Have you ever managed a team's workload using a spreadsheet? Perhaps you haven't, but are you having difficulty prioritising or delegating work effectively to your team?

You are not alone - Jule Morgenstern (an organisation and productivity expert) said "If you overwork your high performers, you will lose them because they start to resent the fact that they’re doing more". It can be hard to balance workload especially when you don't have clear visibility on which work should be started or progressed.

What is workload management and why is it important?

Workload management is the process of efficiently distributing work across your team, tracking the status of that work in the interest of saving time and progressing the work efficiently. When done well, it leaves you and your team feeling more satisfied at the end of the week rather than feeling burned out and stressed.

In a recent UK nationwide survey, 44% of UK office workers feel burned out at work, with similar results across the globe. Good workload management reduces the possibility of you and your team from feeling overworked, especially when it comes to deadline rush!

4 Step guide to effective workload management

1 - Do you have everything you need to meet your deadline?

The first thing that you ideally want to do is to have a clear picture of what work needs to be done right now and what the status of your client workload. Ideally, you want to use the same method to obtain all the information from every client, so you have a real-time report of who has sent over their information and who has not. An ideal way of doing this is using secure online forms. They provide a secure and easy way for your clients to submit their files and information, with the added bonus of providing a professional company branded experience for the client. Using forms, you will immediately be able to see who has submitted their information and therefore what work needs to be actioned.

2 - Assigning workload

An effective way to manage the workload is with tasks. As information is submitted it good idea to make sure your tool is connected to a workflow engine so that as information is submitted by the client, tasks are automatically created for the team. Tasks can be assigned to individuals or the whole team, with all the information contained right there, in the task. The team will be notified, and you'll be able to see the progression of the work for each client using the reporting facility.

3 - Account for absences and adjust

As Oscar Wilde once said, "to expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect". Things don't always go to plan and often people can't work for various reasons. Nothing is worse when you need to progress work for a client than a critical file, or information, cannot be found because it is in an absent colleague’s email inbox. The only option is to reach out to the client and request it again, wasting your time and theirs. Tasks allow you to quickly assign the task to yourself, or another team member, knowing that all the information is immediately to hand.

4 - Confidence that deadlines will be completed on time

To know that all client work is progressing and not blocked, you need clear visibility on all tasks and status for each client. Having clear, real-time reports, will remove the stress from making sure everything is completed on time, every time.

Set yourself and the team up for success

Are you motivated to take the stress out of those last-minute rushing of deadlines? Effective workload management can really take the stress out of the process and make things run more smoothly. Contact us and let us explain how we can help.