Work load

[Willthisworknow]

I try not to moan but workload has got ridiculous recently. We lost folk due to redundancies, then other people left who weren't replaced. Ive taken on extra responsibilities and line management with no pay increase. Yet we're expected to do more. My line manager always cancels one to ones due to her workload and deliverables and there is no give in our system. I was off on annual leave for 3 days this week, only got a signed contract for a project while I was away and have started getting grief for not putting these activities on our internal systems and got a line managee to do some work to meet a deliverable and apparently shouldn't have. I've had enought but not in a position to move jobs due to the flexibility. How do I bring this up professionally but to tell management to back off. I'm so upset I was nearly in tears and had to perform on a teleconference to try and win £80 million of business! I do a lot with little reward yet they don't recognise it. Any suggestions?

[vaseoftulips]

Same thing is going on where I am at the mo. Thankfully I am on a contract which is due to finish shortly.

My boss lost a couple staff recently due to voluntary redundancy. He wasn't even consulted about it. First he knew about it was them telling him when they were leaving. They were both in jobs where there is still lots of work. His philosophy is that the business needs to suffer to learn the lesson.

If I were you, I would rank my work in order of importance and tell my boss that I can't do everything so thing is what I am going to focus on. It's up to her to tell you otherwise. DO NOT kill yourself for a company. You won't get any thanks for it.

Sounds as if she has the same problem as you though if she keeps cancelling one to ones. I'm a PA and my boss' diary is ridiculous. One to ones are always the first things to move in the calendar normally.

[BrownSauceSandwich]

This has to be about the biggest problem in workplaces all over the country, and in every sector: trying to do more (or at least the same) with less. Just look at the poor sods at the Environment Agency, vilified by government for having cut back flood defence activities, when the same government has decimated the resources they had to work with. Sorry, bit of a tangent there...

Anyway, the advice from vase is spot on. Spend some time, even on your day off (I don't generally advise that, but if it's to alleviate serious stress, it can be worth thinking about work on a day off) itemising all the jobs on your TO DO list:where are the deadlines, and how many man-hours will it take to do them? What source will you have at your disposal (be completely realistic... You aren't aiming to impress our boss with pie-in-the-sky projections of how brilliant your team will be.) Then on Monday, you pin down your line manager, and if he/she hasn't got time, let her know that you'll take it to her boss instead, and ask them straight out "I can do X% of my current workload... Which tasks do you want me to do, and which am I going to have to drop?"

That might sound a bit bald, but that is what it will come to either way, and you should not allow them to pass the buck your way. If a company has miscalculated what it can deliver, the responsibility for the mistake falls to the people who get paid extra to take that stress, and the people with the authority to recruit new staff, and the people who decided to lay off all those staff in the first place. We've all had to tighten our belts and go a bit further for our salaries the last few years, and mostly with good grace, but we don't have infinite capacity to do more and more and more with the same resource or less. Your job should not reduce you to tears, and you should not be routinely working hours you're not paid for... It will make you ill.

[BrownSauceSandwich]

Apols for typos. Got a bit het up there.

Resource, not source.

[Wetoopere]

We have a workload management spreadsheet thing that my supervisor completes then adds more work on despite running out of hours
Could you put something together?
Include leave/training too

[Elletorro]

Sounds like you could do with some clarity as to what work can be delegated as well and to whom. If you have take on line management then you need to be able to delegate!

Do you use project management software? Might help to put a project plan together for the jobs you itemise as per brownsauce's suggestion. Then you can present a realistic "solution" and get it agreed with your manager.

Getting a pay rise sounds like the next project though if you your firm wins new business