I’m a manager without enough work to do because my team handles everything

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I work at a fairly large international company with several offices and remote workers all over the country. I manage a team of three graphic designers. My position and team are all new; previously all design work was outsourced. I was hired to put together a team and bring design in-house. I did all of the work in the beginning, and added additional designers one at a time. I am exempt, and my team are all non-exempt.

Now that the team is running well, I’m finding myself without much to do. I meet with my boss biweekly to relay the status of our projects, new clients, vendor issues, etc. I have met all of his objectives, and he tells me I’m doing a great job.

I do typical manager things like approve payroll and conduct employee evaluations, answer team member questions and offer assistance when needed, and review their work and offer feedback. They are all entry-level, so in the beginning I did a lot of training with them but now it’s only required if I introduce something new. This leaves me with a lot of extra time most weeks. I fill it with tutorials, reading management materials, and taking classes, but I am stressed about it because I know I wasn’t hired to do these things as my primary responsibility. I know that output is more important than hours worked, but I feel like the expectations are different for managers. My boss doesn’t assign my team’s work, and our workload depends on how many projects are coming in. I review the incoming requests and assign them to a designer, but I can’t create new projects that haven’t been requested by anyone. I have even stretched the definition of “graphic design” to get a few new projects sent our way.

Is this common among managers? Or should I be able to figure out work to do without someone telling me? I could do more of my team’s work assignments, but I am afraid that could leave them without 40 hours of work, so I usually fill their plates first and just pitch in when things are really busy. My team is not likely to get any bigger, so I don’t anticipate the admin duties associated with being a manager to increase much.

I would like to add that I am 60, female, and single, so leaving the position or company is not an option for me. I have been in the manager position for a little over a year, and with the company for three years.

I’m of the school of thought that if your boss is happy and you’re helming a well-run, productive team that’s meeting their goals, you’re doing a good job as a manager.

Of course, it’s important to define “well-run, productive team.” I’d define that as a team where:
– when work is completed, it generally looks like you wanted it to (indicating some of combination of having trained people well, getting aligned on expectations at the start and otherwise setting clear expectations, and checking in appropriately as work progresses)
– you know where work stands and would catch it early if something were significantly off-track
– if your team is asked what their their goals and priorities are, their answers would line up with your answer
– people feel comfortable giving input, suggesting ideas, and taking initiative, and feel they have a reasonable amount of room to figure out the best way to achieve a project’s goals (as opposed to you dictating every step in the process)
– people know where they’re doing well and where they should work on improving, because you talk about it explicitly and give regular feedback
– your employees seem reasonably enthusiastic about their work, put the team’s success ahead of personal agendas (most of the time), generally have good will toward one another and minimal drama, and feel they’re treated fairly and with respect
– you retain your strongest performers for a good solid period of time
– you address problems quickly, including removing people from the team if coaching and opportunities to improve don’t solve the problem, and you don’t have any concerns about team members that you haven’t talked with them about
– when you’re on vacation, you’re confident that work is moving forward well in your absence, without you constantly checking in

If you look at that list and spot things you don’t have in place, those are good places to focus some energy.

If you’ve got all that checked off, is there room to do more strategic thinking and planning — maybe longer-term goals that aren’t just about processing projects as they come in?

I know you said you don’t want to take more of your team’s assignments in case it leaves them without enough work, but it might be interesting to talk to them about whether they could use more breathing room, and whether there are things they’d like to work on if they ever had the time. Maybe the answer to both of those will be no, but those could be interesting conversations.

You can also think about investing time in developing your staff: what are their goals professionally? Are there skills they want to build, and ways for you to work on building those with them? Particularly since these are entry-level employees, there’s likely a lot of room to go down that path if you and they want to.

If none of the above changes things … well, congratulations, your boss is happy and you’ve built and lead a well-run, productive team that’s meeting its goals.

One caveat to all this: It’s worth making sure that your skills are staying up-to-date and you have accomplishments to put on your resume. I know you said you don’t plan to job-search, but that’s not always fully in your control, and you don’t want to find yourself job-searching from a weak position if you ever need to. I have no particular reason to worry that would be the case for you — building and leading a well-functioning team that meets ambitious goals is a marketable skill — but it’s something to keep in the back of your head too.