I apologize for how long/vague this is, I want to keep a little anonymous. I work in medicine, and the issues I’m referring to are within our hospital’s computer system. Additional issues are that I’m on the grave shift, so communication between me and management is minimal.
Last week there was a procedure change implemented (I had very little notice of this change), the goal of which was to correct a problem that our sister hospital was encountering. Their workload was deemed heavier than ours, so we’re taking preventative measures to help them instead of implementing the fix on their end.
The fix almost triples the time it takes to perform the task, taking it from ~30 seconds to over a minute, which doesn’t sound like a lot but it clogs things up. I’m hit especially hard with this because my procedures on nights are already different, and I work alone for the majority of my shift so I don't have backup. The first night I implemented the fix, I got a bunch of angry calls within hours from the sister hospital asking why I changed my procedure and told me to revert to the old one. I relayed this to my manager (and asked for better communication between us and them), who said he would find a workaround for me.
This is where it gets frustrating. Apparently, the issue that happens during the day doesn’t happen at night, so my manager let me know he would look into a work around so the procedure can still be implemented. Why do I need a work around for a problem that doesn’t exist on my shift? As far as I’ve gotten him to say anything, it’s because he wants our procedures standardized for all shifts. My shift is not interchangeable, I can’t cover day shifts, and they can’t cover nights because we have different duties. Also, if a workaround has to be implemented (another step on my part (+10 seconds)), then our procedures aren’t standardized anyway.
Over the whole weekend, I didn’t do this extra step for the majority of the time. Initially it’s because I forgot, so I followed up frequently with the sister hospital and they confirmed each time that they encountered no issues. I did the new procedure when I remembered to, unless I got overwhelmed, then I skipped it. Because I got confirmation that there wasn’t any issue, I wasn’t affecting patient care at all.
I got audited by my manager and now he's scheduling a meeting with me to go over it, because I clearly haven't been doing it. I want to address the problems above, and I need advice on how to communicate that without being confrontational. I’m a good employee, I have great attendance, and I’ve been with the company for over five years, the majority of it with this manager. He’s temperamental, and I’ve seen nearly two entire sets of employees cycle through, most of them quit because he’s very difficult to work with. I have a stutter that gets worse with stress, so having a script I can go into this meeting with will help a lot. TIA
TL;DR- There’s a new task my manager wants me to perform that adds considerable time to my workload (with no pay increase). It doesn’t actually accomplish anything, because the problem it’s trying to fix doesn’t exist on my shift. My manager is temperamental and stubborn, advice for how to bring up my *concerns?
*concerns being that this process is unimaginably frustrating and pointless.