What to Do If Your Employees Are Too Busy to Take On New Work

If your employees are always busy, then you might have a problem. Nobody truly enjoys being busy at work. And when your team members become involved in too many unimportant tasks, they will likely be distracted from the core purpose of their positions. The results can be damaging, from hurting employee engagement to reduced productivity - your company's image could take a hit when busy work hinders your employees from offering high-quality work or customer service. To address this, companies should make the most of their available resources and ensure employees are performing their roles efficiently to help them reach the company's core goals. 

 

If that's the case, should I hire more people then?

Every company comes to a point when growth surges, and you have to recruit more employees. If not, your employees will be overloaded with projects, resulting in easier burnout. But it can be hard to pinpoint exactly when you've reached that point. And as an employer, how do you know whether your employees truthfully need more hands or whether they could be performing more efficiently?

Well, the first action that an employer must take is to understand how their employees are spending their time at work. A simple way to do this is to ask relevant team members these 3 things:

• The critical tasks they are performing as their primary job responsibilities
• The amount of time they spend on these tasks in a given week
• The kind of tasks that are out of core job responsibilities or any special projects they're taking

Once you've gathered this information, the following action is to focus on the tasks on which the employees spend the most time. Then, consider the following actions.

 

Help your team members prioritize their tasks 

You may ask for too much if you make every task a top or urgent priority. When team members say they are too busy, ask them for their to-do list and help them re-prioritize the tasks then and there. 

Depending on the situation, there may come the point where you'd need to extend their deadlines, recruit more members to the project, or delay tasks altogether. They may also have other priorities, so you must be flexible about when and how they finish all their tasks. 

 

Reduce workload by eliminating tasks that are not as necessary and relevant

When a company grows, it is often easy to forget to take a step back and determine if all efforts are genuinely delivering the goals the company has set. As a leader, looking back is important to improve the current situation. Ask yourself - what can I do differently to minimize the number of tasks, or how can I improve employee productivity so they can complete tasks more efficiently? 

We've mentioned above to collect data on what your employees are doing. So one thing you can do from here on is to reduce workers' time on "low-value" tasks, also known as the repetitive and transactional tasks that typically take up most of the employees' time. Of course, it's impossible to eliminate all these tasks, but employers can strive to simplify the processes to help employees complete these tasks more quickly and productively. Process improvements such as automation and software to track projects are great ideas to be considered.

 

Last but not least, ensure everyone is on the same page

For your team to be as productive as possible, every employee must be aligned with the organization's goals. Being result-focused and paying close attention to the company of work are both key points. Clearly defined goals can help your employees prioritize what's important and discover which tasks don't work toward the core goals.

A great way to do this is to conduct weekly team meetings to re-evaluate to-do lists so that tasks aren't duplicated, and each member is working towards the goal. It is also crucial for every employee to have concise key objectives. They should work to align their actions toward attaining those objectives rather than spending too much time on busy work.

 

Final thoughts

Most employees usually do their best - from their point of view - they mostly have the company's best interests in mind. Doing more with less may seem challenging, mainly when the company grows and customer demands rise. 

To help your employees manage their schedules smartly, leaders should engage and communicate with their members more regularly to understand their daily operations. And if the aforementioned steps did not work or something has stayed the same, leaders will need to admit that it's time to hire more employees.

 

Visit the HR Library to acquire all relevant HR resources.
Contact here for more information on hiring employees.