Am I being treated unfairly at work

[Happygoluckie]

I am part of a small team in a large company. There are 5 of us who are all the same grade, paid the same each month. In a recent team meeting we were asked to discuss what we are working on. My workload is about three times that of anyone else. I am more experienced and older lol but I was honestly shocked at how little they are responsible for. I am going to discuss with my manager when he is back next week , but how can this be resolved. It has been going on for sometime, work is continually passed to me and not others. I am exhausted and work over my hours regularly. I don’t want to be labelled a moaner or incompetent.

Why do you work over your hours? I would imagine that is a contributing factor to why you are getting additional work.

You will need to be really firm with management and explain the workload needs to be spread evenly and you will no longer be doing unpaid work.

When a new project comes your way say “I don’t have much capacity at the moment. Would you prefer me to stop working on something else that I doing for you or would you rather give it to someone who has capacity”. If you don’t tell people that you are too busy how will they know.

Was your manager in on the team meeting, because if so, then they will already be aware of the disparity between your work and what the others are doing.

Perhaps you could start by just mentioning to your manager that it became apparent during the meeting that your workload appears to be considerable when compared with other team members, and you can't help wondering whether there is something that can be done to spread the tasks out more evenly.

Yes my manager was in the meeting and he is very aware of my workload. The whole team are aware that I have far more work. I’m still being allocated more. I do challenge it and just get told I can park something else. Because my team is a legal one parking something isn’t really a reality due to court dates. I’ll push back again, see what happens.

You are being paid on X grade but doing more work which would indicate you have more responsibility and therefore should be paid on a higher grade, or reduce your workload. It is up to them.

Can you make a case for regrading or similar? It would push them to review your work and workload.

You need to put in writing that due to your current allocation of work, you have no capacity for more without putting other duties and responsibilities to one side, which is neither practical in view of the time scales involved. Suggest a meeting to discuss current work allocations and if parking other duties, you will need to discuss this in view of the implications

Are you being passed more due to your experience of dealing with more complex situations or because you have a reputation for getting stuff done or both? If it is more complicated work, could less complex work be delegated to the others? Also could the work be shared with the others so they gain more experience with oversight from you.

I would raise with your manager but come with solutions and ideas rather than just the problem, eg can you take an advisory/oversight role and help enable others to get up to speed.

I recently had something similar and had been saying for a while I couldn’t take anymore work and actually need to offload some as I’m always behind. No senior managers appear to care and I was one of the people who didn’t get a payrise because I’d missed targets repeatedly, so I work only the hours I’m paid for now and take a full hours lunch break. I was probably doing a minimum of ten extra hours a week for free so now I don’t care if I’m missing targets/deadlines. I can’t wait for it all to explode. Don’t get me wrong, I work hard when I’m working but no more free hours and I’ve claimed back so much personal time

The fact that you regularly work over your hours and don’t like to complain is probably why you’ve got so much more responsibility than anyone else.

I agree with this. They know you won't drop the other work and it will all get done. I would refuse additional work and start working your hours only.

If you are all on the same money, you should all be allocated equally complex work. It is so unfair if this isn't happening.

Oh love, you're not a moaner, you've just had your eyes opened and rightly so. Same grade, same pay, three times the work is not on. When you speak to your manager, frame it as sustainability not complaining, something like "I want to flag that the current workload distribution isn't balanced and I'm concerned about burnout. Can we look at how work is allocated across the team?" Bring specifics if you can, even a rough list showing who owns what. A good manager will want to fix this because losing you to exhaustion costs them far more than redistributing tasks. You're not incompetent, you're the one holding it all together.

Thank you so much everyone. I have spoken to my manager and he has promised to reallocate some
of my workload. I’ll see if that happens.