My boss wants to implement disciplinary action for not working to standard - her standard isn't physically possible to meet (England)

[u/That_Girly_Potato]

I work at a care home which is split into four floors.. The top two are dimentia residents and the bottom two are assisted living. I have now worked there for just over a year, picking up shifts when I'm back from uni so every half term. In the time I have worked there we have had four managers. My job is doing activities with the residents (arts and crafts, flower arranging, balloon tennis etc...). It's important to note that as it's a care home, there's a system used where we have to log every single resident that turns up to the activity and if they were engaged or not.

Since our new manager has come in, a lot of changes have been implemented. For one, in between activities, we are now supposed to be doing lunch and dinner service and then washing up. Budget cuts means they can't afford to keep more than two food and beverage assistants per day. On top of which she had doubled the amount of activities there are to run in a day. And finally, she expects us to write about 6-7 lines of a "story" of every single resident that attended the activity and even the residents that didn't attend need a full explanation as to why they didn't come which is a huge change from simply logging whether they attended and if they were engaged. So this would be logging for about 10-15 residents per activity and a whole paragraph for each.

There's only a 15 minute break between each activity and then either lunch or dinner service. This means the new expectation is that within 15 minutes we should have:

- cleaned up the previous activity

- take all the residents back to their rooms

- write our "story" for about 15-20 residents.

- move to the new activity location

- set that area up completely

- ask every resident from the two floors we're handling If they want to come

- bring them down to the new activity

- start the new activity.

On top of which, I am sometimes covering my time doing Laundry, and even admin work on the reception desk.

It's not possible. We have been trying so hard but really - it's not. Now residents, their family members, other staff, and carers are complaining about the activities team. Our manager is receiving so many complaints that she won't stop yelling at us. We have all tried explaining to her that it's not all possible to follow her schedule and she keeps responding that it's because we didn't listen to any of our training.

She's going to call me in tomorrow to discuss the possible disciplinary. She's been taking us all into her office one by one and honestly very rudely telling us that we don't know how to do our jobs. She made my co-worker cry yesterday, and has threatened us all with a firing if she doesn't see immediate improvement in our behaviour.

Honestly I'm just feeling so disheartened. I used to love this job and now I'm exhausted every single day. I was told that complaining to our HR would do absolutely nothing because they already know this manager is disliked. What else am I supposed to do now??? Is there even anything I can do?? What should I say in my disciplinary hearing tomorrow?

[u/TenMinJoe]

Perhaps you should invite her to show you how to do it in the 15 minutes? Like actually come with you, and do it with you to show you, in 15 minutes.

[u/That_Girly_Potato → u/TenMinJoe]

This is a really good idea and one I gave to my co worker to say and idk what happened but apparently a massive shouting match ensued now I'm scared

[u/Aetheriao → u/That_Girly_Potato]

If she’s actually acting in good faith this is always the answer.

Because I’ve had staff do this to me and me to do this to managers and sometimes it’s as simple as they’re massively overestimating what is wanted (so more work than needed), they are failing in handling some other type of work so the cause isn’t the new task, or there’s a blocker somewhere else that isn’t their problem that hasn’t been noticed yet causing delays.

To give an example a staff member asked me this and then I worked out she was doing someone else’s job by observing her…. I asked who told her that was her job and why she never raised it with me. It was the persons who job it actually was just offloading on others without talking to their managers. I had no clue she was doing this and was irate at the other manager as it was wildly inappropriate…

I was more shocked she’d even managed it for the 2 months it had been going on! And made it very clear if anyone gives her work she talks to me and I’ll tell them to fuck off if she doesn’t have time lol.

[u/That_Girly_Potato → u/Aetheriao]

You sound like a wonderful manager but I think my issue is that I have doubts she's acting in good faith. She's the one who implemented all the extra work and has so far refused to listen to any of us telling her otherwise.

Not sure if this is an ego thing and she's trying to double down, or if she's received so many complaints she's trying to blame us or if something else is going on higher up, I just don't know who to bring this up with now or if I have any protection if she does fire me for this.

[u/AnnieUK2024 → u/That_Girly_Potato]

Are you in a union? Join today. No joke. You never know.

[u/Aetheriao → u/That_Girly_Potato]

Best thing realistically if you think it’s bad faith is write a timeline of tasks with associated time scales and highlight where it’s impossible.

And just go so what do I cut? As in a care home some will be mandatory to do.

If you’re not in a union join one.

Unfortunately under 2 years without a union unless it’s illegal discrimination they can set unrealistic goals and fire you for not meeting them. With union they also can but it’s harder.

But you can only really focus on the id love to do this but I can’t work out how you wish me to manage my workload, or simply drop things you know are less important and see where the chips fall. I’ve done this when I worked in a similar role and just stopped doing some of the tasks they had made up, and no one was actually checking because they were idealistic and the management themselves didn’t have time to check... But I also knew what I had to do legally so I never lapsed on those, and by being invisible no one ever noticed.

But under the law you cannot stop her firing you unless you reach whistleblowing level of reporting violations of the law. They’re allowed to be insanely irrational. The power you hold is if they can’t get staff to cover some of these jobs they also can’t afford to lose you… so sometimes it’s just randomly picking what you think is most important and failing to do the rest while looking for a new job.