Re-Assessing Priorities Can Be the Key to Relieving Overworked Employees

Good employees sometimes leave organizations…and then everyone scrambles to explain why. Many times, burnout and workload are the top reasons cited. And too often, some leaders in the organization are quick to note that the employee themselves had time management issues that are likely to follow with them to their next position.

But what if there were steps that the company and management could have taken to help alleviate the burnout situation before the employee determined that the best solution was to leave?

Most of the time, there are clear signals of overwhelmed employees and challenges with workloads. Priorities are almost always part of the problem. So while leadership and management cannot directly take on the tasks of an employee, they can help employees with their priorities which then guides the employees to better manage their time.

Here are several key prioritization-related steps that leaders/managers can use to help employees address an overwhelming workload.

ONE: Explore the tasks that are bogging down team members — and understand the why.

The reality is that everyone experiences workload surges from time to time. However, sometimes workload surges come from a trend that is outside of the employee’s control. Maybe there is a volume increase of projects for their position. Where are the requests coming from? Perhaps key initiatives have been assigned to them without determining what other tasks should be delayed in the process.

Solution: A strong leader should not only understand the workloads for their employees, but probe for details to learn what tasks are getting in the way or causing disruption. Giving the employees the ability to delay some projects/tasks may be all that is needed. In other cases, shifting a project to another team member, or sharing the work between them could be the solution. Lastly, new resources (such as contractors), software, or processes may need to be utilized to improve the situation.

TWO: Know where to intervene with other entities to deflect/delay non-important work.

Many times, leaders from other teams or departments reach out to employees for work to be completed. Managers of those team members are often not even aware of those requests! Other leaders may not understand the time required to complete the request, or the other projects already in queue for that employee. In these cases, it might be more challenging for an employee to say “no” or “later” to such requests. Read our previous post Positive Ways to Say “No” That Will Balance Your Worklife for more on this approach.

Solution: A good leader can take the burden away from the employee by saying “no” or “later” to such requests. By escalating that message to other department leaders on behalf of the employee, priorities for what can be accomplished in a reasonable timeframe can be established. Frequent requests from other teams may also highlight other resources that need to be evaluated to remove work overload from existing team members.

THREE: Demonstrate to your employees how to prioritize.

While time management classes can be effective, a better and more direct way to address time management with your employees is to talk directly about how you would evaluate tasks and projects. As an example, ask your employee to provide a list of 10 key tasks that are on their docket for completion right now. (Some of the tasks may need additional context for you to evaluate.)

Using the list of 10 tasks, have a open discussion about how you might categorize the tasks into “top priority,” “medium priority,” and “low priority.”

• For each “low priority” item, show how you might reach out to the party that needs the tasks completed and explain that you need to delay this item until others are complete.
• For “medium priority” items, help the employee understand how you might set new completion dates that ensure “top priority” projects are able to finish first.

Solution: Make sure that your team priority projects are reviewed in quick status meetings every week or two. Work collaboratively with your employees to identify priorities and even re-evaluate deliverables for some projects that can be scaled back or re-envisioned. Re-read our earlier article on Why Speed Wins Out Over Perfection for more insight. As a leader, you can also reinforce the importance of the top priority projects by demonstrating your own strong time management and project management skills — and help lead by example. Share examples with your team so they can apply the same methodology to their own tasks.

FOUR: Take a look in the mirror to see if (gasp) you are part of the problem

This might be the hardest step to take — and admit — but many times we here at CPL see leaders that spend most of their time creating fire drills for their employees. This could be inviting people consistently to same-day urgent meetings, (and asking them to drop other meetings in the process), or asking for quick slide creation, quick email explanations, quick customer escalation responses. You have probably made any one of these requests recently, but do you do it all the time? Understand that your actions and behavior can drive employees to think that your culture is a “yes” culture, and that success is responding quickly to the latest emergency. When this happens, a leader should not be surprised when priority projects move to the backburner.

Solution: If you are brave enough to look in the mirror and see this unfolding, we advise that you pause and look at the 3 steps above as a partial way to change your behavior. Brush up on your own time management skills if needed. Step three will be helpful in many situations. When assigning a “now” request, let your employee(s) know that another project can be delayed, allowing time for the emergency.

Next Steps

Does this sound like an issue facing your team? Team Alignment is one of our new 90 Day Improvement Plans created to help reconcile priorities for both leadership and employees, as well as guide your on-going priority evolution process. Check out an overview of the Team Alignment Improvement Plan. Connect with us today to customize this or other program topics based on your needs.