What is workload management?

One of the most important points of proper workload management involves resource allocation. Tasks must be prioritized by impact, work must be evaluated for volume and complexity, and progress must be monitored to maintain performance and prevent burnout. Workload management also takes your team’s skillset into account, ensuring that no one is under-utilized or overwhelmed. This ideally leads to optimal efficiency and production.

Why is workload management important?

If you’d like your organization to be efficient and profitable, implementing some form of workload management is imperative. Ultimately, your company’s primary job is to deliver the best results possible and managing the workload helps to reduce unnecessary costs, support productivity, and makes the most of your team’s skills.

Here are some of the benefits of workload management:

• It helps create realistic work plans, so you’re less likely to overpromise and underdeliver.
• It supports employee retention and hiring goals. You’ll be able to anticipate workloads and staff up when necessary.
• It minimizes delays; your plans are more likely to be delivered on time and within budget.
• It optimizes your resources so that work is evenly split between team members in a way that plays to their personal strengths.

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Strategies to manage workload

Deciding to implement a workload management strategy is easy. Putting it into practice may take some trial and error. Try these strategies to help your own workplace become more efficient and productive:

Evaluate the current workload

Getting a true picture of all the work that’s happening in your organization can be a difficult process. One way to start is by looking at prior months’ workloads. Look at new and ongoing projects and get a handle for what’s currently in the pipeline and what’s been completed.

Understand the time and work needed to complete each project

While you’re diving into the workload, take time to understand how long each project (and each part of each project) takes and what it entails. Numerous tasks don’t always imply a heavy workload, and one or two tasks doesn’t mean smooth sailing. A single task might involve a lot of work, time commitment, and effort. This can help you figure out how much new work to accept and how to assign work to your team so that each member is working to their full potential.

Implement a workload management tool

These tools help take the guesswork out of distributing work among your team (or across teams). There are a range of workload management tools that are optimized for a variety of uses. Some are intended for complex projects or collaboration between departments while other focus on real-time productivity data and managing a backlog of work.

Online tools in particular offer the advantage of consolidating information in one location and making it accessible to all team members. Workload management tools help avoid conflicting deadlines and provide visibility, overviews of resource allocation, and reminders of due dates while serving as a means for teams to communicate with each other. Think of them as the tools you wished you had when you had a group project in school.

Look for imbalances and make adjustments

Overall, workload distribution has a direct impact on team performance. If your team is feeling overworked, they may be more likely to take sick days or look for a new position due to burnout. By keeping an eye out for imbalances in workload, you can identify issues and make adjustments in real time. You may even find that some projects don’t need managing.

A workload management tool can be key for this reason as it helps team leaders and managers visualize how much work each team member has on their plate. If you’re noticing changes in demeanor and an uptick in missed deadlines, you may need to adjust how tasks are laid out and spread out the work more fairly.

An organization that implements workload management solutions is often one that is looking out for its employees and its bottom line. By showing your staff that you’re listening to them and working in their best interest, you’re also helping build open communication in the workplace. Learn more ways to stay organized at work and at home.