Asking for help?

[Cleanbedlinen12]

My Dh has a very stressful job and is working on 2 seperate projects, both a lot of brain power and research and both unrelated. The project that is supposed to be 1 day a week is taking 2 or 3 and the boss on the other project is viewing Dh as more and more incompetent. I said Dh should flag this before it becomes an issue, and he makes excuses - he should be cleverer, everyone else is amazing etc .
how can I help or what can he do? He did this at his last job and got totally overworked and stressed.
surely he should tell both bosses and let them sort it out? But how to say in a non moany way. He just says bosses don’t care. I say, they will when their project goes tits up and then they will blame you for not flagging it.
help!

If one project is supposed to be 1 day a week then that is the resource he should allocate, taking a day or two each week from project 2 is inappropriate. He needs to be ruthless and only give 1 day to Project 1 and be clear I.e. I’ve done xyz which is my resource on this project, abc will need to wait until next week.

The project manager for project 2 is expecting 4 days work and is getting 2 or 3 days. Quite rightly they are viewing your husband as incompetent at managing his time.

Thanks ☺️ crazy lazy days. That sounds perfectly right. I don’t get it - he has written a presentation and one of the pages is risks and requirements, except he won’t put on , I need extra help ‘ or extra time’ is there a better way to phrase this maybe?

Can he ring fence his time? So he says that he will spend Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon on Project 1, and won't do anything on that project outside of that time. (obviously that won't work if everything is more "do it now").

Or is your DH's point that he thinks that other people would do project 1 work in 1 day, so it's his issue for not being able to? I can see why he might be reluctant to flag this. If this is the case, he could flag it more as "My skills in xyz are a bit rusty/not had much experience in this - can I have more training/someone to support me in the short term?
If Project 1 is taking the one taking more time than expected, it would also be useful to understand why he feels this means he has to spend more time of it to the detriment of Project 2, rather than leaving things undone on Project 1. Is Project 1 more important? Is the manager shouting loudest?

On the presentation put Additional resource of 0.4 FTE required. The current resource allocated = 0.2 FTE, actual resource needed 0.6 FTE.

oh my gosh, thanks both.
l hadn’t heard of FTE that’s a great way of flagging it. I’ve googled it and it seems 1.0 FTE is a days work. Thank you so much - that sounds much more managerial.

thanks redskye he is nervous of flagging that he needs extra training, he seems to think because they’ve employed him to work on this area ( it’s new to him) and everyone else has degrees etc in it and he doesn’t he will get an earful.

he has a big presentation next week and he has to say that he has had no results in 3 months. He has had a huge amount of time used up by having to sort out some health and safety stuff and also set up a lab that was in too small an area, so it’s all been moved. I’m trying to say we need to put it positively, ‘I’ve successfully sorted out the health and safety and relocated the equipment. I’ve now been able to revise the original guesstimate timings and have scoped out a timing plan.’
is this the sort of thing? He’s really nervous of looking like he is making excuses.
he’s getting super stressed. He says he has mentioned it to someone but they don’t care, they just want their project done.
it’s like he is determined to remain stuck.
im sure he doesn’t have to work this hard or be this stressed.

Yes the presentation should include the barriers he has faced and how he has addressed them. I would also include a timeline showing key milestones to deliver the project. The milestones should be based on 1 day (0.2 FTE) resource a week then do a second option with 3 days (0.6 FTE).

one of the slides should include the impact on project 2 of the additional resource require so far for project 1.

Oh you are brilliant thank you, so much. how do you know this stuff?
So, as I’m new to this I’m just double checking, 0.2 is one day and 1.0 is a week of 5 days.
your advice seems so logical, and I love how it means you are taking control and not in a making excuses position. Do you give lessons?!😄

I don’t want to out myself. Let’s say I spent a lot of years working for organisations that used presentations like this all the time.

What you need to ask DH to do is find out how his organisation uses FTE as it can vary. If no one knows put in Full Time Equivalent (FTE) either 1.0 = 1 week of 37.5 hours or 1.0 = 1day of 7.5 hours (so a week = 5.0 FTE). Then work from that.

You are brilliant, thank you💐💐💐

How did your husbands presentation go?

Oh thank you for asking! That’s kind of you. He took your advice and phrased it as suggested. He came home afterwards saying it was dreadful, but today he got a thank you from the boss who recognised that he’s been doing loads without assistance and seemed a bit happier.It’s all politics, of course. Now the upper echelons are having a shuffle round so He’s wondering how he can flag to someone the area he’d like to move to.
it’s like you need to work on how to work! There must be books on all this stuff.
Thank you so much, your suggestions were really useful.
💐

OP,

Is your DH in the academic sector, by chance? If he is, I should point out that there is a huge unspoken expectation of unpaid overtime.

In no way am I defending this, but it could explain where one of his bosses thought the extra time (or some of it, because the situation sounded extreme) would come from.

Thanks for the update, sounds as though it went as well as it could.

Thanks both!
he’s not academic as such, but is in research for a big company. I guess like all big companies everyone is busy playing politics. It’s tricky because he works very hard and is very good at it, but am not sure he knows how to get that across. He slacks confidence after a horrendous few years, and I think feels he mustn’t make a fuss. Shame they don’t teach this stuff!