Dear Boss,
The small company where I work offers good pay; generous PTO, among other benefits; a fun, friendly environment; and good work-life balance. It also has an excellent product with a lot of growth potential. Generally, it’s considered by employees to be a great place to work.
The problem for me is that apart from the good pay and friendly co-workers, I mostly miss out on the perks that others enjoy. To be clear, there is a spectrum within the company: Some of my co-workers are more overworked and stressed than others. But I’m an outlier: I’ve been assigned responsibility for a lot of the most mission-critical and inflexible work that requires daily attention, so I cannot take any of my PTO. On top of that, I’m relied on for a lot of precise design and problem-solving that requires intersections of expertise no one else has, and it’s difficult to find interruption-free time for that kind of deep work, so that work gets pushed into my weekends. Meanwhile, everyone else gets to take vacations and has time to chat and take breaks during the workday, while I have to maintain ten to 12 hours of being on task, and even that is not enough to keep up.
A pattern has emerged over the years: When I call attention to my workload and how it’s creating key-person risk for the company as well as unsustainable conditions for myself, I get promises of relief and sometimes actual improvements, but my circumstances backslide before long. I might get approval to hire additional staff and things will start functioning better, but then something else goes awry: Upper management overpromises to a client, a key employee quits, a supplier falters and we have to plug that gap in-house, etc. Because I have a broad skill set and am seen as reliable, I’m usually the person assigned as the rescuer of whatever situation comes up, so it’s only a matter of time.
Thus far, I’ve stuck around for the job security, the pay, and the potential for early retirement if our stock options pan out. But I’m being required to bear a much heavier cost than my co-workers for the same upsides, and I’m always teetering on the edge of burnout. Furthermore, the company is so heavily dependent on me for crucial functions, much of that growth potential could evaporate if I quit or even just lowered my productivity. Upper management seems to have convinced themselves (despite what I’ve said) that I am so emotionally invested in their mission that I will endlessly sacrifice the rest of my life to keep their gears turning. That’s the story they tell other people, while telling me that I should take my PTO, but also telling me, “We know you’re super busy, but we really need X and Y and Z done ASAP!”
Is there a plausible strategy for breaking this cycle? Or does it sound like a lost cause?
I’m not saying this situation is your fault, because it’s absolutely not … but it’s almost certainly happening because you’re letting it.
You’ve been calling management’s attention to your unreasonably high workload, yes, but you’ve still been accommodating it. Your company isn’t taking real steps to solve the problem because, despite your requests for relief, you’ve continued to find ways to make it work. So while they might make noises about being sympathetic, as far as they’re concerned, this set-up is working just fine for them.
To be clear, that’s not right! They shouldn’t be willing to overload you just because you haven’t yet collapsed under the weight of it all. Competent management would have listened when you said your workload was unsustainable — not only because the situation is unfair and inhumane, but also because it’s actually not in their long-term interests to keep you so overloaded: Over time, things are likely to slip through the cracks, the danger of burnout is high, and — as you mentioned — they’ve created numerous potential crisis points if you leave without a lot of notice.
While you’ve desperately been trying to get them to see that there’s a problem, they’re not feeling the pain of it the way you are because you’ve kept everything functioning. You need to transfer the burden of solving this off of yourself and over to them … and the way you do that is by setting very clear boundaries about how much you will and won’t do, and then sticking to those.
If you think about it, your colleagues are probably doing this already; it’s why they don’t have as much work as you do. They’re logging off at the end of the day, leaving the office, and saying things like, “I can do X and Y this week but can’t fit in Z until next week.” And their managers are accepting it because this is a very normal way for people to manage their workloads! Most people don’t just take as much work as gets thrown at them and figure they have to get it all done, no matter how impossible.
These are the conversations you need to start having with your manager:
➼ “I can do X this week, but it means that Y will need to wait until more time opens up.”
➼ “I can prioritize X or Y, but not both. Which is more urgent?”
➼ “With X and Y on my plate, I’m not able to devote any time to Z. I’m flagging for you that it’s currently on the back burner and I don’t see any space available to handle it soon, so if it needs to be done, we need to assign it to someone else or move something else off my plate.”
If you’ve said these sorts of things before and the answer has been some version of “just find a way to get it all done,” then you need to say, “Realistically, there is no time for me to do all of that, so my plan is to prioritize X and Y, which means Z won’t get done. If you want me to prioritize Z, I’ll need to push off X.” And then you need to stick to that; if you cave, you’re just teaching your boss that you don’t really mean it when you say there’s no time for something.
I’m guessing the reason you haven’t done that before now is that you’ve felt you somehow couldn’t. But you don’t need your employer’s explicit permission to limit your work hours to reasonable ones that match what other people in your company and your field are working; you can simply proceed as if of course we all understand that you’re not going to be working yourself to the point of exhaustion, and making decisions accordingly. And you aren’t asking for help anymore; you’re announcing what you can and can’t do and sticking to that.
I think you will find that when you do that, people do accept it — just as they’ve accepted it for all your colleagues who have been setting those boundaries either explicitly or implicitly.
And the thing is, if you’re worried about what that would mean for your job security: You have a ton of power here! Your company isn’t going to be able to find someone else to handle as much work as you are — as evidenced by the fact that you’re surrounded by people who don’t — and they’re highly, highly unlikely to fire the person who has been carrying most of the mission-critical work and has expertise no one possesses just because you decide to set reasonable boundaries on your energy. But you have to actually set those boundaries with both your words and your actions … and you have to mean them.
Find even more career advice from Alison Green on her website, Ask a Manager. Got a question for her? Email [email protected] (and read our submission terms here.)