Less staff and more work

[ElTortilla]

We've had some staff leave our small organisation recently without recruiting into those roles and so the few staff that are left are picking up the work of those that left. Management acknowledge this and pro.ise change but only for the distant future. I'm struggling to deliver on my own work because of these extra responsibilities. Is there anything that can be done apart from me raising it regularly?

It’s easier to say than do but just work at the best pace you can. What isn’t done gets left till the next day and that’s it. Prioritise as best you can. If asked about it just say truthfully you can only do so much in a day. I work in an under resourced front line health service. We can’t help everyone referred how they need to be helped and this is the only way i stay sane. staffing is not your responsibility. let them see the conseqences. distance yourself mentally.

Oh and don’t bother raising anything. They already know. Odds are they are seeing what capacity you can absorb to see how long they can defer rehiring.

Currently in the same situation all be it now at the hiring end after 9 long months of missing 4 members of a 10 person team. We just had to let things fail, important stuff was done, everything else was left to one side until we had/if we had time. A lot of stuff hasn't been done in months because of this. We kept the service running which is why it took them so long to hire I think, as they've now started asking for the stuff we didn't have time to do and realised it never got done.

There are only so many hours in the day. You are one person. You can only do so much. Don't work yourself into the ground over it.

If I don't deliver on projects under my responsibility it's going to look bad on me though.

Currently having to cover for someone who's off sick for a month and struggling to juggle their work and mine and feeling overwhelmed, and am being asked more than once if I've done something which is stressing me as usually I can reliably get my own work done/feel like I'm trusted to do so

It's also a lower grade (I'm by no means a manager) so feeling like I'm doing things that I used to do before a promotion

Said person's work has been shared out but it just feels like theirs are things that need to be done, leaving my longer term bigger pieces of work to take less priority

If it was a week or 2 it wouldn't feel so overwhelming, as it would feel like the end is in sight and just battle through. Can't really say how I feel as all of us in the department have taken on various tasks of absent colleague