Colleague goes over and above. How to deal with it?

[Amoregelato]

I work in an environment which is very stressful and there are not enough hours of the working day to get everything that needs doing done. It is relentless and really hard work. It is not well paid for the workload and responsibility.

We have a team of nine who are all lovely people. Two of those nine always go above and beyond in their work. They work late at night sending emails and doing admin tasks. They arrive early and they leave late. The issue is that they make the rest of us look bad and it looks like the job is manageable when it really isn't. They are both aware of what they do and when we have meetings they always say they'll stop working at night but ultimately they carry on.

How would you deal with this?

I'm not actually a teacher, I work in behaviour management and whilst we are referred to as SLT and many of the staff think we are, our salaries are nowhere near this and are less than teachers pay.

Is it likely to improve any time soon - DH in HE had intense early years then got easier - though he just stepped up again and weekends are now affected but for him long term to build course and department up will have benefits.

If it remains an impossible work load - then leaving is probably best especially if poor management is part of the problem. There's only so long you can overwork for before it starts to negatively impact on other aspects of your life and possibly health.

Great, but their sense of achievement is misplaced. It's not fair on those who don't have the capacity to do tens of extra hours every week and it gives management a false sense that the job can be done with the resources they have allocated.

which i can understand but then taking the word fair, life is always unequal in one way or another so to flip your point about fair why should some be limited on what they want to achieve just because others dont want or cannot do more ?

I was always told that if you need to do that much extra overtime, you’re either doing the job of two people, or you’re incompetent!

So again you waltz in at 9am waltz out at 5pm obviously do bare minimum in between and complain about others doing their best because they do the job properly and wonder why you look bad to management your the type would cry off sick for a sniffle

more like more fool them for working for free, and wasting their one life in over exerting themselves for a company that won't reward them for it and where nobody will even remember them a few months after they've left.

I thought this presenteeism way of thinking had gone out with the ark.

OP I don't think there's much you can do. At least the rest of you are a majority rather than just you refusing to actually work beyond your contracted hours. Any manager with a brain (although that does rule a few out) will be able to see that if they are only meeting targets by sending emails at 11pm and working 14 hour days that the workload isn't manageable, just keep reiterating it back to them 'Are you saying I should be working at midnight like X?' 'I could finish this by next week but I would need to cancel my annual leave. Are you telling me to do that?' Ideally get it in writing.

Are you actually fucking kidding me? I haven't had a day off sick in 8 years.

I work exceptionally hard and I'm bloody good at my job. Based on your lack of grammar and poor spelling, I'm guessing you haven't set foot in a school for quite some time.

For those that have asked, as a team we have raised with management the lack of capacity. We get told "you can only do what you can do" but then we get a shirty email asking why we haven't done XYZ. For example, my time is directed by my SLT link. It reduces my admin time to approximately 6 hours per week. School have a policy that all parent emails/calls must be responded to within 48 hours. On average I get between 30-50 emails everyday (not all parents). There is absolutely no way I can be expected to deal with this volume in 6 hours but if a parent complains then that comes back on me.

Oh don’t be so silly.

It's not presenteeism to work hard just like it isn't absenteeism to stick to your working hours.

Ok, I think you are getting down to the nitty gritty here, which is that you want to be liked, and to be the good girl.

Management know fine well you have to much work to do, they know that two of you manage to do more, because those two do crazy hours. They know what you get paid, they don’t expect you to do more.

However like all managers they want everything done yesterday. So when you have too much, you have to say I have X and Y to do but not enough time to do it - I think I should prioritise X, which means Y will be a day late. Do you agree? And if they say - it would be great if you could do both, you say I can’t - so I am going to prioritise as I have said, but let me know if you want me to switch the order.

You cannot always avoid a bit of conflict and it’s a good thing to get comfortable with.

(Don’t react to trolls as you did just then BTW - they love to press your buttons)

So I think with things like this it is really important to be clear about this, preferably in a meeting first and ideally followed up in writing in case it comes back to haunt you.

So e.g.

"My admin time is 6 hours a week. I get data driven info here an average of 200 emails a week in term time. This means I have less than 2 minutes to deal with each email, plus on top of that I have to manage all my non-email admin. This means it won't be possible for me to maintain a 2 working day response time unless something changes. The things I have on at the moment are A, B and C. Personally I think prioritising A would make sense and that means C may fall by the wayside. Do you agree with this or do you want me to drop something else?"

I think making clear that you're happy/prepared to do some extra work if it's a crazy time (Ofsted visit or just back at school or if there's been a massive fight or whatever actually applies in your job) but that if 100% of the time is "crazy time" then it's no longer crazy, no longer sustainable and therefore not viable can be a good balance if you have reasonably sane management and shows you're not just trying to "swan in and swan out" or whatever someone said up thread.

