Colleagues 'hogging' all of the work for themselves

[noworktodo]

'Hogging' is a dramatic overstatement. I have a billability target for my job (essentially nearly all of my time needs to be spent working on client work rather than admin/emails). I work in a small team of 6 and we have a shared inbox where tasks come in. When a task comes in, you put your name against it and then move it into a different folder and begin working on it.

Three of my colleagues I regularly find will put their name down on jobs long before they begin to start them. Sometimes it's because it makes sense (e.g. is related to a project they've worked on before), but most of the time it just seems they do it so they can line up tasks for themselves and always have something in the pipeline. It seems productive and efficient and like they're being really helpful but I'm finding it frustrating because there have been so many times recently when there have been no new tasks in and I've had time to start on something. I've posted in our Teams chat offering up my time and no one responds. My billability has been lower than it should be the last few weeks because of this and I have my performance review coming up.

Is offering my time to the wider team enough or should I be doing more?

Annoying. Can you do the same thing? Play them at their own game.

If it is part of a service, I would ask whether their turnaround times are longer because they are storing up work and not progressing it. As a new client, I'd be annoyed if I was kept waiting because someone was "baggsy-ing" work they didn't have capacity to complete.

What stops you doing the same thing? How are they seeing the work and nabbing it before you have seen it?

Its impossible to advise without understanding the process and SLAs around your team.

Can you create a board like with Jira? Then you can have assigned, in progress, done etc columns. It will then be very obvious that people are assigning work to themselves and then taking a long time to complete it because they haven’t actually started.

Sounds like you need to start doing the same… or tell the manager of the issue at your review

Actually don’t even wait for the review.

Tomorrow ask for tasks to do and point out there are assigned tasks that have been sitting for days without being worked on.

It’s not going to help your review if you have sat on this problem and not mentioned it.

In my job we’re told off for taking more than one ticket at a time because it means everything takes longer.

Ask your manager to confirm what the protocol is, and mention that you think some people are allocating work to themselves ahead of time.

I don't do it myself because I can see it's inefficient to have work sitting there that has been claimed without being worked on. I'm also the newest member of the team so don't want to come across like I'm criticising their ways of working or the process. I might start doing it myself though, especially now it's impacting my billability.

It does increase turnaround times but it doesn't impact clients because it's still within the deadlines. The issue is you have a billable employee sitting there doing unbillable tasks because a project they could start has already had someone assign themselves to it when they won't start it for 1+ hours. Everyone else works on one thing and then when it's completed they then pick something else up. Our tasks are usually 2-4 hours long so lots changes throughout the day.

I think I will raise it with my manager in our next 1:1 but I expect they'll tell me I should just message the colleagues directly and ask if I can take the task instead, which is fair enough, but it's frustrating.

@noworktodo It does increase turnaround times but it doesn't impact clients because it's still within the deadlines

So it is not a problem then - what matters is the work being delivered within the timelines and the clients are happy.

You need to take the emotions out of this and stop talking about fair/unfair. You have joined a team which has a way of working and this delivers to the SLAs whilst each person meets their chargeability targets.

You need to work out what you need to do within the team practices to meet your own targets. Have you worked on teams which operate like this before (ie has chargeability been a key performance metric for you) or is the style of working new to you? If the latter it can take some adjustment.

Discuss with your LM at the 1:1 and clarify how the performance metric is applied and if their expectation is simply that the team meets its overall targets. Also make sure you understand your LM’s targets as well and align your own work to those as well.

Do your team mates ask each other’s permission to pick up a task or just take it on? If the latter then you do the same, just ensure that what you take on is manageable. Your team mates are more experienced at allocating themselves tasks and still meeting the targets - its probably nothing more sinister than that.