Workload Management: What It Is, Why It Matters & How To Do It

According to the numbers, your average employee spends 51% of the workday on tasks of little to no value. Also, that same average employee gets interrupted about 60 times during the day.

And when you read similar stats about how employees are stressed and overworked, it all points to a paradox of sorts: your employees are underutilized, while at the same time dealing with burnout.

How is that possible? Unfortunately, this seems to be a common occurrence nowadays because a lot of agencies, businesses, and organizations are having trouble managing their employees’ workloads.

If your agency is facing the same problem, you’re in the right place, because we’re taking a closer look at what workload management is, why it matters, and how you can implement it to help your team.

What Is Workload Management?

The idea behind workload management is that every person inside a team is assigned the right amount of work. In other words, workload management is about efficient and even work distribution across your team.

The workload management process helps introduce order, prevents things like burnout and job dissatisfaction, and makes your team more efficient and productive.

It also helps with employee retention and making the most out of the resources you have. For example, with proper workload management in place, members of your team will never overwhelmed or underutilized.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s take a look at other reasons why workload management is crucial to your agency.

Why Workload Management Is Important

When you are running a small agency, even the slightest ripple in your operations can feel like a tectonic shift. For example, one of your employees leaving can have a huge impact.

According to research on employee wellbeing done by Gallup, 58% of employees are struggling due to burnout, lack of respect in the workplace, and stress.

When implemented properly, workload management can help you keep all the aforementioned at bay. It helps with the following:

• Realistic work plans: This helps not just your team members but also your customers to understand how much time and work is needed to complete a specific task or project. Giving them a more accurate estimate helps improve your relationship with them.
• Reduces delays and missed deadlines: With workload management, you are better equipped to organize your team’s tasks, as well as to prioritize them, so that all of the objectives are met in a timely fashion.
• Improved quality of work: With enough time to complete their tasks, your employees can focus on putting the quality of their work first.
• Decrease stress and burnout in the workplace: One of the main generators of stress and burnout is the excessive workload. With proper workload management, your team members won’t be given more work than they can handle.
• Increases employee retention: When your employees are not constantly buried under a mountain of work, they feel like they can make progress and reach their goals, as well as receive acknowledgment for their efforts.
• Resolves conflicts between different projects: When you are running multiple projects and using the same people, there is bound to be some overlap. Managing your employees’ workload enables you to circumvent issues such as starting or finishing multiple projects on the same day.
• Meeting the client’s needs better: Because workload management introduced quality and consistency, your client will know exactly what to expect from your team and will be assured that you will deliver every single time.

Now, let’s get onto how you should actually go about implementing the principles of workload management in your agency or organization.

How to Manage Your Team’s Workload: 7 Effective Strategies

There are countless ways in which workload management can be implemented, so we have focused on the 7 most effective strategies to help your team fire on all cylinders:

Determine the Workload and Capacity of Your Team

Even if your agency team is fairly small, determining the workload can be a fairly complex task which is complicated by things like multiple projects, employees belonging to several different teams, as well the sheer amount of documents and information.

Knowing the full capacity of your team means knowing what each team member can do, their availability, as well as how to use their strengths to get the job done on time. Yes, it’s a job in itself, but making the additional effort to understand how your team works is worth the trouble.

Here are several things you can do to understand the actual capacity of your agency team:

Also, don’t forget to account for stuff like meetings, vacations, and unforeseen events, such as team members getting sick.

Allocate Your Resources and Break Everything Down Into Individual Tasks

With a detailed overview of everything that needs to be done, the next step is to decide which team member will be doing what, as well as when. This seems deceptively simple, as it you need to keep in mind that you have limited resources.

