To feel frustrated and embarrassed that I have no work to do at work?

[notenoughworktodo]

At my work we are all assigned onto specific accounts for our clients. We have weekly meetings every Monday where we all give a quick summary of our workload for the week. It means work can be redistributed across the team e.g. if someone is drowning in work they can have someone who has a quieter week pick up some of their work.

For the past few months my workload has been really light. I usually have maybe 15-20 hours of project work and that's all (bearing in mind I work 35 hours a week). We do timesheets too so our time has to be accounted for.

I feel really embarrassed turning up to these meetings with these huge chunks of free time. I feel redundant... Senior management is also in these meetings and I feel like it's a bit weird that most people have no free time available or maybe a couple of hours free and I'm regularly having 10+ hours/week free.

Do you know why this is the case.
Have you been assigned easy clients? Or are they just not needing much from you right now? Can you be assigned another one to redress the balance?
Who’s doing the assigning!

One of my clients is having a bit of a lull but hopefully will pick up over the next few weeks. The other client have a small budget so whilst I have projects with them it's only maybe 5 hours of work per week.

I've been picking up odds bits of work from colleagues for different clients but I think I need a more permanent solution

Do you ever raise this with the leadership team? When I’m not busy I make sure I’ve let our SLT know and asked colleagues if they need any support. You seem quite passive.

If work gets redistributed depending on who's got more free time, how come your time isn't being filled?

Anyone remember a thread a few years ago where the poster had very little work to do? She kept raising it with her line managers who just didn't seem capable of giving her more work and didn't seem to see the problem . I can't remember the outcome.

I think it must be very frustrating, I am sure we all enjoy the occasional hour or two with not much work but it must be very demoralising.

Do the senior team know that you have lots of free time or is it that they are mistakenly thinking you have x/y/z project, therefore must have enough to do and so don't give you anymore?

Can you raise it with a direct line manager privately rather than in the meeting?

I quite like the system of the whole team meeting and redistributing so that no one is drowning in work - it sounds like a good idea!

@Ragwort I remember that thread!!

It always amazes me that people can have not enough work to do. I seem to be permanently drowning haha 😄

This is so strange! Lucky they can still be profitable if they have employees who have no work.. seems to me there’s something amiss with the structure & definitely poor management. You should say something and ask why your workload is so light! Unless you’re happy to continue like that but I imagine it’s a bit boring! Just be honest about the lull for your clients and ask for a private meeting with management to see if they can do something. X

I would raise directly with your line manager, saying that you seem to be in an ongoing lull with your client hand gave roughly x hours capacity a week so can you have a discussion about how best to fill that capacity in the way that makes the most sense for the business, be that helping with other accounts, working on a special internal project of some kind, or supporting/mentoring junior team members etc. Is there any online training etc that you can get out of the way or a new area you can gen up on whilst you have time. Hopefully your line manager will have some thoughts.

I feel your pain, OP.
For me, been going on ~7 years.
Luckily I don't have meetings where I have to pretend I was super busy.

How does a company afford to keep paying for 7 years if you don't have enough work to do ... it is truly mind boggling ....?

I've never been in your position so I must admit I'm a bit jealous, I couldn't go for a wee today because we were so stretched. My kidneys are still complaining!!

I think in your position after the novelty wore off I'd start looking around and talking to colleagues to find projects and skills that interested me. Then go to your boss saying "I'd love to learn x process" or "I'd be interested in supporting Sam with x client"
It makes you look interested in the business as a whole rather than just bored.

Every week is different so I can't really be proactive about it, if that makes sense. Mentioning it on a Monday is being proactive. We can only be assigned to two clients (I'm junior and have only been there 6 months). I also mention it to my team and I start things early, e.g. this week I'm starting on next week's work.

I asked my manager what to do when there's a lull and he just said to bring it up in the Monday meetings which is what I'm doing. I'm ahead on my training and I've started doing training for the next job grade above mine (with my manager's permission).

My time does tend to get filled up with odd bits of work. Sometimes I'll help out on another account for a bit, sometimes it's lots of 1 hour things for different people.

I just don't really understand why I have so much free time and none of my other colleagues do. Sometimes when I've said in the meeting how much free time I have people are surprised and think maybe I'm underestimating my time or something but I'm not.

