Is Your Team Overworked?
There’s a trend that’s been around for a while now: this idea of doing more with less. While it sounds good on paper, the reality is that often organizations are not set up for working in a lean way. And what happens? Teams take on more and more work, being pushed down from the top, from senior leaders who don’t want to take no for an answer.
There’s a lot going on in that situation, from cultural issues, to a lack of ability to prioritize projects through a PMO, and probably more besides. However, even well-run companies with strong, efficient leadership teams, sometimes struggle with having more work than can be delivered with the available resources.
But how do you spot if that is happening to you? Especially if your team normally has high morale and is committed to delivery, which might make them reluctant to tell you that it’s all got a bit too much?
Here are 3 signs that your team is overworked and struggling, along with some suggestions for you to help individuals and projects get back on track.
1. They are hard to get hold of
As many teams are working virtually now, the first sign you have that things might not be going to plan is that your colleagues are harder to get hold of.
They stop returning your phone calls. They take ages to reply to emails. They are slow to respond to instant messages in your collaboration tools and they’re keen to get off web conferences as soon as you’ve stopped talking.
These all point to people who are busy and at risk of overwhelm – if they aren’t already there. It tells us that they are struggling to stay on top of the incoming flux of messages and demands on their time, and that’s a step on the journey to burnout.
Alternatively, if you are in a matrix organization, it could be a sign that they are working on other projects that are a higher priority, and that is taking them away from your work.
How to help: Ask them what’s going on. Say that you have recognized they aren’t engaging with you in the same way they used to and see if you can find out whether it is pressure of work or another project that is pulling their focus (or something else).
If you know what the problem is, you can work together to come up with ways to deal with it, such as re-prioritizing their work or securing expert project contract resources to take some of the workload.
2. They start missing deadlines
Another sign that your team mates are struggling with their workloads is that deadlines come… and go.
Hopefully, you’ve got some early warning tracking signals like earned value management reporting that will highlight when project performance is starting to slip, so the impact of missed deadlines can be caught early. If you can spot the trend that timelines are slipping, you can step in to do something about it.
However, if you don’t have earned value management reporting set up on your project, you will have to rely on other forms of status tracking to identify dates at risk. The challenge there is that you might not know a deadline is going to be missed until it whooshes past with nothing to show for it.
This problem is made worse when people on the team don’t seem to be aware that it is happening, and aren’t prepared to put any effort in to sort it out. That can be a sign of lack of engagement and resources who are so burned out they are unable to muster the enthusiasm to address issues with the project schedule.
How to help: Go back to the drawing board with your project schedule. Call up your Primavera P6 plans, or whatever tool you use, and work together to replan the work with realistic timescales. Create a new baseline, drawing on new information about the velocity of the work.
At the same time, watch out for any impact to team morale and try to get to the bottom of what might be causing that – beyond the pressure of work.
3. They won’t commit to project work
You’re in a meeting, talking about a new risk. Everyone acknowledges that the team needs to do something to address it, but your normally vocal colleagues are quiet about what risk management actions need to happen and who is going to do it.
A key sign that your team is overworked is that no one wants to volunteer for tasks. They all have enough to do and are already overwhelmed with the volume of stuff of their task lists. It feels like no one has the capacity to take on yet another thing, like sorting out a risk management plan and overseeing the actions required to manage the risk effectively. They make vague noises about the fact it needs to be done, but everyone seems to wriggle out of being responsible for the actual doing of the work.
If you notice that the team is less proactive that normal, and they are resistant to commit to dates or take on new tasks, it could be that they already have more than enough to do.
How to help: Your team is overworked and doesn’t have capacity to take on extra work, and yet there are tasks that come up during a project that need to be assigned and completed. Look at resource utilization reports and check they are accurate. Review what they are telling you about team capacity and compare that to what you are seeing: have you previously missed something in the reports that would point to the team being allocated too much work at this time? If so, make the adjustments accordingly.
If the resource plans don’t look like they represent too much work, try to find out if individuals are working on other tasks that are not reflected in your schedule. Make whatever adjustments necessary to update the schedule and resource forecast to bring the two in line with the capacity of the team.
In summary, the main things to look at when your team has too much to do is to either reduce the volume of work by pushing out the project timescales or removing items from scope, or bring in more people. Contract resources can help you fill a skills gap and supplement your existing team members with individuals who can make a contribution from their very first day. For example, adding someone to your PMO team who can specifically focus on resource planning and management may make a big difference to spotting these warning signs earlier, allowing your delivery teams more chance of hitting their deadlines.
Whatever the cause of your overwhelmed team, don’t ignore it. If you team is overworked, keep the communication channels open and reach out for professional support if you need it – we’re here to help!