EngineerHer

Yes I know. It’s February and I’m already talking about taking time off. But the fact of the matter is, that if, like me, you carried over holidays from 2024, the chances are you probably need to use them before end of March. So don’t get caught out.

Now, of course, most managers will allow a little bit of leeway there, but there are assholes I mean not nice people out there. So, maybe don’t risk it and use your holidays. They are part of your compensation package and are hugely important!

The problem with taking time off

For many of us, taking time off means working double time for the week before and the week after we take the break. You’re trying to see into the future and anticipate what will be needed and who will need it and all the rest. If you’re a metrics driven organisation, it gets even worse, because you nearly have to see into the future and give reasons as to why the metrics are good, bad or ugly in your absence…

Or worse? You end up engaging with work and logging in anyway, on your time off.

Neither of these situations is really maintainable. It’s not logical and it really doesn’t help you enjoy your time off! But this is the reality many of us face. And it can lead to the break not having the effect that it should have.

What to do then?

Well this is another aspect of writing it down that people kinda forget. It helps if you’re in a role with a standard calendar, but for many engineers, the notion of even a standard minute is a bit of a joke. However, we all have tasks, meetings and jobs that just need to get done on a regular basis. And equally true for many of us, we’re skipping in at the last minute, squeezing those tasks in between meetings, or even during meetings.

But step 1 is to write down those tasks. Just make a list of the regular daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly tasks that need to get done. Now, a task can be a meeting you need to attend, or prepare for. It can be approving your teams’ clocks. It can be gathering and presenting metrics. It can be arranging the monthly team lunch…

Who knows, once you start making the list, you may find out just how much of your job is taken up with thankless, pointless, useless work that you can either stop doing or delegate to someone else. I mean “thankless, useless, pointless” might not be the way other people view the things you’re doing. We all have people in the organisation that love getting their information in a particular way and any changes require an Act of Parliament to push through. Or Divine Intervention. One or the other.

But listing out what you do and how you do it on a regular basis is the first step in a process.

I know, I love a good process. (I can hear the laughter of some of my colleagues right now – I should edit to say I love a good process that I see the point in… )

How does this help?

Well first of all, writing down this list of what you do and how you do it is the first step in allocating the work correctly. There are 3 main options really for any task: keep it, delegate it, eliminate it. But how to choose which one to pick?

For each task, you need to consider the following:

• Is this task essential to achieving my goals? If no – delegate or eliminate.
• Can someone else do this task more efficiently or effectively? If yes, delegate.
• Does this task need to be done now, or can it be postponed? If it’s urgent, then possibly JFDI. If not – delegate.
• What are the consequences of not doing this task? if it annoys your site lead or a senior director – possibly keep it or delegate it. You need to consider if there are minimal consequences to not doing the job, why bother?
• Is this task taking time away from more important activities? Then delegate or eliminate.

	If yes	If no
Essential to goals	Keep	Delegate/ Eliminate
Someone else do it better?	Delegate	Keep/Eliminate
Urgent?	Keep	Delegate/ Eliminate
Consequences	Keep	Eliminate
Taking time away from other activities?	Delegate	Keep

So you can see that if something is essential to your goals, or urgent or there are consequences to not doing it, you probably want to keep it.

If someone else can do the task better, or be trained to do it better, then delegate. (Or eliminate if it’s not essential, urgent or consequential)

If it’s taking time away from other activities (and what doesn’t!) delegate at best or eliminate if there are no consequences.

I can already hear the calls

Look, I said this was only step 1. Ok?

Now you know what you’re going to keep, delegate and eliminate, it’s time to look at the delegate pile.

Another few key questions:

• who is capable of doing this?
• who can I train to do this?
• what support do they need?

It should be reasonably straightforward to choose someone to take over the task. Particularly if it’s a basic admin task. Trust me – any engineer can run a report from your CMMS once they have the right access. Any engineer who tells you they can’t manage excel is lying. And if they really can’t – they can learn. These are basic skills in the modern workplace.