Now, as far as resource allocation goes, that is an art unto itself, but in the context of workload management, here are some strategies that have proven helpful time and time again:

• Put your most crucial and urgent work first: Prioritize the most important and challenging tasks first. The same goes for projects. Create a to-do list for your team, so that they are aware of the order of priority.
• Assign the right people to each task or project: This means taking into account their availability, skill set, and experience, as well as strengths and preferences. Some people might be more motivated if given work that inspires them, even if they don’t have the necessary experience.
• Talk to your team: The only surefire way to gauge your resources is to talk to your team and learn how much bandwidth they really have. After all, they know their workload and abilities best, but asking for their input also helps empower them. And always, absolutely always let the person know why they are getting a particular task so that they are engaged right from the get-go.

Increase Team Efficiency

The aforementioned points contribute to the efficiency of your team, but that’s just one part of the equation. The other is having employees who are motivated and disciplined, which deserved a topic of its own.

We will focus on things you can do as an agency owner or manager that can make your team more efficient. Do the following:

Minimize the number of Meetings

Truth be told, meetings are necessary, but there are always those that seem to drag on forever, and which leave you completely drained. So, try and limit the number of meetings your team members are a part of during the week, so they can focus their energy and motivation on actual work.

Implement Time Management Strategies and Tools

Some people are great when it comes to self-discipline, while others might benefit if you provide them with a more structured way of working. To help your team members reach peak performance, have them consider the following time management techniques:

• Time blocking: This involves dedicating a fixed chunk of time to a specific task or activity. For instance, your SEO specialist decided that they will work on keyword research from 10 am to 12 pm tomorrow.
• Pomodoro technique: This time management technique involves focusing 100% of the effort on a single task for exactly 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break. The process is repeated 4 times, after which your team members should take a break of 15-30 minutes.
• Reduce distractions: This involves several methods, such as dealing with all the busy work after you have done your core activities, as well as using apps that prevent you from accessing distracting content, such as social media or YouTube.
• Log time spent on tasks: Have your employees log how much time they have spent on each task to gauge how much it actually takes them to do. Using ActiveCollab can help make this very simple and streamlined.
• Batch similar work: Constantly shifting context leads to scattered focus, error, and distraction, so it’s best to group together similar tasks. For example, group together all content-related tasks, such as writing and editing, without inserting any SEO-related assignments.

Minimize Multitasking

Fortunately, the myth of multitasking has been laid to rest for the most part. Organize work in such a way that doesn’t require your team members to juggle several things at once. Avoid multitasking by letting them focus on one task at a time, and then working their way through the workload.

Reduce Administrative Tasks

Checking up on emails, answering calls, going to meetings, and dealing with paperwork are all things that eat into your team members’ productivity and time. Enable them to prioritize their core activities, and deal with all the non-crucial administrative tasks afterward.

Regular Breaks

Completing an entire task in one huge chunk is a nice concept, at least in theory, but in reality, your employees’ productivity and focus will diminish over time. The solution? Normalize taking breaks throughout the day, so that they can take a short rest and regenerate.

Use Workload Management Software

If different teams inside your agency are using different tools to keep track of their work, or even worse, not using any at all, then it’s time to start thinking about unifying the way they do, and that means using software to manage your workload.

By having a centralized workload management tool that enables you and your teams to keep track of everything from time spent on each task, priority, and progress, as well as client requests.

ActiveCollab does all of that with ease, and then some. Not only does it come packed with communication, reporting, and project management features, but it also has a dedicated Workload management feature.

What can you use Workload in ActiveCollab for? Here are the most important points:

• Create a project: You can create as many as you like, as well as invite not just your teams, but your clients as well. Make use of things like categories, priority order, and categories. You can also choose to hide certain project aspects from your clients.
• Create and assign tasks: ActiveCollab enables you to break down each project into individual, actionable tasks, and assign it to the right team member.
• Manage start and due dates: With all the tasks assigned, you can define start and due dates, which will enable you and your team to keep track of progress, and adjust the end date if necessary.
• Create time estimates: With ActiveCollab, your team members can give accurate estimates of how much time they need to finish a task.

