Job Overload

If you find your workload has increased exponentially over the past year or two, you aren’t alone. Many employees are experiencing the effects of working for a company that has reduced staff but still maintains production at pre-staff-reduction levels. The tips below will help manage your increased workload:

• Understand expectations: By understanding your manager’s expectation of your role and responsibilities, you can more successfully discern where to focus your time and efforts.
  
• Stay current with company goals: Companies change goals, as needed, to adapt to market conditions. Make sure you know what’s important to the company you work for and how you can be a part of helping the company to reach its goals.
  
• Prioritize your work: Prioritize your work projects and tasks based on what you’ve learned about your manager’s expectations and the company’s goals. Organize tasks into categories like hot, medium, and low, taking into account assigned deadlines.
  
• Create daily “things to do” lists: Each day, spend 10 to 15 minutes creating a daily “things to do” list, based on the priorities you defined.
  
• Do not over commit: It’s great to be a team player, but learning to say “no” to requests that are not one of your priorities is a must for staying on track. Obviously, if the request comes directly from your management, you may need to make an exception.
  
• Delegate tasks: Review the tasks you’re managing, and identify those that can be delegated. Either delegate them directly, if you are in a position to do so, or engage your manager’s assistance in delegating.
  
• Negotiate longer lead times or extended deadlines: If co-workers are giving you tasks with short lead times, it may impact the quality of the completed task. Communicate this to co-workers and suggest longer lead times or deadline extensions that will enable you to do your best work.
  
• Set realistic expectations: Look at your own expectations of what you think you can get done in any given day. Ask yourself if your expectations are realistic. If the answer is no, work to adjust them. You may want to engage a co-worker or manager to assist you.