Frustrated about role

[JustAnotherMumHere]

I love my job, my company and my colleagues but I am becoming more and more frustrated about my situation and career progression. I am the most junior person in the start up by about 5 years. I have worked for them for a year and that is all the experience I have, however I am very good at what I do. They have cleared a path way for me to expand my passions and what I am best at. However, I need to finish my other tasks in the day before I can work on that because the company just wouldn't function if I didn't do them. I'm also battling against the fact I'm the only mum in the company - all the others are childless and I work 2 hours less each day (I guess I'm lucky I still get 100% pay..) because I do pick up and drop off at nursery. OH has a very busy job so can never help - he is often not even in the country.
I told the company they need to employ someone else to help me with my tasks that have to be done each day (I took yesterday off for teaching training and NO ONE did any of these tasks!) Which means I had double the work today and absolutely no time to work on the projects I want to be doing.
I'd think about applying for new jobs if it weren't for the fact that I need to work on the projects to get the experience... :(
Ideas on how I can successfully project this to my seniors that I need a new person? (We're a rapidly growing company but I seem to be the only one never finishing my work and working in the evenings and weekends to finish things and it is making me stressed :( )

It sounds like you have a brilliant set up. You like where you work, who you work with, and what you do AND they pay you 2 hours every day you don't work?

I am guessing you could be using those 2 hours to finish your work. Not sure I would be rocking the boat too much tbh, your colleagues might be very unhappy at the inequality in pay!

TheSnowFairy - I guess I do work them - I manage social media so I'm constantly on my phone. Most evenings I do 2 hours but only once the kids are in bed and it means I have no evenings to de-stress and I still don't to get to do the things I want to be doing. Each meeting we have to discuss what we need to need to be doing and the owners like to suggest things for me to do in the area they know I want to work more in - but they seem to not realise I am drowning in the daily tasks.

Ok. Without knowing exactly what you do / your tasks are, it's difficult to suggest answers.

I also look after social media in my job but switch off as much as possible outside work otherwise it could definitely be a 24hr job! My work isn't covered by anyone else either so if I am off (or like today, a 'brief' task ended up taking hours) I need to catch up.

Can you look at what you are doing now and see if you can create a process to reduce it? Or set a time that you work on the other work no matter what?

It sounds like the daily tasks are your job though, but you just want to do the extra bit you are interested in! You'd need to change your role within the company to expand it further, pitch it like that. Would there be enough to do with the extras without the daily tasks to make a role?

I'd carry on doing what you're doing for another year, get so,I'd experience under your belt, then decide what you want to do longer term.

Sounds like you are trying to fast forward your career yet you admit you still need the experience. So keep going, give consistently high quality work and prove yourself.

Maybe suggest they get an apprentice? The apprentice could do the social media or something and you get some management experience? so win win all around?

I think there’s a couple of issues here. Nobody covering your tasks whilst you are off is a problem, particularly when you are off for more than a day at a time. You need to discuss with your manager how best to hand over this work when you are absent.

With regards to the project work - presumably this is a “nice to have” rather than a necessity, as it’s being fitted in to your role where possible, and not it’s own distinct role?

If you want to make a case for a new position, you need to demonstrate why the business would benefit from it, and how you propose it would work in terms of role content and FTE. If there’s not enough work for two FTE, could you put a case forward for a part time role to support your current tasks, which would enable you to have a set % of your role available for the other work items that you want to pursue?

Unfortunately it’s not always possible to pick and choose what you want to do at work, but that is part of gaining experience until you are skilled enough to pursue your preferred path.

Thank you for all your advice. Hopefully there will be a role for me in that position I want and thankfully a colleague is suggesting to managers that my tasks are too much for one person to handle.