From 20 August 2001 until 16 November 2016 I worked my heart out for Tasmanian’s doing it tough. Across multiple roles, including Accommodation Support Worker, Family Support Worker, Financial Counsellor, Senior Financial Counsellor, Northern Regional Manager, and State Manager, I worked damn hard. My last role, that of State Manager of Children, Family and Community Services, I held from May 2011 to November 2016. It was the role that carried the most responsibility of my tenure, with close to 20 community programs, 5 direct reports, 100 staff, 20 volunteers, and between $5m-$8m in contracts to manage annually. I actively built a high functioning leadership team, I worked intentionally to create a physically, socially, and psychologically safe work environment for all staff, and invested in the professional development of all. As a result, there was high retention of staff, and the output and discretionary effort of teams was admirable. They all engaged in human service work that was hard, emotional, and placed workers at risk of vicarious trauma. In response I baked into our team culture approaches to peer support, self care, safety planning, supervision and debriefing. I believe I was operating as a Level 5, servant leader; until it was all torn down.

By far the most complex program I managed was the Therapeutic Residential Care (TRC) program (see seperate post). As is the way with government funded programs, after 4 years of delivery (I stepped in to lead the program part way through the first year), we were required to re-tender for the program. A non-conforming tender was submitted without my support by my line manager. It was immediately dismissed by the department and not considered. My line manager had deemed the TRC program too risky and effectively relinquished the contract by submitting a tender that asked for more funds than were on offer. Consequently, the $3.5m per annum contract was awarded to a competitor. The continuity of care we were providing at TRC was unnecessarily disrupted.  It was my responsibility to lead the transition of the service and clients to the new provider, and manage a redundancy process for 35 TRC staff. At the end of this process in late June 2015 financial year, I was exhausted. I had supported some staff to transition internally, some to transfer across to the new operator, and farewelled many good staff to a period of unemployment. I needed a rest after almost three years of intense 50 hour weeks, after hours on-call, and limited recreational breaks. I took part of spring 2015 to recharge.

Upon my return, I was informed that, given the loss of the $3.5m per annum TRC program, there was a need to restructure my stream. I was instructed to accept a ‘business development’ role that was vaguely defined. I was promised my salary would remain unchanged, and I would continue with a “state manager” title, however I would have no program responsibility, no direct reports, and no staff. I was no longer a leader, nor manager. I was being asked to park myself in a corner as an administrator. I knew this playbook tactic as I had heard it being threatened in the past. My line manager had boasted previously of ‘moving people on’ by changing their duties by starving them of meaningful work, and effectively boring them to the point they resign. It is a form of constructive dismissal. I called bullshit, and so set in motion a period of dis-ease through the balance of 2015 and 2016.

The one glimmer of hope I had was in autumn 2016 when my line manager had been reminded by union officials that restructures required all affected parties to be consulted and this included managers. In a half baked process, all State Mangers were asked to effectively nominate for their preferred role in the new structure. I responded immediately seeking to return to the leadership of community service programs. I nominated effectively for my old role that had been bundled up, rebadged and given to someone else without due process. The “process” was resolved quickly, and my preference was declined. I was offered the business development role once again. I questioned the transparency of the process and the robustness of the decision making. I asked what the process had entailed. I was told by my line manager, who unilaterally made the decision without oversight:

“You did apply, you didn’t know about it. It was the process in my head”.

I was then informed that I would have a new position description, and:

“At this level, Paul, you are expected to accept what is offered and sign it. If you don’t sign the new position description this will get very nasty”.

And indeed it did get nasty. I was isolated, and effectively bullied. In mid November 2016 after enduring what I could, I was spent. I could not face it any longer. I worked with my union to put the case that I had effectively been made redundant but due to my long service the agency was pushing me to resign to avoid paying my entitlements. I held out and stood firm for three month until the CEO signed off, and at 5pm on Friday 13 January 2017 I was paid out, and unemployed.

The process was jarring and scaring. How I had been treated and handled was the antithesis of how I had sought to serve clients and staff throughout my 15 year tenure. It was also inconsistent with the stated goals and values of a social justice agency.

For the summer of 2016 I immersed myself in landscaping my garden. This included hardscaping; the act of manually digging tonnes of dirt, breaking up truck loads of concrete, building retaining walls, laying turf and paving. This hard manual labour was exactly what I needed to reset. I healed by getting my hands into the earth. I found great satisfaction in being able to stand back at the end of the gardening project and take pride in what I had built. The images beside shows some of my landscaping work (I readily accept that I had the middle class privileges of paid leave, surplus income, child care, my own home, and time, among other resources to engage in recovery).

In March 2017, I returned to community service work, fit and ready to go, but with a new approach to my own self care, and a firm determination to continue evolving as a servant leader.

Post script

Twelve months after my redundancy I was called to make a witness statement as part of a “class complaint” against my previous line manager. I was one of more than 20 people over the previous 5 years who had claimed to be unfairly treated by this person. The matter had been escalated to the Board. The complaint was explored by a privately contracted external party. On 30 May 2018, I sat with my former CEO and the Board Chair and was told that I was a reliable witness but none of my complaints had been substantiated. I was handed a letter that explained the same.

A little over a year later I learned that the agency Code of Conduct had been tightened to more clearly articulate the level of expected behaviour of employees, including managers. My previous line manager, true to form as a rolled gold ‘corporate psychopath’ (see Clive Boddy’s TED Talk), continued his bullying ways, and was finally caught.