To not prioritise my colleagues workload over my own work when she is off?

[Timetogoo]

I work in a team of 4 but two members of the team work with a different client base than myself and my colleague who work with the same group and split them between us. We help each other out when we can and pick up each others work if we are on annual leave. Colleague works 4 days a week and has one day off.

I have been doing this role since January and lately she has been making digs about people not being “team players” and complains every Monday about how much work she has to pick up from Friday and over the weekend. She complained so much that I did say I would pick up her work on a Friday where I could. So the Friday just gone, I was absolutely swamped with my own work, plus my manager was giving a few other tasks to do as a priority. This meant that I didn’t get to finish my colleagues work as I prioritised my own plus the work given by my manager. Even though I got lots of her work done I still came in this morning to her saying “x came in on Thursday evening, did nobody see it or something, because it hasn’t been done?” She brought it up again another two times. I said yes I saw it but I didn’t have chance to get to it. But it’s rubbed me the wrong way. It might not sound like much written down, but the way she said it has aggravated me. I can only do so much work in the space of one day!

I feel like I’m not being unreasonable so not sure why I’m posting but maybe looking for justification and if I should say anything further?

I'm struggling to see how this works - unless the work is sufficiently generic than anyone can 'dip' in and out - such as putting invoices on a computer.

Colleague just needs to put out of office on her computer, and start again on return.

It surely can't be efficient to try and get in the middle of someone elses workstreams one day every week.

Gosh, it's hard enough when someone is off on holiday. Even then, we tend to leave stuff where possible

yup, Not sure why you are having to niggle this out between yourselves. monitoring output and setting priorities is the responsibility of your manager.

@RatalieTatalie i like your style!

So this is compressed hours? If she’s doing 5 days in 4 then you shouldn’t be picking up any of her slack!!!

Yet again this is a management issue.
If you both work full time hours and start with similar workloads then why is she not doing some of your work in her longer days Monday to Thursday?
I suspect that this would be much less of an issue generally if her non working day was any other day of the week.
Friday being the end of the week is often a rushed day for urgent work before the weekend, as Monday seems a long time away. If her non working day was Monday, and she was fully up to date when she left on Friday, some urgent work might be able to wait until first thing on Tuesday.

If she is working full time over four days then you shouldn’t be picking up her work unless it was something specific and time critical agreed in advance. Dipping in and out of her work on a Friday is a massive pain in the butt and will cause problems.

I wouldn’t be helping her out going forward. If she carries on whingeing then she needs to discuss it with her manager as the four compressed days clearly isn’t working. She can’t have it both ways.

Yeah so we both do the exact same job so I am able to dip in and out of hers if I need to. We work very closely together so we both know where each other are up to with things and what’s going on.

In my opinion, nothing is so urgent that it comes in on a Friday and can’t wait until Monday! But if I do have the free time, I will help to clear some of it and she does the same for me. it’s just increasingly annoying me that she is still coming in on a Monday muttering under her breath and making passive aggressive remarks. As well as having our own inboxes, we have a shared inbox where people will send queries to, so if she comes back on Monday and there’s loads in there she basically thinks I have left them all for her to do on Monday which isn’t the case. I am just busy trying to manage my own, plus hers, plus the shared one so if it’s a busy day I don’t manage to clear them all

Yes I agree and also work comes in over the weekend so she comes in to over 100 emails and loads of new work sometimes snd gets overwhelmed

What’s the expected turnaround time for most of the requests that come in? If you can’t make it work for one day a week what happens when you or your colleague are on holiday for a period of time?

If she's doing compressed hours, she is getting a FT salary and should be able to deal with her own workload. Normally, when people apply to work compressed hours, they need to set out how they will manage their workload and ensure that the business needs are met.

She should be working longer hours on the four days that she works, so she should be able to deal with the work that came in on a Friday. Obviously, there may be really urgent stuff coming in that needs to be dealt with on the day it comes in, but generally, she shouldn't be relying on your to do her work on a Friday. She sounds like a cheeky fucker.

If you otherwise get on well you could have a word to ask her to stop the comments & remind her she chose the work pattern and is paid full time.

Management needs to sort this.

If I understood it right you work FT over 5 days and she does the same FT hours but over 4 days.

Why are you then expected to regularly pick up work from a FT colleague to complete on a Friday.

You need to have a chat with management how to rearrange the work load. the current set up isn't fair and it doesn't sound like it's working for either of you. Overall, the issue appears to be that you are short staffed.

I think it depends what the tasks were. If a really important task comes in when she’s off, it should be prioritised over less important tasks of yours.

But ultimately this is bad management. If she doesn’t work one day a week (whether that’s part time or compressed hours), she shouldn’t have time sensitive tasks that can cause issues and have to rely on informally asking other members deciding to help her out. Either all work needs to be communal rather than assigned to specific people, or there needs to be some kind of formal system in place for identifying which of her tasks need to be prioritised by others in her absence.

Why don't you just tell her directly, "look, I'm not a robot. I get to your tasks if and when I have time for them. But they are not prioritised over my own tasks, and I would appreciate it if you would stop making me out to be a bad colleague when I so happen to have too much of my own work to do to even have a look at yours, let alone work on them". It's not your responsibility to ensure that her desk is cleared by Monday morning.

Now that I see she's doing compressed hours, I'd definitely push back and say you can't manage 6 days worth of work in 5 days so will no longer be helping her out. It's not your job at all. It's her job and by complaining about it she proving she can't cope with the compressed hours. Maybe if you give her back her work suggest she speaks to her manager about going back to 5 days non compressed as it seems her compressed hours aren't working. That will certainly shut her up! She could always switch her day off to a Thursday or a wednesday... But that's up to her to figure out. Just pass it back and ignore her op, not your problem to deal with at all.

If she is doing compressed hours then she has to be working longer days ie 9.5 to 10 hr days including lunch so she must need to be starting earlier and or finishing later than you.

Does this pattern fit with your workloads ? She has or should have those extra hours to catch up with her Friday work that rolls over into Monday. If you do (for simplicity) 8 cases a day for 5 days she has to do 10 for 4. Obviously my simple maths assumes you get at least 16 cases a day and she takes her Monday to do her 8 not done from Friday before starting on Mondays and only catches up by the end of Thursday. This may mean she feels stressed and behind with her work and instead of accepting its a result of compressed hours shes blaming you for not doing the Friday work and leaving no catching up for her to do.

Is she expecting you to do extra tasks a day for 5 days to pick up her work or do expecting you to do 16 on Fridays ?

Is that happening? It seems to me that it is.

Does your workload follow that kind of simplistic pattern. If she is only doing 8 tasks a day not 10 and not catching up then thats her problem not yours and her compressed hours aren't suitable for her job role.

Is it that she wanted to cut her hours but not her pay so never imagined she would have to have the extra daily work/catching up to deal with ? If that is the case she needs to go part time.

Or is it that your work load daily tasks just not suitable for her working pattern?

Next time she has a moan you say "you do seem to be struggling with the compressed hours, maybe it needs to be reviewed."

If she does compressed hours, then obviously she does her Friday's work when she comes back in on Monday. That's how compressed hours works. It's not annual leave that anyone has to cover for her. She's paid a full-time salary to do five days work in four days. Maybe your manager needs to spell that out to her but it's not your problem. YANBU.

Sounds like because you’re new she’s trying to train you into doing her work as well.

What happens when you’re off, does she pick up your work?

^ this

Perfect!