am I supposed to cover 100% of a coworker’s job when they’re out?

A reader writes:

I’d like advice for keeping your sanity when acting as someone’s PTO back-up.

I had a former coworker who I was paired with for many of our responsibilities. When she took time off, she would set her Teams message to “do not disturb” for two days prior to going on PTO and two days after returning. This would add an extra four days to the time I had to cover for her because no one could get ahold of her and I was the default. However, when I took time off and she received a request for me, she would just tell them, “You will have to wait until Jane is back.” Nothing happened when I tried to talk my manager about it.

A current coworker just puts my name down in his out of office message and doesn’t bother to give me a heads-up. I asked for that to stop and it hasn’t happened since.

The last two weeks or so, I covered for another coworker who was out of the country for two weeks. He is a totally lovely person, and I was happy to do it for him. He did leave some big issues unresolved, which I had to push through while he was gone. Here is my issue with this: he is a director and has oversight for X, I am a manager and have oversight for Y, so I don’t know the ins and outs of X. The only thing in common is that the same vendor provides X and Y. Every single person who reached out while he was out expected the same level of knowledge, decision-making, and follow-up from me that he is able to provide. I did what I could, but it took so much time that my own work took a back seat. He is now back, but I am still dealing with follow-ups and fallout.

My prior management always had expectations around what you could leave unfinished or having an “out of office” plan and limiting it to “urgent” issues only. My current manager does not. How do you set appropriate boundaries around being someone’s PTO coverage when management does not? Both with the person you are covering for and managing the expectations of those reaching out?

I wrote back and asked, “When you say nothing happened when you tried to talk to your manager about the first coworker, what exactly did you say and what was her response?”

When I talked to my manager, I explained what my coworker was doing and how it extended the PTO coverage beyond the actual days she was out of the office. I also explained that she didn’t reciprocate when I was out. My manager just said, “Oh, really?” I’m not sure if she said anything to the coworker, but nothing ever changed until I left for another position within the company. The coworker was somewhat of the “golden one” with management, so I am sure this just ended up that they didn’t want to rock the boat with her.

Did you directly ask your manager for what you wanted — as in, “I’m going to let Jane know that I can cover for her on the days that she’s gone but not for the two days before she leaves and the two days after she’s back — okay with you?” Also, ideally before you went on your next vacation, you’d say to your boss, “Can you ensure Jane will cover for me while I’m gone? In the past she hasn’t, but my understanding is that we’re supposed to cover for each other.” If your manager gave you another vague response like “Oh, really?” you could say, “Yes. I haven’t been able to resolve it on my own, so could you talk to her about how coverage should be handled?”

And if your manager’s stance was that Jane wasn’t doing anything wrong, then you might as well see how much room there was to do the same thing on your end — or at least the part about telling people they’d need to wait for Jane to return if they needed something particularly onerous. (This assumes you and Jane were in relatively comparable roles; it wouldn’t work if her work was more urgent to have covered than yours was.)

With the coworker you covered for where people expected you to have the same level of knowledge as he did: when you’re covering for someone, it’s generally fine to say, when needed, “I don’t have all the context (or authority) on this that Maxwell does so he’ll need to handle it when he’s back” or, if it can’t wait, to escalate it to someone above you for help. It’s also okay to say, “I’m just covering for Maxwell while he’s out, so I can do X to keep this moving but Y will need to wait until he’s back.” If that isn’t enough for what the situation requires, you should loop in your boss to figure out how to proceed. It might be that much of your work really does need to take a back seat while you were covering for this colleague, but that should be a conversation you’re having with your boss if so. That would also mean that the next time Maxwell asks you to cover for him, you should explicitly cite what happened last time and ask for his help in keeping your coverage to essential items only. He might have no idea that happened, and before he leaves he might need to better set expectations with the people who are likely to contact him.

In general, though, you’re right that it’s normal for workplaces to have expectations around what you can leave unfinished when you’re away and often to limit coverage to urgent issues only. If your manager expects that covering for an absent coworker means “you do 100% of their job, just like they would do it when they’re here,” that’s pretty ridiculous — it would mean that someone else would need to cover for you while you were covering for your coworker!

But there’s a decent chance that you can manage this by being assertive with your coworker before they go on vacation about what you can and can’t handle and explicitly asking them to set the correct expectations with their contacts before they leave. If that doesn’t work, then the conversation to have with your boss is, “If I need to take over 100% of Jane’s work while she’s gone, then we’d need someone covering for me during that time! Assuming that’s not practical, and since I can’t fully cover both jobs at once, my plan is to prioritize XYZ and leave things like ABC until she’s back.”

The post am I supposed to cover 100% of a coworker’s job when they’re out? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

View the full article