What is workload management?

The quest for employee productivity is a charge that every forward-leaning company picks up and accepts. It almost goes without saying that organizations are pledged to trying to streamline their processes, optimize their workloads and carry out all functionality with peak efficiency.

Resource allocation and resource management become of prime concern, and it all revolves around this question: How do you get the most from your various resources—whether that means human resources or computer resources—and set realistic but worthwhile goals that can be met without overutilizing key team members and leading to personnel burnout?

That’s the main challenge of executing effective workload management, and it can be a tricky balancing act. Here’s why: This is where computer systems (which operate predictably) intersect with flesh-and-blood workers (whose behavior is often less predictable). All of these collide with project schedules (which are presumably set in stone—that is, until shifting business priorities suddenly change milestones and alter due dates). Keeping these 3 variables in relative equilibrium is the key to proper workload management and it’s a juggling act that requires considerable project planning and far-seeing prioritization.

Different enterprises approach workload planning in various ways. Still, 3 constants can be applied to all organizations engaged in workload management.

Deliverables are the output materials created by the organization and can take many forms. Deliverables can be manifested as tangible goods (such as manufactured products) or as intangible intellectual property (such as software programs and apps).

Unless we’re discussing a very small startup, there will likely be an established division of labor in place, with specific teams dedicated to certain projects. This helps keep a team’s operations within a manageable scope, especially when dealing with heavy workloads, complex projects and important tasks.

Time management is not undertaken as a mere good practice that a company follows. Production deadlines must be enforced because even enormous companies are only as valuable as their ability to provide deliverables within a contracted amount of time. Because it is so critical to ongoing viability, time tracking becomes a monitoring activity of prime worth.

Before continuing, let’s define our terms more precisely because the phrase “workload management” carries more than one meaning. Although those definitions aren’t worlds apart and are, in fact, slightly analogous, they are distinctly different.

In 1 context of employee use and work share, workload management can refer to a team's workload management or how the total amount of work an organization plans to execute is shared among the company’s various departments and team members.

Admittedly, there is a “human element” aspect at work when you discuss team capacity and how team workloads are shared by the entire team because we’re talking about how people do their respective jobs. This human dimension remains during the core activities of workload management that take place in retrospect, including the verifiable monitoring of metrics related to team performance and team productivity and the less concrete consideration of other valued intangibles like teamwork.

However, in another meaning, workload management looks at that same question of productivity from a strictly computing perspective. In this sense, workload management is a work management exercise about figuring out the total computing project tasks that must be completed in order for the organization to achieve its ongoing goals. The organization will use this compiled figure to help accurately project capacity planning and task management to make it happen. This then trickles down to figuring out how to disperse collective workflows into balanced workload distributions.

Then there’s a third and broader meaning of “workload management” that combines both discussions into a single conversation that covers the project management work that must be done, the human staff assigned to execute that work and the computer systems and processes required to accomplish it. To study this topic fully, we need to examine this comprehensive sense of “workload management” and all that it entails.

It’s hardly shocking that there are so many types of products dedicated to workload management processes, given that nearly all organizations are engaged in formulating and carrying out workload management strategies. Here are some of the most popular options:

For decades, this was not just the leading way to visualize performance comparisons, it was pretty much the only way to do so. Turns out some basics can’t really be bettered, which is why we’re still using spreadsheets in the 21st century. By posting all their contained information according to X and Y axes, spreadsheets can provide and compare much data at a quick glance.

The first spreadsheet computer program was called VisiCalc (for “visible calculator”) and was released in late 1979 for the Apple II computer system. VisiCalc (created by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston) was based on a 1961 study by American scientist Richard Mattesich. In turn, VisiCalc paved the way for Excel, which has become synonymous with computerized spreadsheet programs, and was pioneered by a Microsoft employee named Charles Simonyi for official launch in 1985.

Estimates published in late 2022 indicated that each month more than 750 million users turn to Excel, and some projections push that number closer to 1.2 billion.¹ Similar estimates posted that some 63% of all companies used Excel on a regular basis for at least some of their various accounting needs.²

One of the most basic and easily grasped ways to track workload progress is through Kanban boards (“Kanban” is Japanese for “visual signal”). Kanban boards first found use with actual, physical whiteboards set up with vertical columns that divided project steps. Stakeholders could then apply notes within those columns to denote incremental progress.

