Prioritizing Employee Development

When we believe our staff are being overworked, and we want to delegate an additional project to them, the best solution is not always taking on more of that work ourselves.  As you can imagine, that will ultimately lead to us being overworked.

I recommend that we first take a hard look at what we are expecting our people to do, and if we have additional projects or tasks we think an individual is best suited to handle, we have the opportunity/responsibility to re-prioritize their assignments so that they regain the necessary bandwidth for this new assignment.  In doing so, we are recognizing that the new project is more important than the projects they are already working on.

If the quantity of work is being controlled by someone above us, we have an opportunity to ask our management to re-prioritize what is most important.  By doing so we are being an advocate for our people, because sometimes managers lose sight of all the work they are delegating.  Of course, a final solution might be recognizing that we do not have enough resources to get all the important work done.

When I sense that someone is overloaded, I seek to understand why and then if I still believe this additional project is a good fit for the individual (because it will contribute to their professional development and/or make them more promotable in the future) I take something off their plate, so they have room to take on the new project.