Asking for more work

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Most companies will have so much work that you will never run out of things to do. But there are times when you don't have enough to do. In this situation, you should ask your manager to give you more work.

Hi Mark, I finished all my weekly duties already. Do you have more work I can do?

I've been completing my work early on a regular basis. Can I have more responsibilities?

I have a lot of extra time. I usually double check all my work, but that doesn't take much time. Is there any additional work I can do?

Although asking for more work is a good sign of being productive, there is actually something better. Instead of asking for more work, find the extra work without asking. After you find something to do, then tell your manager that you want to do the work.

I had extra time on my hands so I started investigating the network problem. If you don't mind, I would like to work on this project to help the office productivity around here.

If you are a manager, would you want someone asking you what to do, or would you prefer a worker who found a problem and wants to fix it. I have had people ask me for more work and it is stressful trying to think of something. I am busy and don't have that much time to find extra work. If a worker identifies more work to do, then I would appreciate it that much more.

I have been completing my work a day early every week. I know the reference material has been sitting there for some time. Would you like me to do that project, or did you want to assign another project to me?

Although having extra time to do more work is a good situation to be in, there might be times when you have too much work. Here are a couple of sentences to ask for help.

Hi Mark, the addition we made to the project made it difficult to complete by myself. If the deadline doesn't change, I will need some help to complete it. Can you assign someone to help me out?

I have spent every minute on this project and have been putting in serious overtime. This project is a lot bigger than we anticipated. I am going to need some help to complete it on time. Do you have anyone available to help me?

The Alpha project has been eating so much of my time that I didn't have much time to work on the Beta project. Is there anyone with extra bandwidth to help me finish the Beta project?