I struggle with imbalanced workloads between the salaried and hourly employees on my team, particularly towards the end of our workday.

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Elaine Varelas offers strategies to tackle workload imbalances in mixed-compensation teams, especially when late-day rush requests arise.

Q.  I work in a department of a law firm with a team of five. Two of us are salaried employees, while the other three are “nine to fivers” or paid hourly. The issue is that we regularly get rush requests late in the day and the hourly employees rarely, if ever, offer to stay late, so the burden of working late falls upon the other salaried employee and me. The hourly employees get time and a half but just don’t want to stay later than they have to. The team was restructured recently and it’s really frustrating that management didn’t take this into consideration. What if anything, can I do to improve this situation?

A.  Your situation is very frustrating and one that is faced by almost every working person who is on salary. My assessment is that something is significantly wrong with your compensation plan if the hourly employees don’t see the opportunity for time and a half as a significant benefit. What it most likely means is that their base hourly rate is too high and their time and a half salary is not motivational. The incentive for them to stay later to complete urgent requests isn’t enough so the salaried employees are overburdened to complete the work for the organization.

In terms of improving the situation, the first thing to look at are the rush requests late in the day truly rush requests or are they representative of other people’s lack of insight into the department’s working hours and staffing schedules. Law firms are typically composed of significantly hard workers who are known to work long hours. The assumption that everyone can easily adjust their personal schedules to accommodate unexpected late work needs to be addressed and changed by senior-level employees who assign these last-minute requests. If this is a daily occurrence and people can’t anticipate what they need by the end of the day, that’s a management issue. We all recognize that rush requests will happen, but it shouldn’t be a daily occurrence. So, you’re dealing with multiple problems in this situation.

I encourage you to talk to HR, particularly since a restructuring happened that didn’t solve this problem. A straightforward solution may be to adjust the schedule so that one of the 9-to-5 employees works from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., covering late requests and relieving some of the pressure from salaried staff. There are simple solutions to an issue such as this, but if issues aren’t raised and solutions offered nothing can be done. Complaining to each other gets tiresome! Raising the issue and potential solutions with firm management and HR is a smart step.