Imagine if you had 3 extra hours of productivity in your work. What would you do with those 180 minutes?
And, what if we told you that with a platform like monday.com Work OS, you actually could obtain a productivity increase of 3 hours per employee per week?
If you’re part of a team of any size, no matter if they’re remote or onsite, workload management tools can help make your team more collaborative, transparent, and productive.
But first things first:
What is workload management?
If you have a team, chances are there will be work that needs delegation and management.
Every team has different members with different skills, interests, and availability.
Workload management is the process of allocating work among different team members and monitoring their capacity over time. The goal of workload management is to make sure that everyone’s work is delivered on time, but also to ensure there is always a healthy balance in terms of the amount of work every team member is assigned to, to make sure no one gets burnt out.
Traditional methods of scheduling tasks can leave some staff overwhelmed, while others are left twiddling their thumbs. Workload management tools, like those that can be built using monday.com’s customized platform for work, mean everybody on your team stays engaged.
And, just like that, you can boost productivity, transparency, teamwork, and job satisfaction.
What are workload management tools?
Team workload management tools are mechanisms and platforms that facilitate the strategies and processes to help distribute a balanced amount of work for each team member.
By using these tools, managers and team members assigning work can do so from a high-level, and from wherever they’re working from.
monday.com for example, offers a dedicated Workload View to see how your team’s work is divided, ensure no team member is overloaded, and view upcoming timelines for everyone’s tasks in one place.
While this view may not be crucial to the day-to-day management of your team’s workload, seeing at a glance how everybody’s doing and who may need to be scaled up or down is an incredibly valuable insight to have, if we do say so ourselves…
Top 5 workload management tools
1. monday work management
Best for: Teams of any size |
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Top features: - Resource management & time tracking - 27+ visual work views - Integration with 200+ third-party apps - Automations & AI-tools Pricing: Free plan available. Plans starting from $8/user/month See all monday.com pricing plans Get started |
2. Trello
Best for: Visual small teams |
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Top features: - Kanban-style boards with lists, and cards - Checklists and due date setting - Commenting and tagging teammates Pricing Free plan available. Plans starting from $5 per user/month Read full review: Trello Review |
3. Asana
Best for: Task-focused workflows |
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Top features: - Task tracking with multiple views - Integration with other tools - Task dependencies & automations Pricing: Free plan available. Plans starting from $10.99/user/month Read full review: Asana Review |
4. Wrike
Best for: Workflow management |
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Top features: - Document management - 400+ app integrations - Customizable workflows Pricing Free plan available. Plans starting from $9.80/user/month Read full review: Wrike Review |
5. Smartsheet
Best for: Dynamic spreadsheets |
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Top features: - Grid-, calendar- and work views - Automates calculations across sheets - Strong reporting features - Spreadsheet export Pricing Free plan available. Plans starting from $7/user/month Read full review: Smartsheet Review |
How do you manage workload effectively? 5 easy-to-implement tips
Managing your team’s workload isn’t always straightforward. Your team could be working remotely with conflicting time zones. Or, you may be managing a diverse team with varying skill sets and availabilities.
How do you make task management more effective? Here are 5 go-to tips to get you started:
1) Use the right workload management tool
You should find software that is accessible on the go, with customer service available when you need it.
Some of the highest-priority features you should for are that the right platform should not be time-consuming to implement, and should include high-level and detailed views, boost collaboration, and make workload planning a breeze.
Additional important features to look for:
- Multiple views of your team’s work
- Resource allocation
- Automation for repetitive tasks
- Time tracking
- App syncing and integrations
monday.com is a powerful, customizable Work OS that can take care of all your other business processes. With integrations and templates, our platform for work manages anything from customer sales to recruitment and onboarding.
2) Prioritize tasks
Once you have signed up to your chosen Work OS (cough, monday.com), it’s time to get productive.
Break down every project into smaller, more manageable tasks.
There are 4 steps to project prioritization.
You can order your tasks by answering these questions, and putting the data into monday.com:
- What tasks are on the to-do list?
- What is urgent, and what is important?
- What is the best way to delegate the pending tasks?
- Which tasks are the most time-intensive?
3) Understand your team and resources
Your company resources include your employees and everything else you need to complete tasks. This could be equipment, meeting rooms, company vehicles, or devices.
Managing your team’s schedules and allocating physical resources can be a bit of a juggling act.
This is another example of how versatile the monday.com workload view can be, allowing you to allocate resources where they need to go, when they need to be there:
4) Look at the bigger picture
monday.com’s views make it easy to see what’s happening on a daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly basis.
And looking at the bigger picture allows you to get ahead of the game. You can plan your workloads and schedule based on known commitments.
By knowing what comes next, you can allocate tasks early, flagging upcoming to-dos with your team.
This is particularly beneficial to freelancers and remote workers who follow a monthly schedule.
You can switch up your views to see it all. Our Timeline view is just one option:
5) Be adaptable
Two words: flexibility and adaptability.
Employees aren’t robots. Sometimes life’s little roadblocks—like delayed equipment deliveries—can turn your perfectly planned workloads upside down.
Projects can evolve. Tasks can be more complicated than you predicted.
Remember we flagged the need for flexibility and adaptability? With monday.com, making changes is no big deal. All you have to do is drag and drop to reorganize and reallocate.
And also take advantage of communication integrations such as Slack and Zoom.
Manage workloads easily with workload management software
monday.com is for businesses of all sizes. It can be your workload manager, your CRM, your project management hub, and your calendar, all in one.With customizable, no-code apps, over 200 ready-made project templates, 8 different views and more than 40 integrations, monday.com is a complete Work OS that lets you manage everything in one central location.
Ready to get rolling?
We’ve told you about what makes an effective workload management tool and how the right software can streamline your workflows. You can see what your employees are up to, what they have in the pipeline, and how long each task should take.
You can get rolling with our Work Plan template today, or, if you’re ready to roll, you can start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required!