If your management are crazy people it doesn't work though and the only solution to crazy people is a new job. I had a job where management's preference would have been to employ a robot if they could have located a suitable one. They couldn't so were stuck with humans and their resentment of their employees' humanity was obvious. I stuck it out to get what I needed out of the job and left ASAP after that.

Honestly - this is more good girl thinking. Life isn’t fair, you have to set your own boundaries and stick to them.

If only two of you are getting the work done, the managers know that’s because those two are doing extra. It does not make them think you should all do it (they wouldn’t) it makes them think they are lucky to have two who do.

Leave those two alone - maybe they want to escape something at home, maybe they are workaholics which is an addiction like any other, or maybe they want a promotion and think this will get them one. They are not your problem - your desire to avoid any conflict is your problem.

In a school, it’s most likely the OP is doing the work of 2 people, being paid for one and being paid poorly at that.

the others doing free overtime does effect the OP because the work load can’t be dealt with in the hours the team is being paid for, by working the equivalent of another staff member’s hours for free, the other team members remove the incentive to hire an extra team member or look at processes to see if they can be streamlined/made less labour intensive.

Thank you! This is exactly it and has already happened in reverse. Whereas last year the team had a lead and an assistant for each year, the assistants are now shared between the years where they haven't replaced the people who left last academic year, increasing workload even more.

Ignore nonsense from some of the negative people on here. Some people have no life outside work so their life is work. I have worked over 20 years in education and seen different trends - people basically competing with each other - it's like a badge of honour - quite sad really. Also, more unionised educational establishments are less like to be as you describe in the op, as people appreciate the knock on effect on colleagues.

I love my job but like the old phrases says, I work to live not the other way round, where people live for work etc. As long as your line manager is happy and you're doing the job don't worry about others. Although I appreciate is easier said than done.

I was the person working full time hours & more but only paid part time. After having family I found the adjustment from full time to part time employment hard, so it was more to do with me than any pressure put on me by my work. That said, looking back I do feel work took advantage of this. Covid didn’t help & we’re now made to feel that we should be contactable 24/7 - or at least that’s how it feels.

I’ve stopped this now. I’m fully preaching quiet quitting these days. I’m 20+years into my career & now watch others fall over themselves to impress. I do what’s expected of me & work to my job description. I don’t access my emails etc outwith my works hours. I don’t work at weekends & I also don’t answer work related texts & calls to my personal devices outwith my working pattern.

These people doing the crazy hours might burn out in the short term. Best to work to the best of your ability during your assigned hours, then use your free time to rest / recharge / exercise / do positive things so that you're ready to tackle the next day with the most energy you can muster.

I had a colleague who would work right through her lunch break, necking the coffees as she went, churning out the work but then by 3pm she would have a massive energy crash and would be good for nothing for the last couple of hours because she was so hungry. She always made me feel guilty in some way for stopping work and eating my lunch / going for a walk on my break. But I had better stamina in the afternoons than her.

I hate people like this. It puts pressure on everyone else to do the same, so it's a capitalist dream. In my first job in my early 20s I had a 90 minute commute each way by train, and if I didn't leave bang on 5:30 to sprint to the train station I would miss my train and have to wait an extra 40 minutes. But I felt like such a slacker and guilty when some colleagues stayed until at least 6pm, so I would log in when i got home and do extra. This was in a job barely above minimum wage!

But that sort of behaviour from others is a symptom of insecurity and an unhealthy workplace. If you can't get your work done in your hours there's something wrong, either with the worker or with the role being too much for one person. As long as you do your contracted hours and the duties required, why should you work for free?

It’s their prerogative and ambition. It’s not your business to do anything about it. Just leave them to crack on.

I learnt the hard way that putting in the extra hours does you no favours. In my previous job I went above and beyond for years and still got thrown under the bus one day. After that experience I made the decision to never do it again. I work hard and give my best, but not to the detriment of my own life and health anymore. I am like everyone, replaceable, and know the more I do in my own time the more managers will expect me to do.

Every now and then there’s a thread about not being appreciated at work until you leave. Someone always pops on and says something like “when I left they replaced me with two people!” And I always think “there was always budget for a second staff member, but you were a mug”

Why do you have to deal with it?. Do it your way. Go to work do your best come home
. Don't get involved and don't trust anybody.

I've been them and all it does is mask how much work and how little resources there are and nothing good came off it!

Let them if they want to but you do not.

As to duty of care, none of my managers have ever shown me duty of care. So you take care of you!

This is normal for working within a school unfortunately. The "full time" staff work 60-70 hours per week in term time. I did that for 11 years.
Now I work 0.66. This means I get 0.66 of a salary and work approx 40 hours a week.
The only way to work in a school and not work ridiculously long hours is to go part time.
The school holidays are fantastic though!

Former TA. Just got out due to many of the reasons outlined in this thread. I didn't realise what a weight had been lifted until the term started last Monday and I was no longer part of it. People don't leave jobs, they leave poor management.