Hold up, you seem to be contradicting yourself a bit here - you say you have no work to do, but then say you have about 25 hrs on your regular clients and that this will likely increase soon when your client increases their requirements. You also say that your spare time usually gets filled up with small tasks for other people. So it doesn't actually sound like you're idle much?

You said you're junior - how junior are we talking? First job junior? Could it be that you are motivated and ambitious and actually just stressing that you're not being given the chance to show how good you are by having more meaty projects to work on? I remember when I was in my first job that I was upset that I didnt have much regular project work to do and was picking up random menial tasks like data entry here and there. Looking back now I realise that doing grunt work was totally expected for junior staff (and actually senior people had to do quite a bit of it too), that doing lots of varied tasks helped me develop my skills and to become more efficient even if they didn't seem like 'important' work; and crucially, that sometimes showing somebody who is inexperienced how to do something takes a lot of time and energy and that it's old often easier to leave that person under-utilised rather than invest a load of time explaining the task. I totally understand how frustrating it can be, and can make you feel not very secure, but I found that as time went on my workload grew and I started to dream of the days when I had actually had time to eat lunch.

It's either that or you're totally shit at your job and people don't want to give you work because you'll cock it up but they can't face going down a disciplinary route to get you sacked so are just letting it slide. (That's a joke! You sound diligent :) )

My sister was like this in her first job as a junior, she was very efficient and got through her work quickly and well then offered to help others only to be told to "do some filing" it was frustrating but she was noticed and promoted very quickly and is now in a very senior position a few years on.
Make sure you're doing a great job for your clients, no matter how small and look for opportunities. You'll soon get offered meatier jobs.

Be careful op, happened to me and i completely deskilled in a quiet role and then had a serious learning curve in new role

Make it clear you want more to do. If the situation doesn’t change in 6 months, start applying elsewhere.

I once had 6 months with barely a scrap of work to do. It was awful, demoralising and I didn’t want to go into work everyday and try to look busy. The worst thing was I’d been moved to the management office so all I could do was open and close emails all day and go for ‘important looking walks’ and pray for hometime to come. It was truly hideous. I feel for you.

I had the same once, it's completely grim pretending to be busy. Honestly I found that far more stressful than I ever found actually being busy made me feel!

Maybe everyone else is pretending they are really busy. And you are quite efficient.

How long have you been in your role OP?

Sounds like it might be a combination of cyclical work and your own efficiency.

Your clients seem to require varying amounts of work at different times - in my experience it's just the nature of things that you sometimes have quiet weeks and sometimes snowed-under weeks. Your client's lull probably won't last and if it does pick up you'll probably be grateful in retrospect for a relatively chilled month. And your company can't reassign clients at the drop of a hat (and in any case they'll need you if any of your clients start to require more).

I have a role where there are sometimes entire weeks with barely anything to do, and other weeks where I'm working flat-out crazy hours across multiple time zones. We're encouraged to take it easy and recharge in the quiet weeks.

If you're just more efficient you could try using it as leverage, depending what your professional ambitions are. You're doing the right thing in raising it as an issue, doing training courses etc, but if the reality is that you're just a much quicker and better worker than your colleagues, then either you can start thinking about how to move up in that company - or it might be the case that you've outgrown the company and can look for more challenging roles in the same industry.

@Ragwort

Anyone remember a thread a few years ago where the poster had very little work to do? She kept raising it with her line managers who just didn't seem capable of giving her more work and didn't seem to see the problem . I can't remember the outcome.

I think it must be very frustrating, I am sure we all enjoy the occasional hour or two with not much work but it must be very demoralising.

Was that the woman that worked for the army? I think she decided to do loads of online courses.

Ask for more, repeatedly, then just make noises about leaving. They're either trying to make you quit or don't realise the seriousness of the issue.

I'm about to do the same at my place. My skills are in demand elsewhere and if my own job can't give me anything to do, thanks but I'm off. I've been amusing myself with side projects for five months and I'm bored senseless.

I’d raise it outside the meetings and persistently seek more work - a decent project.

I had similar once and when I came to apply for a sideways move or promotion received feedback that my experience was lacking. This was largely due to poor job content.