Kanban board use was first introduced in the late 1940s by Toyota engineer Taiichi Ohno, as part of a “lean manufacturing” approach designed to maximize productivity and limit waste. The first computerized Kanban software was pioneered by computer enthusiast David Anderson during the early 2000s and later adapted by software creators like Microsoft. Among current Kanban apps, Asana is known as a leading provider. Its Kanban board product accommodates automation and enables integrations (for example, methods to link Kanban boards with other tools to streamline workflows and save time).

Dashboards use widget technology to showcase various types of information within 1 visual configuration. The obvious model for this is an automobile dashboard, which lets a driver view important gauges and other monitors, all within their immediate gaze.

Computerized dashboards perform the same functionality, except with charts, tables and graphs instead of various gauges. Early experiments with computerized dashboards took place during the 1980s, but it wasn’t until a decade later that those dashboards became more useful and better integrated into systems. Dashboard use really took off when it became capable of showcasing key performance indicators (KPIs). 

Aside from project management software, there are other types of project management tools available—methods representing tried-and-true ways that have been around for many decades:

• Task lists: For breaking out the individual steps that need to be followed, the plain old task list is still essential equipment. Like spreadsheets, task lists are effective primarily because they boil information down to its essential data. Task lists are usually the first step in formulating effective strategies for addressing new projects and an early part of defining necessary project milestones.
• Gantt charts: One of the best primary tools for monitoring progress, Gantt charts express progress as a horizontal bar that denotes progress from left to right and becomes fully colored upon reaching 100% completion status. The bars of Gantt charts (named for social scientist Henry Gantt, who first created the method during the 1910s) usually also provide a numerical percentage of completion to augment the horizontal bars, which can be stacked to compare progress in various project areas.
• To-do lists: Another workload management tool that assists in the process of monitoring progress are to-do lists. While task lists concentrate on defining major developments, to-do lists represent the “drilling down” into those developments and itemizing the actual steps that will lead to project completion. To-do lists can be created with a variable scope, meaning they can be applied to an entire department, a specific team or even a particular individual.

Note: Although you might expect to see spreadsheets among this list, there’s a key reason why it was excluded. Although team leaders often construct visual grids on whiteboards or in word processing programs to contain a variety of data, such grids don’t count as actual spreadsheets. Spreadsheets don’t simply contain gridded information. That information is connected by computer intelligence that allows users to make simple calculations that can at once be applied to all the data in that spreadsheet—saving considerable time from having to make multiple calculations. That comprehensive intelligence isn’t present within a simple, gridded chart. 

Organizations vary widely, as do business needs. Nonetheless, there are still some sound core principles regarding smart workload management, and they can be applied to nearly all companies.

A workload management plan can only be as sound as the thinking that goes into it. Therefore, it’s incumbent upon whoever is doing the planning to honestly assess personnel skill sets and their effectiveness within those roles. This is as critically important as having an accurate projection of a project’s needed steps and key milestones. The more honest you are about company capabilities, the more likely your workload management planning will prove effective.

This should go without saying, but it’s surprising how many organizations still operate with their staffers largely in the dark about company operations or the full expectations related to their individual performance. Communications to team members should be simple to understand and difficult to confuse. Further, clear communication should apply to all teams and be applied evenly across resources to avoid information gaps and performance silos.

1 way that companies burn out their key staff members is by outfitting them with an unrealistic number of multiple tasks. To keep employees functioning effectively and in general contentment, an environment of multitasking should be avoided. Staff members should be allowed to focus on 1 task at a time until that task is completed. This avoids the near-paralysis that can affect productivity when 1 employee is attempting to juggle far too many tasks at a single time.

A key aspect of effective workload management involves taking advantage of the various technical tools at your disposal wherever possible. Repetitive tasks are a key area where you can apply 1 of your greatest assets: templates. Templates are ideal for automating document creation and speeding up their production. They also help ensure that company standards are formatted with consistency on all outgoing documents.

Here’s another no-brainer, but you’d be shocked how many top-flight organizations simply delegate important responsibilities to teams without later conducting regular check-ins with all relevant personnel. Clearly, this is a recipe for disaster that should be avoided at all costs. Team meetings needn’t be lengthy to be effective, but they do need to be held with regularity and give each team member time to report on their current activities and any potential blockers to their progress.