Here is a quick overview of how Workload actually works:

There is also a powerful Reporting feature that automatically generates detailed reports on your team’s tasks and time spent, which can be used to optimize your team's performance, gauge its true capacities, or let the clients know how their money is being spent.

Enable Clear Communication

Once you have everything set up, it’s crucial that you keep everyone in the loop, especially if there are changes or new developments on your project. Make sure to remain accessible to your members if they have questions, doubts, or problems.

Instead exchange emails, it would be good if this communication could take place in real time. This can include anything from regular check-in meetings with your teams and department to using chat apps.

If you are using ActiveCollab, you can utilize the chat feature and reach any team whenever you need it. This is especially useful for remote workers, but it also simplifies things for in-office teams, as you won’t have to use a separate chat app.

Create Realistic Client Expectations

You want your agency or business to be as productive as possible, and that should go without saying. However, some managers, eager to get the best out of their teams, overpromise their clients and set expectations so high that teams cannot possibly reach them.

This not only leads to client disappointment but also has a negative impact on the well-being and mental health of team members. Plus, if the only way to keep your clients is by offering a lot more for less, it’s just a race to the bottom.

A better way of going about it would be to give them a clear overview of how much time your team is spending on their project. Once they are aware of how their money is being spent, they will be more willing to alter project needs if necessary, as well as hire you in the future.

Assess Workload Regularly and Make Adjustments

Workload management is a process, not a one-time fix, which means you need to be aware of the circumstances that might require you to alter your original plan.

For example, some tasks may take more time than originally estimated, or they get delayed because they depend on other work that is taking additional time.

How do you get around this unpredictability? We suggest implementing the following tips:

• Identify overworked/underutilized team members: In case of uneven workload, redistribute it, so that overwhelmed team members have a chance to breathe, and underutilized employees can shine.
• Adjust project deadline: Every project has a lot of moving parts, it’s not set in tone. If your team needs additional time to finish a project, consider postponing the deadline and let the client know about it, while giving them a valid explanation.
• Reprioritize work: If your team comes across a task that is more complex than initially appears, but still crucial to the overall project, think about prioritizing it, especially if other tasks depend on it.
• Get additional help: If your team is still struggling to deal with the workload, you can also help them by hiring additional people to help. For example, if your content team is behind schedule, you can hire freelance writers to fill in the gaps.

Workload Management Challenges

Workload management is not an easy feat even if everything is going to plan. In real life, however, things don’t always go according to plan, because we can’t control everything.

You can expect to come across these common workload management challenges:

Unrealistic Deadlines

If deadlines don’t reflect the actual team capacity, it can easily lead to increased stress in the workplace. Before you know it, your employees are stressed and overworked, and the quality of their work begins to suffer. And if that becomes a regular thing, they will experience burnout.

Uneven Workload Distribution

When you have a team in which someone is pushed to their limits while others are barely working, it can quickly lead to resentment among team members, which harms morale and collaboration.

With ActiveCollab, you can easily spot which team members need more work or a break by looking at visual Gantt-like charts.

Shifting Priorities

Flexibility is always welcome, but if you are constantly requiring your team to change their priorities, they can quickly become overwhelmed or even confused. Not only will it take them time to adjust to new objectives, but they will also be exhausted from their previous efforts which have led to nowhere.

Conclusion – Make Workload Management Work for You with ActiveCollab

As you can see, despite some challenges, proper workload management is a win-win for everybody. You get a team that is more efficient and productive, and your employees get to work in an organization that has their well-being in mind.

However, managing your team’s workload manually is something we would advise against, because there are only so many hats you can wear. ActiveCollab, with its workload management tools and features, helps you do most of the heavy lifting.

Do you want a productive team? Happy and motivated team? Satisfied clients? ActiveCollab is your ideal partner to achieve all that!

Sign up for our 14-day free trial, or book a demo, and have our experts demonstrate ActiveCollab how ActiveCollab can transform workload management for your agency!