This week at Wundamail HQ, we’ve been exploring the idea of sharing the load at work. Whether this is by sharing knowledge between team members, or knowing when to ask for help, ensuring that your employees are sharing the load is an integral part of managing a successful team. We’ve rounded up the most interesting and useful pieces on the subject, together with why we think they’re well worth a read.
Click To Read: How To Gracefully Ask Your Colleague To Share Your Workload on Your Story
In Akanksha Chauhan’s article about the etiquette that revolves around asking for help within your team, she breaks the process down into three simple steps that take the stress out of putting your hand up and requesting help. By setting out the process step-by-step, Chauhan offers some useful tips and ideas about what to say and (more importantly) what not to say when trying to get help from another colleague.
The article doesn’t skirt around the fact that we’re all busy and sometimes we all need a hand getting our work done, but it’s about how you approach that situation. It’s insightful but concise, and provokes how some thought about how you should handle your own workload, requests from others, and the overall commentary surrounding how stretching yourself too thin can cause unnecessary stress in the workplace, and at home.
Click To Read: Make Sure Your Team’s Workload Is Divided Fairly on Harvard Business Review
Rebecca Knight’s piece on how to ensure that your team’s workload is divided and delegated in a fair way is a thoroughly researched and informed article that not only draws on experiences within the office, but psychological aspects from experts in the field. Aimed specifically at managers, it discusses how to resist the urge to give the hard workers more work simply because they get it done quicker, rather than delegating the workload properly, with people’s strengths and weaknesses in mind.
The article even includes a crib sheet of how to approach the situation with certain archetypes within your team, i.e. “the person who can’t say no”, “the person who is struggling”, “the person who isn’t motivated”. Knight breaks everything down into sub-sections, switching between informed advice, and tools such as a list of the do's and don’ts associated with sharing out the load between your team.
Click To Read: How to Balance Your Team’s Workload Fairly and Effectively on Gain
In this straightforward blog, the Gain team combine some interesting statistics on how business leaders rate themselves on their fair delegation skills with some tips about how to rebalance the workload equilibrium. Using the guidelines set out by Thought Leaders creator, Mike Figliuolo, the piece outlines the five critical steps that managers should adhere to when sharing out the load among their team.
It takes into account team member’s/ individual preferences, skill sets, and their availability at any given time, in order for you to successfully delegate any potential projects. This post is a quick but perceptive read for any manager trying to rebalance the scales of their team’s workload, in an efficient and time-sensitive way.
