After a painful period of unemployment post Masters studies, I finally got the job of my dream and then another job of my dream. I am not going to talk about the first one, but the second I got this year and in which I have been for two months now. The second week I was thrown in some investigations and probation reviews. My first week I only managed to set-up my accounts and have IT-related activities to be up and running as I am working from home. Then I started to meet some people in the project such as line managers and introduce myself I did more than that and asked about their challenges. Huge mistake as people expected me me to provide them answers. I waited for a introductory call with the director and my line manager to set-up some ways of working, business insights and plans. However, I was thrown in probation reviews which meants people were investigated because they didn’t behave well and it was whether or not they would have gotten sacked or given a second chance. Needless to say how stressful was to learn by myself the policies which I needed to get hold of to conduct those meetings, read statements and send out invites for meetings and at the same time figuring out what decisions I needed to make after the meetings. Then, after these experiences I was thrown in the vortex of the admin emails to clean some inbox which I presume was full with unanswered emails as the previous lady who run the show fled the project and moved to another business project. It followed a months of hundreds of emails per day with no knowledge of the business and extreme pressure from some stakeholders to take over the self service HR system which was a no go to me because the HR director said she would not give me admin rights but only view ones to check against and inform myself as and when required. Obviously, the training was accordingly. But people would expect me to do more than that and fix things in the system for them. It is incredibly difficult to explain the difference between the two type of rights. The same HR Director welcome me by saying that she doesn’t know what I would be doing there as so far she HR was a couple of persons whom she worked with and not quite sure about my role. I promised myself to win her over. After this period of roller coaster now things are settling down but I already started on the wrong foot as I had no legacy, no knowledge nor foundations, worked in a reactive way given the demands to drive the agenda if someone else and had no time to think things through not to mention anything I asked the HR admin team would be useless as I have no reply. Line Managers expect me to provide them with answers and solutions the minute they start taking me through a problem and not sure what training and policies they have been provided. Then because of the pressure and willingness to deliver I made some mistakes and one culminated with introducing myself as a Jack of all trades to the client in a retention meeting. Apart this all good. I am trying to figure out what training alternatives to put the deputy line managers through as the line manger said they were not interested in the e- learning courses the company lined up for them in professional development then, I am trying to provide them with solutions for when they ask me what to do with people which are not performing to the required standards.
portaitofmythoughts 