Philippines staffing guide
Run a Weekly Workload Review for an Assistant
A short weekly review catches overload, unclear priorities, and missing support before they become missed deadlines.
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A weekly workload review is not a performance appraisal. It is a planning conversation about what is on the queue, what is stuck, and what the owner needs to decide. It takes thirty minutes and prevents the Friday surprise where three deliverables collide.
The operating problem
A weekly workload review is not a performance appraisal. It is a planning conversation about what is on the queue, what is stuck, and what the owner needs to decide. It takes thirty minutes and prevents the Friday surprise where three deliverables collide.
Prepare a one-page view: the recurring tasks, the ad hoc requests, the deadlines, the waiting items, and the decisions needed. Include the estimated effort for the coming week. The assistant should prepare the view and the owner should review it before the meeting, not during it.
Ask three questions. What is at risk? What is taking longer than expected? What should we stop or defer? The answers should lead to one or two changes, not a long list. A review that produces ten actions will produce none.
Check the balance between recurring and ad hoc work. If the assistant spends most of the week on urgent requests, the recurring tasks will slip. If the recurring tasks consume the week, the owner may be avoiding decisions that would reduce the load. The review should make the tradeoff visible.
What to control
Look at the waiting items. A task waiting on the owner for five days is not an assistant problem. It is a decision bottleneck. The review should name the owner and the date. If the same owner is always late, the escalation path needs to change.
Review the quality sample, not only the volume. Pick one or two completed items and check the evidence. A high volume of work with weak notes creates rework later. The sample should include at least one adverse case or exception.
End with the next week's priorities. Name the top three deliverables and the person who will review them. If a new request arrives, the assistant should know what it displaces. The priority rule and the workload review should agree.
Keep a short record of the decisions. The next review should start with the prior actions. This prevents the same conversation every week and gives the assistant a stable basis for planning. The goal is a queue the owner and assistant can both explain.Invite the assistant to set the agenda with the owner. The assistant knows where the work is stuck, and the owner knows which deadlines are immovable. A joint agenda is more useful than a manager's checklist.
A workable routine
Keep the review to thirty minutes. If it runs longer, the issues need a separate working session. The weekly review should decide priorities, not solve every problem. A long meeting becomes another task on the queue.
Review the coming week's capacity, not only the past week's output. A calendar that is already full on Monday needs a decision before the work arrives. The assistant should flag the overbooked days and the owner should choose what moves.
Record the decisions in the same place as the delegation log or the task calendar. A decision that lives only in the meeting notes will be forgotten. The next review should start with the prior decisions and their status.
Use a simple capacity estimate rather than a precise time study. The assistant can mark each deliverable as light, medium, or heavy and compare the total with the available hours. The estimate is a conversation starter, not a billing record. It helps the owner see when a week is already overcommitted.
Review and evidence
Invite the owner to name the one deliverable that cannot slip. That single priority resolves most conflicts. If everything is critical, the review should challenge the list rather than asking the assistant to work faster. A short list of real priorities protects the quality of the work.