I’m certain many of the more senior techs out there have run into the situation where they are called upon to perform duties they were once responsible for but have since moved on to other positions where it is no longer in their job description. I’m not talking about the casual can you help me with this as you’re walking by someone’s desk or when you see a co-worker is having difficulty with something you know is an easy fix, I’m talking about when you are asked if you can take on extra duties for an extended period of time to help out in a time of need; usually without extra compensation.
There are certain situations where it would be expected of you to help during a crisis and I personally would expect that of my employees; for instance, during our recent close encounter with a hurricane, I wouldn’t have thought twice about getting right in there and doing whatever was necessary to get all the workstations and network back up, But what about when someone leaves a position with little or no notice? How about if a critical employee has a medical issue that requires them to be away from the office for a month or two?
In my case, I really liked my previous position (not that I don’t like my current position) so it’s more a matter of keeping me away from it rather than asking me to help out. Our Network Administrator will be unable to come to the office for a few weeks but she can do most of her job via VPN or remote connections but we all know, sometimes you just have to be there to push the buttons. So it goes through the chain of command, her boss goes to their superior, that person goes to my superior and he expresses his concerns about me taking too much time away from my duties to help out and is concerned about co-workers calling me more than they should when they could wait for the Network Administrator to deal with their issue remotely. I know the Network Admin is very capable of handling things remotely; that was my former position, I am currently manager of a different department with heavy IT requirements.
How do you deal with being asked to take on duties from your former position?
Edited because PurpleSkys said my grammar sucks 🙂
