When you have a small team faced with lots of projects, it can be challenging deciding how to divvy up assignments without burning out your high performers or delegating to the same individuals every time.    

This cycle can be common when working against deadlines with a limited team.  However, this can lead to even more work when the top performers leave because they are done with being overwhelmed while those less efficient team members are not tasked – or even provoke resentment from those never selected to take on a project. 

Grasping The Master Plan

It is important to understand the workload that your team members’ are already handling and determine what is most important that you need accomplished before assigning new projects to them.

Instead of reacting quickly to simply delegate assignments to be accomplished, take the time to lay out what employees are already working on and the needs to be accomplished with a project.  It doesn’t need to be broken down with every detail, but at least identify the project goals, the basic needs to be accomplished and prioritize existing assignments against the new project(s).

Delegating to Individual Skills

Once you have identified priority levels with your projects, that will help clarify whether your top-performers are already loaded with more important assignments – versus immediately tasking them with more as default.

Focus on aligning tasks with team member skill sets and professional development goals that can be a win-win for the team overall.  

For instance, if you have an employee with a background or interest in an area untapped in their current position -- such as a social media guru who currently works with grant writing -- it can be a great opportunity to assign them to develop a web presence marketing campaign if a project needs publicity assistance.   If you need to have an experienced team member assist that individual to confirm they meet the deadlines – then that can be more manageable for a team to partner versus having the same individuals being tasked to take on the full scope of that need.

This will also encourage staff development and aid in areas your business may not have funds to hire someone to handle full-time.   Your top-performers may also appreciate having other not-so-obvious team members help with the job, instead of being assigned with more.

Setting the Expectation

Everyone works at different paces, and if you are adjusting to have more inclusive team members’ work on a project – reward and enforce the importance of high-caliber work versus speed. 

Reinforcing the goals of the assignments and why they were selected to handle that specific project is a good reminder for focus and motivation.

Although, since some may not be motivated in the same way, it is important to schedule one-on-one progress meetings to keep individuals accountable and confirm their understanding of their role.

This may seem time-consuming – so, meetings can be a brief 15-minute call to just check-in, if bi-weekly in-person meetings are not viable.

You can consider outsourcing specific tasks to a third-party as another option, if available.  But when focusing on the in-house small team and balancing the workload, remember to be inclusive to keep staff satisfaction. 

In the end, this can also help to better understand areas of needed growth, professional development and/or reorganization for your team.