We all want our work life to be enjoyable, interesting, mentally stretching and ultimately resulting in career progression. For most of us however, this is not always achievable and while being too busy results in stress and anxiety, the opposite can be extremely demotivating. Troughs in activity are particularly common in training departments, either due to the organisation's seasonal calendar or when the dreaded budgets have been cut.

First, if you've been very busy, try and enjoy the less intense periods, this is important for your mental wellbeing, particularly if you work in a highly charged and competitive environment. Second, there is always something to do; you just might have to find it or create it for yourself.

We all have to-do lists but what about a 'will-do' list, specifically designed to fill work-light days constructively with useful tasks that can easily be put down if things pick up again client-side. Items on your will-do list could include:

The most obvious thing you can do is to take holiday when times are quiet. This might seem like an odd thing to put on a task list but everyone needs to rest and relax and it's best to do this when your workload's light. Unfortunately, this is not always an achievable way to spend downtime, particularly if you have children and/or have to book time off months in advance.

Make contact with new and existing clients, attend networking events and maximise the potential of creating new work. Spend some time building your own profile; write blogs for the company website, take an active role in social media and generally look for opportunities where you can contribute your areas of expertise.

Talk to your colleagues; if you've just come out of a period of intense work, such as when a pilot or project finishes, downtime presents a good opportunity to nurture in-house relationships. Be proactive; ask the partners and senior managers if there's anything you can help with.

A quiet period provides a good opportunity to take a look at your career ambitions and take positive steps to make things happen. Read books and articles which will improve your knowledge, attend a course or seminar that specifically relates to your corporate goals. More structured progression could include getting up to speed with relevant Continuing Professional Development (CPD), something which every professional body requires its members to complete.

If you have a team who may all be experiencing downtime why not help them develop? Give a presentation or learning session; subjects could include changing regulations and how it affects our firm, or lessons learnt from a recent workshop.

This is one for the trainers who have either external or internal business development responsibilities. There is always more that could be done when it comes to marketing and business development - when times are busy it's something that often gets put to one side. Examples of how you might be able to help include researching your firm or department's target list of prospects; maintain and deepen relationships with current or potential referrers and follow up any conversations which could turn into work. Writing blogs, articles and engaging with social media (as previously mentioned) are great ways to promote you and your firm.

 

If you're not currently actively involved in business development and this is an area that interests you, why not ask to shadow a pitch? It shows willing and provides first-hand experience of winning new work.

To new employees in a professional firm environment a slow period can seem worrying but nine times out of ten this is normal; it is usual for workload to have a cyclical or seasonal nature.

I used to be involved in organising a fast-track management programme for newly qualified accountants. As part of this programme I worked with participants as they moved between assignments; many of them found it hard to start in the deal-led environments due to the period of 'bedding in' while they waited for a new piece of work to be assigned to that project team. If you are concerned, talk to more experienced people in your department, they will be able to tell you whether what's going on is normal, plus suggest ways in which you can contribute to helping the team achieve it’s business goals.