WFH & In the office

[Unicorngreen]

Looking for opinions please . I'm 5 months into a recruitment role for a large organisation. I work FT in a very large, buzzing office and have my own workload as well as dealing with queries from staff working within the office who are all recruiters/seniors and HR.My equivalent works from home FT due to mental health issues which was agreed some time ago and I have absolutely no issues with this.My issue is we have the same workload/tasks but he manages them from home and I manage mine in a busy office and get handed tasks every day from other staff within the office in addition to my own workload. Not sure how to manage this. Any ideas?

You're not sure how to manage what?

Just get on with your job,if you are been given too much work,speak to your manager
What your WFH colleague is doing is not your concern

God people on here are snarky sometimes, of course it’s her concern if she gets given more work than her equivalent colleague and she’s every right to raise it.

OP I would speak to your manager but I think you’ll need to word it carefully.

Talk to your manager,

“hi, Jane, I’m given around 6 ad hoc tasks. a day on top of my work. Should I ask colleagues to give every other one to Bob or should I take on all the ad hoc ones and Bob do more of our shared standard ones?”

The fact that as well as my own workload it is not taken into consideration all of the constant queries and interruptions I deal with.Fortunately my wfh colleague does not have these issues.

We are both working on projects that require concentration and my manager does not appear to comprehend why I am not completing the tasks as efficiently as my colleague.This is the issue. I have explained due to constant interruptions it is not possible to work as efficiently and my manager did not see this as a problem?

Your visibility and productivity in the office will be noticed. Your boss is well aware I'm sure that you are fielding more work than your colleague. So, if I were you I would capitalise on that and look to progress/get promoted on the basis of your hard work and productivity - without raising any explicit comparisons.

Op, could you direct colleagues to phone Bob with morning queries and ask you in the afternoon, or something?

it is one reason that my work is trying to get people back in, visiting customers will ask anyone they see for help and that falls disproportionately on the office based. Appreciate this is an MH issue not a covid one

Can you keep a list for a week of all the additional queries and how long each one takes. Then you can show your manager why there is a difference in yours and colleagues time taken to complete the other stuff.

It depends on what the mh issues are I suppose which they company won’t be at liberty to tell the op but maybe part of the problem why he was wfh was the constant interruptions

Thanks for those who have politely replied with constructive comments.Keeping a list seems a good idea.I obviously want to maintain sensitivity around this issue and not point the finger.What also makes it difficult is that being reasonably new, 5 months in and not yet completed my probation I also don't know how to answer some of these queries with being new so I am pointing them in the direction of my manager.Possibly when I am in a better position to assist it won't be as such a problem.Neverthless it still seems a bit unfair.

Do you have a shared mailbox or workload management tool? Most queries into our team come in through email or the query tool and are shared out equally amongst the team, whether the person they are going to is WFH or in the office.

Anything that comes from a walk in is logged into the query tool and accounted for in whoever dealt with its work for the day - or, if it doesn't have to be sorted there and then it can also be sent out to other colleagues.

If you keep some sort of time sheet, make sure you log every minute you spend on the extra tasks. This will give you solid proof that you are taking on the ad hoc work.

Op

is there a reason you point them
to your manager rather than saying “phone Bob, he will know as he has been here longer”?

Can you keep a list for a week of all the additional queries and how long each one takes

I'm currently doing, at request of my manager, as I'm doing a lot of additional "consultancy"
If you do this then you can sit down with your manager and decide to divide up all these additional tasks equally between you and colleague WFH. Then you can confidently direct people to call or email him when you've already dealt with several

Can you reframe it? It's not constant interruptions. It is additional work. That's time consuming and impacts your ability to meet your daily personal deadlines and longer term, the project's goals.

I can think of loads of reasons why you wouldn’t respond that way to a query or to being given work

Sure, but at the moment she is saying “I don’t know, ask my manager” - I am wondering if she could say “I don’t know, ask my colleague” instead

I would just say ‘I’m not sure about the answer, but phone Bob and see what they think - they’ve been with the company longer so should be able to help’ or ‘I’m working on this at the moment but at 2.30 I’m calling Bob so I’ll ask him then, or you can call him directly if you’d prefer’

and then return to your work.

I work hybridly, days in the office are difficult. I get asked about my team’s stream of work and I don’t know the details that’s why they are there. But you also do have to put out clear signals that you’re not available to everyone just because you’re visible. It’s no more time to call Bob than it is to walk across the office.

I had a similar issue with workload and the team coming to me with tasks, questions and queries all the time, and in the end I put in a request to work from home for a few days a week. It gives me the headspace I need to get everything done and I'm bothered less as I'm not visible in the office. Are you able to, or would you be happy to do something similar?

Alternatively, make sure you tell people to send their queries to your counterpart as you're busy at the moment. I think sometimes people need reminding that there are others available to help. I have other senior people in my team who WFH and will video call, screenshare or chat online to help others when needed.

It seems unfair to you that a disabled colleague has reasonable adjustments in place to enable him to continue employment? You're jealous of someone for being disabled?

If you raised this with your manager in the same terms in which you wrote your original post, it's not difficult to see why they shrugged you off. You're lucky that's all they did. You're talking in a discriminatory way and failing to be constructive.

This isn't about your disabled colleague, this is about your inability to cope with interruptions and what support you may need to manage that. Leave your colleague out of it.

@swanling that’s quite the leap! If one person is in the office and one WFH, the one in the office will get more ad hoc queries than the one at home, by human nature. It’s not unreasonable for OP to want to manage this, whether by splitting the queries in line with various suggestions, or adjusting down other work to have capacity for queries. None of that is discrimination

Also, if OP's manager is wondering why Bob gets their work done but OP isn't, it's totally relevant

I’d take Bob out of the equation. This is to do with your work and how you manage it. For all you know Bob could also be doing other things. Write down exactly what you do and the tasks you think are over and above. Then come up with a plan to manage it with your boss. Have you thought about wfh a few days a week?

Wow, that's an impressive amount of made up bullshit in one post. It's not an inability to cope with interruptions that is the problem, it is that she is being given a higher workload than her colleague and then being criticised by her manager for not being as quick as the guy with the lower workload. The OP is clearly not jealous of someone's disability. She is annoyed that more pressure is being put on herself and then she is being compared less favourably to this colleague who has a lower workload as a result of wfh and not picking up the same ad hoc queries.

People are asking g you because they see you.

can you say ‘sorry I am up to my eyes, but could you give Philip a call and see if he has some time?’

do this for every other query.

I don't understand why you assume the other person has a lower workload?

Or that their productivity is not as high as yours because they are working from home?

I would actually suggest that it is your responsibility to manage your workload effectively:

If people are trying to give you additional tasks all you need to do is tell them that these tasks instead need to be flagged with your line manager first who will then allocate them within the team.

Problem solved.