of interest in the more progressive ideas mentioned above, as well as an often unbearable weight of cynicism in the office. In the last fortnight, I made a passing comment on one of my more frustrating days about the difficulty I have in finding the passion in the role. This was during a seemingly endless and very, very dull statistic gathering process. 

The response, while likely not meant to be as depressing as it sounded, came across the room:

"Passion? Oh no dear, there's little room for that in this job."

I probably could have shaken off my frustration with this unhelpful reply. What really knocked the wind out of me was a follow up statement from another member of the team a few minutes later:

"Yeah, the thing is, this job is more operational. We're doing the work in the background so other people can do the passionate stuff."

Is this really the world I have stepped into? Purely functional, sacrificing the passion and drive which drew me to the charity in the first place for a basic pay increase? Surely not. And yet, there is mounting evidence to suggest it is just that. Day in day out, I witness my colleagues in the management team face down bureaucratic hurdles and HR problems with increasing frustration and ire. It is commonplace to hear wishes of escape when the office door swings closed. One phrase in particular has become something of a motto for me in this room, uttered by a number of my peers in the short time I have been in post: "Remind me why I'm doing this again?"

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It is the end of my first quarter in post and I am churning out reports and firing off emails at a rate hitherto unseen in my working life. My year is now segmented into three month chunks, each set to culminate with a two week period of high stress, high frustration and many, many statistics. Is this what I bargained for?

Perhaps I will be in a different headspace this time next quarter. More likely though, I will be asking similar questions, trying to figure out whether I stay put for the security or step into the uncertainty of the UK job market in 2023. Not the most appealing set of options, I'll be honest.