My organisation want to me to take on IT duties in addition to my actual job, I don't want to. Have I handled this well and how should I proceed from here?

I'm a junior employee in the finance section of a company of about 100 employees.

The IT dept here is generally unhappy at their workload, pay, etc, and there's a high rate of turnover

Recently my manager asked me for 5 minutes to talk, and he said there'd been a proposal to have some finance colleague help out with the IT depts workload, stuff like assisting with answering tickets and other things the service desk do. He said he's chosen me and asked me what I thought. I said "I'll think about it", which in hindsight was too passive a move...

Anyway a few days later I have a meeting with my boss, and his boss (the person who proposed this idea). As I had the calendar invite the day before and guessed correctly what it was about, I rehearsed the night before what I was going to say so I could come across as well as possible and stand my ground.

This would be approximately 7 hours extra per week, plus some time taken away from my core job. So I'd be going from something like 42 hours: finance, to 37 hours: finance and 13 hours: IT. I value my free time and would absolutely detest this idea so I drew together a really comprehensive response. And as far as I know there would be no salary increase

Meeting starts and they go over the proposal in more detail and ask me what I thought of it. Here's what I said. It's from the notes I made the night before the meeting and I basically said this verbatim:

So, I've been thinking about this since <my manager> mentioned it to me. Let me say first off, so you know roughly where I'm going with this, the worksharing idea does not interest me at all. I agonised over what decision to make, and how to communicate it as I was aware of how it might look. I don't want people to mistakenly thing I am lazy, or uncommitted, or not invested in the future of this company. As that is not the situation. I enjoy working here, plan to stay here for many years and I'm excited to see how we grow in the near future. I'm not opposed to mucking in when required, as you'll remember from Ash's project, but that was a finance project that I felt my skillset could be applied to, where as taking on IT tasks is far outside my remit and I do not feel I ought to take this on. I strongly think it is something I won't be comfortable with and I don't want to divide my attention, and take away my mental energy from my finance work, which is where I feel I am strongest in, and make the biggest contribution to the company. The idea of the additional hours as well as removing the time I spend on my actual job, just isn't worth any extra compensation. I hope you understand where I'm coming from and don't feel this is coming an angry place, as I appreciate that I was the one who was recommended for this, it's genuinely nice to know my work ethic is noticed and valued, But I'm afraid I just can't agree with this plan.

Stopped here and let them ask any questions. My boss said he understands how I feel and I made some good points. His boss said "okay, we appreciate you coming in today. We'll bear your comments in mind and will continue to discuss this with management. Thanks for taking the time out today for this", and that was the meeting done.

Did I handle this well? I said everything confidently and assertively but without showing any signs of annoyance at the situation. My main worry was being thought of as a shirker or someone who isn't willing to put in anything more than the bare minimum so I made sure to address this

Furthermore, how should I proceed if this comes up again and they're still insistent on me doing this?

I'm strongly enough opposed to this that if it goes ahead I'll look for a new job and hand in my notice when done, but I'd rather not go through with that if I don't have to as I'm happy here apart from this..."incident".

(I refer to Ash's project in the meeting, that's a colleague who works for a different team within finance. His team were struggling big time with a deadline. It wasn't directly in my job spec, but I still felt I could help, so I helped get it over the line. After all, most job specs say "and any other reasonable tasks" at the end of the job spec.

Just to note I don't work in an at-will country so it's not a worry they'll instantly terminate me. It would be extremely difficult for them to fire me for this, bordering on impossible

Thanks for feedback and ideas!

usa jobs
usa jobs resume
usa hotel jobs
usajobs
usa jobs federal government
usa job in ksa
usa jobs
usa jobs login
usa jobs gov
usajobs.gov
www.usajobs.gov
usajobs.com
usajobs
usajobs.gov official