by Leigh Goessl

Created on: July 19, 2009   Last Updated: August 04, 2009

In a workforce where many employers are actively looking to scale back on costs, this often means cutting back on staff through layoffs or not hiring replacements when staff retire or quit. Many employers opt not to replace employees as a measure of savings by not paying the additional salaries, benefits and other costs associated with maintaining a workforce. Unfortunately this can have a cascading negative effect on remaining employees.

Most frequently the work load of the employee who left the organization is then redistributed to remaining staff. As a result many employees find themselves overworked and under stress. While employers think they are saving money, in the long run, this can really do damage to the company because productivity and quality can end up suffering and bearing the brunt of decisions to cut back staff.

Employees who have too much work to do are going to feel overwhelmed, experience loss of focus, not able to dedicate all their time on specific tasks and eventually are likely to suffer some level of burnout.

Here is how these elements can lead to inefficiency and overall burden on the entire organization:

*Overwhelmed

Employees who are overwhelmed are going to experience levels of frustration and annoyance due to being overworked and underpaid (how often when work is redistributed do remaining employees see a raise?)

As a result of this frustration, they may either frazzle out or just stop feeling pride in their jobs because too much work without recognition has a tendency to decrease morale. All of which leads to inefficiency.

*Loss of focus

Employees who receive too much work, especially if the tasks are varied and unrelated, eventually may begin to lose focus. This is often due to constant interruptions, demands and redirection of what they're doing. As a loss of focus increases, efficiency is bound to go down.

This is most often related to a person being assigned too many tasks that extend beyond their job description. It may be they either don't have experience in additional tasks, or little interest.

Whatever the case, continuous interruptions and demands help pave the road to inefficiency.

*No time to dedicate to specific tasks

Overworked and under pressure, employees who are directed to take on more work ultimately find themselves unable to focus on niche oriented tasks and not enough proper attention given to each one. When more work is piled onto the queue, this is distracting and as a result specialization has high potential to be watered down.

While the employer may see short term benefits from paying less people to do more work, if this continues over the long term, they may find other problems plaguing their workplace when employees are no longer specialized to do certain jobs.

As a result both quality and level of productivity can decline, further leading to inefficiency.

*Burnout

One of the biggest problems associated with handing employees too much work is if they are burdened to the point of burnout. Burnout is directly associated with inefficiency because an employee cannot keep up with the demand and this can affect both quality and productivity.

Overworked employees not only harm the individual, but can have an overall declining effect on an entire organization. While making staff cutbacks is a difficult decision and many factors play into the decision-making process, one of the facets to consider should be the long term effects of slashing the number of staff members to do the work. It's rare the levels of work decline, so having enough employees to effectively do each job is an important aspect to consider.

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