Coming Up
Why handing out a former colleague’s to-do list backfires
A meeting format that helps you decide what your smaller team should start, continue, or stop doing
The ground rule that keeps the conversation kind
What to do when your boss still expects the same output from fewer people
Welcome to Day 4 of our Leading Well After Layoffs Challenge!
So far this week, we’ve focused on people – what to say to them, how to help them process, how to rebuild their trust. Today we turn to something more concrete: the work itself.
The team got smaller, but the to-do list didn’t. Somewhere in your project tracker sits everything your former colleagues used to handle, waiting for a new owner. Today is about what to do with all of that work – because handled carelessly, it can burn out the people you still have.
Before we jump in, here’s a reminder of where we are in this challenge:
Day 4: Reset the Work Before Redistributing It (You Are Here)
Day 5: Reengage the Team Without Forcing Positivity
Reset Before You Redistribute
The instinct after a layoff is to take everything the departed person was doing and divide it among the people who remain. But that assumes the old workload still makes sense for a smaller team.
And that extra work adds up quickly. A task here, a project there, and before you know it – someone is doing a job and a half. In the Perceptyx survey we mentioned yesterday, 59% of employees at organizations that had recently gone through layoffs said they were already taking on extra work because of understaffing.
So don’t start by asking, Who can take this on? Start with, Does this still need to be done?
That’s today’s work: deciding what matters now, what can wait, and what you can stop doing altogether.
Run a Workload Retrospective
Now that you’ve agreed not to simply redistribute everything, it’s time to decide what stays.
If your team is small enough, do this together. The people closest to the work usually know which tasks still matter, which ones have become pointless, and which ones are taking far more time than anyone realizes. It also gives your team back some control, like we discussed yesterday.
(If a full-team session isn’t practical, do it with leadership, but gather input first. The real workload is often hiding in details managers don’t see.
Start with a modified version of the retrospective prime directive:
