I am just uneasy about the line “And if that meant an Agency temp still being employed part-time in your section, so be it.”
When you have to manage a tight departmental budget, it isn’t always possible to keep on agency temps, who are frequently far from cheap. Other staff are consequently put under great stress to cover the work.
Both are of course in their own way correct. At my last full time post , as CEO of an exam syndicate and education services company , I saw the clash of these tow imperatives. I inherited the position when the organization , which had been protected for mny years as a form of quango, moved into the private sector. We had two senior directors with sickness problems, both of which were recurrent. One was at Head office the other was in a regional office.