Message #70622

[sparkles_95130]

I've come to realize this isn't a transition time, it's more like a networking opportunity for my new mgr. My mgr keeps in strong contact with all these people, and my work mostly now is in the areas of setting up breakfast/lunches/dinners/meetings with them personally or tracking them down "I can't remember xyz's phone number - get out the phone book and call everyone in it with that (really common) name"/etc which creates a higher workload from an already fast-track, high demanding mgr -- and it was a bit worrisome in talking to the old EA who said to me rather bluntly "good luck."

I'm hoping that comment was directed to the workload as I do like bossie personally. And I like how much bossie includes me even if it now entails me reading their email as well as my own. However, as an example we've had cuts to the team and folks out on leave so we are down to 5 on our team and 3 of them have sat at my desk in tears over the workload. And all have mentioned it to me.

Several of the team asked me to speak to bossie about the workloads/deadlines/long hours. Not sure how I can approach bossie with this but I do need to address how much overtime I'm putting in. So far I haven't put in for all my actual hours as I know it would generate a report to the division head (a previous boss) who personally told me before new boss was hired I was not to work any overtime due to cost saving measures.

I'm not that comfortable having a sit-down meeting with bossie and just putting it on the table to say you're asking too much. If I sit down with bossie I need to be armed with very solid information that clearly shows, no it's not inefficient people, yes it does take that long to do xyz because I think that is the disconnect. I am creating a Gantt chart for the rest of the year with all the deadlines in hopes bossie might see what is being asked of everyone and I thought of tracking how much time it takes for me to do things but I'm worried they will think it takes me too long to do tasks. I'm not sure how to include the learning curve time as all of us are being asked to do things we haven't done (or haven't done in the way being asked) before so the learning curve is a big impact.

The true answer for me is both the level of detail asked (see example above) plus the extra outside things like speeches/interviews/memberships/people/etc bossie also takes on personally, especially given I've had to take over 1 large project/committee of a Director who is out. I'm an EA not PA (very different in my area of the world, PA's get paid $$$$ more than me).

Any ideas on best practices on how to compile good data on this are welcome!