Any Human Resources people moved back?

[Incata]

Hello all

 

Both hubbie and I are quite frustrated and when he comes back from sea we are going to discuss our options. I am now (to my great surprise) seriously thinking about leaving Perth and moving somewhere else (either back to Canada which I adored and never really got out of my system), or back to the UK (to be close to hubbies family and our friends).

 

I wanted to see if there are any Human Resources people out there who have had a similar experience to me and moved back to the UK successfully?

 

I got fired last week and I am still upset about the things they came out with. I have never been treated this way before. I last got fired when I was 13 (from a Saturday job, for saying that the hats they wanted us to wear looked silly) and I am 40 tomorrow. I have spent the last 10 years contracting and earning good money because I was good at what I did.

 

It took me 9 months to get a job. I was told I was too senior, too experienced or had no WA experience in every case. At last I got a job in a not for profit, which was paying about $15k less than I would get in the public sector for doing the same job. They told me they could not get someone with WA experience who would work for that sort of money, which is why I got the job.

 

The organisation professed to be a Christian organisation with strong values which it pushes in all its literature, its inductions etc etc. I got there and found a culture of hypocrisy. The senior management team expected everyone else to live and work according to the values, but they ignored them in the way they behaved and in the way they treated their staff. It started to rackle after a while. I was told all recruitment had to go through me and I was responsible for making sure it was done to a high standard and that all the rules and regulations were followed, by everybody, without exception. I took this to be the case - and then asked why the CEO was hiring staff without reference checking them first, when he insisted that a verbal offer could not even be made before references were checked. This happened twice and twice I questioned it. The first time my boss said I was quite right to challenge it and that his boss was pleased that I had done so, as it was the only way that standards were going to be maintained. My boss was then fired/made redundant (they said he was made redundant but then replaced him with my colleague, so it was not redundancy). The issue over references came up again and I challenged again. Apparently this was not a good thing.

 

Then one of my team was moved out of our ground floor office to the first floor, necessitating her going up two flights of stairs. She has severe arthritis and lower back problems and can barely walk. The building has no lift. I asked whether any thought had been given to how she was going to get upstairs in the mornings, being that she can hardly walk and I requested that she stay downstairs and someone else go upstairs.

 

I was told I had an attitude problem, that I did not know my place and I was fired. I was, and still am, shocked. In the 9 weeks I was there they had 4 restructures and I had 3 different job descriptions, which did not really help the whole situation. I have worked for both not-for-profit/charity and blue chip companies in the UK, Canada and India and I have not at any point known a company where the rules did not apply to the senior management team. They said that my boss was trying to tell me not to bring these things up, but she never actually said anything. She just kept winking at me. She winked so often that I thought she had a facial tick and ignored it.

 

I clearly got it very wrong and am quite upset. They also won't give me a reference and told me that Australia could do without people like me in it. That hurt a lot.

 

My husband is being told in his company that he should fake his timesheets so that it appears that when he is at sea he is only working 12 hour days, instead of the 18 hour days he has been forced to put in at sea, because they have not supplied the correct manning levels.

 

We have a lovely house and we like the sunshine very much. However, we have both been shocked by the poor quality of HR Departments, the hypocrisy and the willingness to happily break the law when it comes to safety and the protection of the vulnerable (which is what the organisation I worked for did).

 

We know we should consider ourselves lucky to have our own home and that my husband is in employment, but actually we both feel like we have gone back 20 years (in terms of the way people are treated in the workplace) and we are in a state of shock. At the end of December, my husband will have been here and year and it will be a year in mid-January for the kids and I.

 

We were going to come for 4 years, but are now sitting down and thinking, "Is this worth it? Is it going to get better?". My 4 year old is desperate to go back to the UK, my 3 year old has started to say he misses his Gran and wants to go home and I feel lost.

 

I have emigrated before and loved it. Don't get me wrong, I had some tough times, but never like this. I've never had my confidence shattered like this.

