A reader asks:

I own and operate a small business. The workflow is typically manageable within a 40-hour workweek. However, occasionally an important project comes in with an especially tight deadline, and it usually affects a different person each time.

I have difficulty asking employees to go the extra mile for that day or two when needed. I’m not even sure what constitutes a fair request. What are the rules about this? I almost always decide that I will take on whatever extra work is necessary myself, rather than ask for any extra push from employees. My logic is that I will save it up for when something is really

critical. Of course, that day never comes. And taking on the additional work myself has become distracting from my primary job.

Hiring an additional person is not an option because the extra work does not always pop up in the same operational area, and typically the work overflow requires deep knowledge of a particular project. (Also, all but one of my employees are salaried exempt.)

Under these conditions, is it appropriate to ask for an occasional extra push? If so, how do I go about asking for that?

Alison Green, a columnist for Inc.com responds

Yes, you absolutely can ask and expect that people make an extra push when it’s required.

If that’s happening all the time and people are consistently working significantly more hours than they signed on for when you hired them, or if they’re regularly having to cancel plans, etc., then you’d need to step back and look at whether there’s something bigger you need to change. In that case, you’d want to ask: Do you need to set expectations

differently at the outset so people know what they’re signing up for? Do you need to be open with people that the needs of the work have changed (and hopefully change their compensation accordingly)? Do you need to hire additional help?

But when we’re just talking about an occasional need for someone to put in a few extra hours that week, that is very, very normal for most professional positions (especially exempt ones), and it’s something you should be able to expect people to roll with.

However, you need to tell your team that you need it! Sometimes that means just straightforwardly assigning the work. For example, “Can you do X by Thursday?” Depending on the context, you might add, “I know that’s a tight turnaround — unfortunately it didn’t come to us until today” or “Let me know if you need to adjust any other deadlines to make room for it.”

Note that you don’t necessarily need to announce “you will need to work extra hours to do this” — because maybe they will, but maybe they won’t. In general, you should be able to trust professionals to figure out how they’ll need to manage their schedules and their workflows, including if that means deciding to put in some extra hours. (The exception to this is your one non-exempt person; make sure to talk to them about how to handle overtime.)

If you want to convey that folks should expect to be entering a busier period: “The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty crunched, and I’m going to be sending you more projects than usual. It might require putting in some additional hours, but it’ll just be until the end of the month.”

If anyone pushes back on this, you can say, “There are natural ebbs and flows to our work, and there may be times when you have to work more intensively and times when the workload is lighter. The goal is always for those more intensive periods to be short-lived and for most of your weeks to be around 40 hours — but occasionally the nature of the job is that you might have a longer week here and there.” You could add, “If you’re ever in a situation where that more intense period doesn’t seem to be letting up or feels like your new normal, talk to me and we’ll figure out how to reprioritize.”

That’s it! Most likely, you’ll assign the work that needs to be done and people will roll with it without thinking it’s weird. This is a normal thing to happen in professional jobs, and you don’t sound like you’re at all in danger of abusing it.

Information provided by: Inc.