How to give structure to understaffed team?

Anonymous

May 23,2023 at 4:25AM UTC

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How to give structure to understaffed team?

A year ago, it was only me. Boss and other member let go. Since the , I’ve been fortunate to have another wonderful boss and role model helping me build out a team under me. It’s rewarding and challenging as I got my shot pretty young and still with a lot to prove. Everyone is thrilled with our teams output and I know we are a high functioning team but at same time, I wish I could draw clear lines in roles and create more structure. In different ways, they all feel this way-that our pain points are expected but we should be preparing to scale (no one wants the team to grow more than me but I don’t think they realize the natural pace from here will be much smaller). When do you say, okay, that’s it. Everyone wears too many hats and we don’t pay overtime so i need to manage up? And is it typical that the thought of saying we can’t handle what’s on our plate makes me feel like it’s reason for management to see me as unfit or ungrateful or not ambitious enough? Truthfully I have less boundaries as an Individual contributor but now I feel new motivation to do what’s best for my team…yet do not see ability to create structure unless we hire or pace out expectations realistically and we just got turned down on expediting new planned hire at this time even though my boss just broke records for new business aq.

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Rae WagonerMay 23,2023 at 12:25PM UTC
Bravo to you for valuing your team and moving to protect them from burnout/overload. Especially since you recognize that you have fewer boundaries than they do. I think this bodes well for your career as a leader.
AnonymousMay 23,2023 at 5:09PM UTC
I've been in similar situations and have successfully added/repurposed staff over the years.
First really take stock of what your group is doing in an average week. Try to quantify the tasks in a way that makes sense to your leadership. I can say we have XX files in our portfolio, we serve XX clients, we have X help sessions per week, plus we do A, B, and C.
Evaluate the separate tasks and sort them (critical/primary tasks, supporting tasks by high and low value, random tasks that don't neatly fit into the other categories). Do all of the tasks really need to be your team's responsibility? Sometimes we end up doing things that are no longer relevant or should belong to someone else.
Once you have a grip on what everyone is doing, and you've ensured everyone is working on relevant, high-value tasks, look at what's left. Things that are not getting done but should - could be pace in general is just slowing down because there's too much to get done in a day, or you could provide better service or expand scope if you just had the resources.
If you had another staff member, what would their job description be? I find it useful to let my existing staff have a lot of input into what they would rather be doing more or less of when I'm working on a new job description (not just when I'm adding more people, as we review all of this every time we have a vacancy so we can adjust as needed). Some changes would require a reclassification of existing staff, but unless you have a large team with regimented roles where lots of people are doing the exact same work, you likely have enough flexibility to rebalance specific tasks to keep your high-performers happy. If you leverage the restructuring to propose promotions for some of your existing staff (not always feasible), all the better.
Once you've done all the prep and have a restructuring plan with the new job description and any updates needed for existing job descriptions, you're ready to pitch your plan to your boss. In my experience, it's way easier to get a "yes" when you've done all the prep work and they just need to tweak your plan. Asking your boss to do all the work to put it together - when they probably already have plenty on their plate - is way more likely to result in a "no" until there's a crisis of some sort. In scenario 1 you look like a thoughtful planner who is looking out for the best interests of the company/clients. In scenario 2 you look like someone who doesn't understand what's going on. Even if you do all the work and get told no, you'll be able to point to your efforts to address the workload if you end up in crisis mitigation mode.
Good luck!
AnonymousMay 25,2023 at 5:34PM UTC
I think you might want to create a tracker and then on your own track the main items that concern you. Add in timelines for getting said work done and the resources (people) that need to be doing these things. Stretch it into a 40 hour week and see how much bleed over there is because you have too little staff to do the work. Decide what priority levels everything needs to have think about costs as well and then work with your manager to assure there is a rotation for people to breathe and get breaks if there is a risk of burnout. If it is truly unreasonable and nothing will ever get done without huge trauma, then think about your longevity in this type of environment. If it's not for you then you just might have to move on.