You are overwhelmed with work, start complaining to your boss, they disregard your complains, you insist, you make their life miserable and after some time you may be lucky enough to persuade them to invest in bringing in a new colleague to help you out and take some workload off your back.
Except that you suddenly find out that the workload has quadrupled.
Sounds familiar perhaps?
No matter how experienced a new colleague may be, to the extent that they will be more junior to you, you should take it as a given that you will have to dedicate significant time in inducting them into the new environment. Not only that, but usually, as a more senior member of the team, you will also have to set aside even more time for training and developing the new colleague.
This is the only way to make the investment in new blood count.
This also means that your work will (at the very least) quadruple, since, where you had one employee doing the work of two, you will now have only half of an employee doing the work of two.
And this is because apart from having your previous workload of two people, you will now also have the additional tasks of training the new colleague, as well as reviewing their work. This pain is necessary however if you are to get back in return for your dedication, the reduction in workload that you were originally hoping for.
That being said, it doesn’t mean that you will have to be the only one to be in pain during the new colleague’s induction period. Try anticipating the events. Check any tight deadlines that you have coming up and make it clear to the management that if the introduction of a new colleague is to genuinely help in improving the output of the company’s work, they have to recognize their own responsibilities in this endeavor: They need to find at least one more experienced colleague to help you out during the period of the new-hire’s induction. This will significantly minimize any chances of the firm’s day-to-day operations suffering because of your diverted attention, or having the new-hire experience a prolonged induction period, that may as well hurt them psychologically and further reduce their performance, thus defeating the original purpose of bringing new blood in to help you out.