Struggling hugely with workload - wrong expectations?

[TaylorSwiftsEyebrow]

I am an officer level job, paid the salary of an assistant (less than £25k), doing the work of a manager. I work in the third sector for a medium sized charity and have to do all communications (so all publications, leaflets, PR, public affairs, newsletters, case studies etc) as well as all the website and social media (this includes researching, creating a website redevelopment brief and soon to be managing that whole process) AND an internal communications launch thing (including the branding! I have no Illustrator experience!) AND creating, researching and implementing an organisational communications strategy. I've been there 4 months!

This is ridiculous, right? I'm struggling enormously on the low pay and have started looking elsewhere but jobs are thin on the ground here and I've noticed a similar trend elsewhere. Do I need to have a frank discussion with my boss? I have tried to gently tell people to back off a bit because I'm drowning. But they really need to either make me a senior officer (I was one previously) or manager and hire an assistant or give me some budget to hire some freelancers.

Am I being unreasonable here? Am I just whinging and should suck it up?

Being a senior officer or manager might get you more money, but the issue is the workload, so I think the key thing to focus on is getting assistance. If you need to be a higher rank for that, then go for it, but getting money alone won't fix it. You need to have a discussion and say you can't handle it all, and show how having an assistant (or two) will mean you can do these pieces of work. If they say no, ask which is best to drop - better to do 3 things well, than 4 things poorly - or do reduce the scope of what's covered in each piece, or...

Present some different solutions - and if it were me, I'd be making my preferred option sound most favourable.

Where I work, junior staff are dumped with work that no one else want to do. Work load is high, I am glad I moved up, much more fun without over worked.

I can't ask for an assistant at my current level though. An assistant would be line managed and delegated by my boss, who barely directs my work.

It's not quite dumping on, there is no one else who can do it. I am the only person with this specific expertise in the organisation.

I am the only person with this specific expertise in the organisation

Unfortunately these situations are a double edged sword. Yes, you are a critical member of the team, and have unique skills but as you are now experiencing, the downside is that nobody can share any of your work because you're the only one who knows how to do it. That's a real Achilles heal to the organisation, because there's no plan B ("under the bus" contingency) and the employee is burnt out by being overworked.

If you want to move to a more senior level, your next step should be to submit a business case proposal with the solution to this problem, highlighting how vulnerable the situation is and include in your recommendations that you need an assistant you can train up in some of the less specialist aspects of your job, and some visibility of what you do - to reduce the burden and mitigate risk. This 'single wo/man dependency' is not sustainable.

It depends on how willing you are to relinquish any control, as currently they are 100% reliant on you personally ......

I am very willing, I'd be happy to do lots still but it would give me headspace to think about strategic stuff which is very hard at the moment. I'd happily relinquish a lot of the day to day busy work. I don't like them being 100% reliant on me.

Can you ask for a promotion or a pay rise? If you are doing much more than you have in your JD, you should have a good chance to achieve one of these. You are there for 4 months. When do you have an annual meeting with your manager to review your targets? It is usually after the probation period. Definitely, I would raise this issue.

There are a couple of aspects to this: I am never sure charities want to pay fairly and can see employees as volunteers. Guard against this. Secondly, I do think you need to talk to your manager about redefining your job description. It’s not unusual for a single employee to have specific skills (DH has a tech guru) but there needs to be a fair salary to reflect expertise. If the biggest problem is overload, then renegotiate the job. What can an assistant do and why couldn’t you supervise an assistant?

Try and talk about it to your manager when your next review is due.