But it is useful for both you and the person you’re delegating to if you can write a process or procedure or cheatsheet to help them work their way through the task. They probably won’t need to refer to it more than a few times, but it means there is a guide and they don’t have to call you every week for months on end til they remember how to do it.

I recommend a step by step, click by click list of the individual actions you take to complete the task. I mean you probably don’t need to start with “turn on laptop”, but who knows, with some people you might…

And then set up a weekly session to review what they’ve done for a few weeks so they gain confidence and you gain trust.

I thought we were reducing my workload, Orlagh?

It will long term. The longer you say “I don’t have time to show anyone how to do this” the longer you’re left with time sapping tasks. It’s that basic. Take one task a month to develop the cheatsheets and decide who’s going to take this on.

There are two benefits to this:

1. It clears your decks a bit
2. It means there’s back up, so when someone’s on holiday there’s at least one other person to cover the work.

So, no one has to log on when they’re off and engage with work…

You may also find that some of your team members are only too happy to do this. Plus, if it’s crunching numbers with no real engineering involved, it doesn’t have to be someone experienced.

The goal is to have these people in place to take the excess workload off your plate. So you have time to think. But it does require some once-off, upfront work.

Back to the holidays

if you have cheat sheets in place for all the work that needs to get done on a regular drumbeat, you can at least share the tasks with other people. Do you have to go to that meeting every week? Or can you send a delegate every now and again? If you can – bring them along a few times while you’re there to help them find their feet.

If it’s that important that you can’t delegate down, then delegate up. Seriously. It’s possible. If the meeting is that damn important, your boss can take it while you’re away. You deserve a decent break from work.

Besides, you can count the delegation as part of your succession planning as well. Get HR on your side!

If all the regular drum beat stuff is taken care of, then it’s the projects and the arising work that’s left. When you’re developing project time lines, you should be including a buffer anyway, to allow for unforeseen events. They happen to all of us. And this includes taking time off.

If you have 5 weeks holidays a year, then assume you’re going to be missing for at least a week every quarter. And add that on to any projects you’re taking on. If you don’t take the time, then you get a bit of leeway, but if you do take the time, you’ve already accounted for it.

Either way – you win.

What did I do exactly before last weekend?

Nothing. There is one job I usually do on a Friday that I completely forgot about. But the consequences of not doing that once isn’t a big deal. And I now have someone I can delegate the job to anyway.

Taking a single day off shouldn’t require too much work. If I’m off work a week or more?

• set up delegations on all the approval systems in work
• delegate out the meetings I usually attend (up or down)
• double check any metrics needed while I’m away are being covered by someone else
• make sure everyone knows I’m off work. Seriously. Everyone. No one every has the “oh, I didn’t realise you were off” excuse with me!
• Set up a very clear out of office. My message usually reads: “I’m out of office with no access to emails until X date. For urgent matters, please contact Y and they will direct the query to the correct person on the team. For everything else, please contact me on my return for a timely response.”

And yes, that last line on my out-of-office does indicate that if you want a quick response, send another email once I get back. When you come back to 1000 emails or more, you’re not going to see the wood for the trees! Be practical…

Start preparing now for your next break. it will make life so much easier in the long run!!

Final words

Look, this blog is aimed mainly at women in engineering. But there’s a lot of help here for others as well.

As women, we tend towards the “too nice” end of the spectrum. We don’t like passing on work. We don’t like setting boundaries for fear of being viewed a bitch. (Generalities here, people) And it can feel awkward passing on work to someone else. But think of it this way.

By passing on metrics or regular feedback to someone else – you’re showing trust in them. You’re showing you value their skills. In short – you’re showing you value them and the work they do to the extent that you’re willing to let them represent you. In public.

it’s also a good opportunity for younger engineers to get visibility in more senior settings. And a relatively low-risk way to do it. It helps prepare your team for engaging with more senior management in different environments as well.

By delegating work, you’re actually helping your team progress. No matter how much it might not feel like it sometimes. And it frees you up to do the work, and take the breaks, that you desperately need.