Pros
My contract with NSPCC was a fixed term maternity cover role. While my team was only three people the wider team was a 30+ fundraising team. I found people generally friendly and helpful and for the most part workload was acceptable. The available trainings were good and I loved the mentoring programme with external mentors and the flexible working conditions.
Cons
Many of the processes (HR, finance and the on boarding of new suppliers) were inexplicably complicated, time consuming and rather frustrating. I did pick up early on that my line manager didn’t appreciate my staff member’s otherwise excellent work. He kept delegating work to him directly, moving the goalposts and expecting things from him that were not is his job description. Eventually, my staff member resigned and without any discussion I started covering parts of his role. I did offer to talk about this formally but that never happened. Two months later my line manager also left. That’s when things turned worse for me. There was a growing expectation from the head of the wider team and the permanent staff member who returned from maternity leave that I would do more of what my staff member used to do. I had to say repeatedly no to tasks that were in my former staff member’s job description. It was stressful. I was portrayed as not being a team player when I referred back to my own job description and asked for work that met it. This after I had been praised by various colleagues organisation wide for my work. For my final weeks I was left alone and I thought this was all behind us. Then I applied for another maternity cover role within the wider fundraising team. I exceeded all the expectations including the desirable criteria. Hence, I was surprised to receive an email saying that there were candidates “whose skills and experience more closely matched what [they] were looking for”. This was curious. So was the fact that four months (!) after the final day of my former staff member the role was still not even advertised.
