Workload. Or, more accurately, overload.
It’s one of the things I see come through most often when employees are asked for honest feedback.
Then I take that message back to leaders and, quite often, they genuinely don’t understand it.
The leader says:
“They know what the quota is. It hasn’t changed. Why are they complaining about workload now?”
The team says:
“We’re overloaded. They don’t understand the work we’re doing. We need more people.”
And there we are. Stuck in a revolving loop that never quite gets solved.
The argument has already started, but the investigation hasn’t.
A client, case or piece of work may still count as one.
But that one piece of work may now involve more investigation, more judgement, more documentation, greater risk, more people to coordinate with and considerably more follow-up.
One client can generate a small village of extra work.
The spreadsheet still calls it one. The calendar tells a very different story.
The leader has the numbers. The team has the lived experience.
Unfortunately, neither side is necessarily bringing enough of the picture to work out what is really going on.
Leaders aren’t always asking:
What makes these clients or cases more complex now?
Which parts of the work are taking longer?
What has been added since the quota was set?
What is being rushed, delayed or quietly dropped to keep meeting it?
Team members don’t usually arrive with a tidy comparison of what the work required two years ago and what it requires now either. They know they’re tired. They know the work is taking longer. They know something needs to change.
So they say, “We need more people.”
They might. But that still isn’t the investigation.
Sometimes the work is still getting done, so capacity appears to be fine.
But people may be working longer, rushing parts of the job or quietly dropping the thoughtful bits—the extra conversation, the quality check or the follow-up that would have made the client’s experience better.
Quantity can be maintained for a while by borrowing from quality, energy and goodwill.
But eventually, the bill arrives.
Energy drops. Momentum slows. Good people leave. Clients notice.
Productivity falls, even though everyone has been pushed to produce more.
Before launching another initiative, take a few real examples and put them on the table.
What did this kind of work involve when the quota was set?
What does it involve now?
Where is the time going?
What has been added?
What is being compromised?
The answer might be more people. It might also be a better distribution of complex work, fewer unnecessary steps, clearer priorities, different processes or more capability within the team.
But at least then you’re solving the actual problem, not the first version of it that arrived in the survey results.
Sometimes the numbers are accurate. They’re just counting the wrong thing.
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