I waited (3 months) before writing my review to give myself clarity and understanding of what I expected to achieve by writing this and if it was worth doing so. I decided it was. BR states that employees health and well-being is one of the most important things to them but, for me at least, I was failed. To the point of extreme burnout where I was dehumanised, overworked and then discarded when I resigned to protect my health and well-being.
What I would like to say about my burnout:
- I did not burnout because I did not speak up. I did. I spoke up 7 months (July-22) before I resigned. That day I was in tears. I explained that too much was being put on me, I was working long hours (100 extra hours in July alone). I felt that I had to work while I had covid and that the work was intensive with no breathing space. It was too much. I revealed that I was a breast cancer survivor and that I was worried with all this going on that my cancer would return. The response from the Head of Department (HOD) was to not work more than 50 hours a week. Two more days than my contracted hours a week.
- I did not get burnout because I did not work hard enough. I worked an additional 80 days than I am contracted to do last year. I spoke to HR in December and was offered an additional 5 days leave. This was not offered by the HOD until I spoke up.
- I did not get burned out because the HOD had a full team in our dept. We were down at least one team member which the HOD failed to recruit someone (they had 3 months) to assist the team in our busiest period which included year-end and audit.
- I did not get burnout because I was not good at my job. I worked long hours trying to catch up with legacy issues and it was not easy. Instead of HOD and their boss understanding these issues I was constantly being told what was being done wasn’t enough. I am only one person. I don’t know how much more I could have done.
It makes me extremely sad and concerned for our current and future employees in this team. The blame culture is rife and instead of working together to improve you were fed with constant negativity that you weren’t doing enough. This impacted my well-being to the point where I didn’t believe I was doing a good job. But I was. I’m not a machine and even machines will break if they are constantly overused.
A few other things to mention:
- I spoke often with HOD who was also aware that I was not sleeping well. Their suggestion was to take sleeping pills. This, I didn’t want to do and said so. I don’t think this should have been suggested to me. That should not have been the solution.
- There has been quite a bit of turnover in the team, sometimes people only staying months in the past few years.
- The HOD no longer spoke to me after I resigned, with the exception of a few work-related emails when my line manager was on annual leave. How different this was from the busiest period when it was up to 5 hours a day speaking to me while we were short-staffed. I finally spoke to HOD about this because it meant I couldn’t do my own work and was a big contributor to all the additional hours I was working.
What should I have done differently?
- I should have resigned when I was in tears and my worry about my cancer returning was not taken seriously. But, unfortunately, my well-being at this point was not good and I did not have it in me to fight for myself. I also thought I would let others down and didn’t want to do that. I (finally) resigned after having a very bad day. I was told in an open office something that should have been said privately and when I was upset, I was told I was being unreasonable. It was then I realised that my health and well-being wouldn’t be safe at BR and despite not having a job to go to, finally fought for myself to do what was best for myself overall.
I feel very let down by what happened at BR. None of this should have happened and as I said in my written exit interview I didn’t deserve to be treated so badly after working so hard. I am not sure if HR read my exit interview as I did offer to speak about this, but I never heard anything back. I had spoke to someone in HR prior to my resigning.
