How much should I help the new person in my old job role?

Question

I work for a very large organization.

I left one subset of the organization, such as a division, we'll call A, and went to another such subset (such as division) that we'll call B.

In any event, someone from A has taken over my job duties there, and is asking me several questions.

I have conflicting feelings:

i) My chief duty is to my new job, B.

ii) I want to be helpful to A.

Question: How do I gracefully navigate this situation, so I keep everyone happy, as there could be 'feedback paths' between A and B.

I have been given good reviews in my new job, B.

Answer 1

Since A & B are both part of the same overall organisation the answer is essentially - help A as much as you can so long as doing so doesn't detriment B.

If the amount of support A needs is reaching the point where it's starting to impact on your work for B then you'll need to make a call as to whether you approach your manager at B to say that you need to do some additional knowledge transfer to A and you're going to need to take X hours time to do that or you have to decline to help A further and cite that you've got to focus on your work at B.

The third option would be to explain to your replacement at A that you'd be more than happy to help but since you are now working for B you suggest that they ask their manager at A to seek approval from your manager at B to spare you for additional training time. Doing this gets you off the hook of having to ask your manager to allow you to do the work - but it increases visibility of these issues which your counterpart at A might not want to do. It also adds an additional bureaucratic overhead, which if the support you need to give is small might be excessive.

Answer 2

What you need to know is how much time your own management wants you to spend on that vs your other obligations. The only way to determine that is to ask your manager, I''m afraid, sensitive or not. It's up to them to negotiate that with the other person's manager.

Answer 3

First you need to accept that you cannot keep everyone happy given that you moved from a job that you clearly no longer wanted to do to a job that you want to do and you have someone dragging you back to the job you do not want to do. So either you are left unhappy by helping with a job you do not want to do or the new person is left unhappy by you refusing to assist in the old job.

So the question becomes, who do you want to leave more unhappy? You or the new person? Has management provided you with any expectation of you assisting the new person?

At the end of the day you are the only person who can decide how much time and energy you are willing to put into training the new person to do your old job. I find it reasonable to answer the occasional general question but that can quickly escalate into feeling like you are back in your old role. Given that you want to be helpful, then establish some boundaries for yourself and offer assistance up to those boundaries. If the new person attempts to cross them then let him/her know that you are not able to assist in more in-depth questions and possibly point them in the right direction to another resource, etc.