 

I just don't know whether we should give it more time or whether we should cut our losses and go. I don't know if my experience in Human Resources reflects what others have been through or whether I just got unlucky? I keep being told that Perth is such a small place that if I got fired once, the chances are I will not work here again as it will get round that I am somebody to not touch with a barge pole. That's upsetting too.

 

Either way I am very sad. Making it worse is that it is my 40th birthday tomorrow and my husband is at sea, so I will have nobody to celebrate with (other than two little ones under 5 who want to go to MacDonalds, but I'm not sure I can stomach a big mac!)

 

I'd appreciate any experiences or comments. I have not discussed yet with my husband about going elsewhere and I just need some help trying to get my thoughts in order.

 

Thanks for any input!

[Quoll]

(((Hugs))). That sounds like a nightmare! And happy birthday!!!!

 

Not worked in Perth but that kind of bullying is fairly commonplace in Canberra from my experience and it is distinctly unpleasant to have to work in a toxic cesspit. I hope you can find a solution one way or the other.

[fourcorners]

Hey Incata I really feel for you. Hope you tried to make the most of your birthday and enjoyed your big mac!

 

Sounds like a really unpleasant place to be in and you must feel pretty demoralised at the moment. I am probably pointing out the obvious here but try not to make any big decisions while you are still reeling. Allow a little time to pass but by all means discuss all the options. When faced with dilemmas like this we like to draw up lists of pros and cons for each option.

 

You've had a really frustrating experience in Australia so far so I have no doubt you are starting to feel totally 'over it' right now. I hate that 'lost' feeling and have had it a few times myself since being in Australia. It sucks!

 

Don't be afraid to talk things over with your husband so you both know how you both feel. He probably already knows you're feeling pretty down after being fired (I think anyone would in that situation). I have found it always helps to talk things through with my OH, sometimes it can be difficult but in the end it always helps make you feel better.

 

At the end of the day you may have dodged a bullet with that company. They probably had a reputation to begin with which may explain why they couldn't find anyone before you came along. Plus if the HR sector is that small in Perth then other companies may also be aware of that reputation and you may not be disadvantaged as much as you fear.

 

Your ability to find another job may not be in question here. Moreover the question is do you have the desire to find another job here in Australia?

 

One final thing is you shouldn't consider yourselves lucky to have a nice house and that your husband has a well paid job. I would say luck probably has a very small part to play in things, and you've both worked very hard to get where you are and made plenty of sacrifices along the way. I do truly believe that people make their own luck in that way. So if you have the dream, whether that's in Oz or elsewhere, have confidence that you will be able to achieve it, and treat every experience, no matter how crappy, as a stepping stone towards that dream.

[Chortlepuss]

I am sorry to hear about your experiences. Australian firms - and not for profits - can be challenging places for people with a strong sense of ethics. In Brisbane I got laid off for a combination of things, standing up to a workplace bully, and also reporting a fraud where someone was raking off $1 million PA - HR was routinely bypassed, and staff directly recruited on lucrative contracts... Absolutely no sense of living the values. It went all the way to the top and whilst the CEO was concerned enough to ultimately move people out, I am sure they went with good references. Personally I can't stand to work in that sector again, too many excellent people at the bottom flogging their guts out for little money, whilst the management clean up, giving themselves hefty 'retention bonuses' etc. There is so little governance, and your boss was right, many Australian's in high places would like to see the back of people like you (and me) because of principles, honesty and ethics and they are not used to professionalism and fairness. I don't think that people in the UK are any more ethical - But there are systems in place to detect fraud, and other dodgy behaviour and sufficient people to challenge that they can't get away with it so easily. Good luck with whatever you decide. I will go back to the UK eventually - and work experience here is part of why I am returning. I know you are probably feeling dreadful right now, but you did what you had to do, and lived according to your values - Good on you for doing the right thing!