Workload planning: a comprehensive guide

Workload planning (or “workload management”) is an essential means of achieving project objectives without causing team burnout.

Have you successfully completed this step? Expect an increase in team commitment and productivity. Jumping headlong into a project without a solid plan? Finishing the job on time and on budget just got harder.

So let’s take a look at workload planning to create balanced schedules for all your team members (yourself included).

What is workload planning?

Workload planning is the strategic process of prioritizing and distributing work to optimize your team’s productivity. The first phase involves breaking down large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks. You then assign these tasks to your team, taking into account skills, capabilities, downtime, administrative tasks and overtime.

As your project evolves, workload planning becomes more focused on monitoring progress and actively modifying task allocation where necessary. This ensures project success and prevents burnout.

Three key benefits of workload planning

From sustainable productivity improvements to better information and stress management, here are the main benefits of planning and prioritizing your team’s workload.

1. Improving mental health at work

59% of American workers experienced “at least moderate levels of burnout” between 2021 and 2022. And a surprising 81% cite “employer support for mental health” as an “important consideration” in their next job search.

The problem? If you want to replace burnout with high morale and retain top talent, you need to meet the growing demand for mental health support in the workplace.

Studies show that excessive workloads are one of the main causes of burnout.

Planning workloads in advance – rather than buying beanbags for the break room – could be the secret sauce you need to create a work-life balance.

Key points to remember: Effective workload management can help you and your team meet project demands without the last-minute delays and excessive workloads associated with burn-out. The result? A healthy work environment that attracts and retains top talent.

2. Improve productivity in a sustainable way

Employee disengagement can be a drag on productivity, and costly in more ways than one. For example, disengaged team members can cost a company up to 18% of their annual salary. In contrast, highly engaged teams are 14% more productive than their disengaged counterparts.

Several factors contribute to team disengagement. Among the main factors are burnout and excessive workloads caused by poor resource management and planning.

Key points to remember: Manage workload to empower your team, not exhaust them. A well-planned, easy-to-follow workflow that takes into account downtime and potential errors while exploiting your team’s strengths isn’t just a sustainable way to improve productivity; it’s the right solution.

3. Obtain key project information

Ultimately, you want to complete projects on time and on budget, with minimal stress – you’re part of the team, after all. But you also want to achieve these goals without creating resentment or unnecessary stress within your team.

By strategically planning workloads, you can schedule group and one-to-one debriefing times. Take advantage of this time to gain key insights into the project that you might not otherwise have been able to uncover. For example, if a team member is feeling overloaded, exposing him or her to costly mistakes. You can then reallocate the workload as needed and avoid burnout.

Key points to remember: A workload plan will give you a better understanding of the project and your team’s workload from start to finish. Including checkpoints in your plan can also help you detect any human error before costly delays occur. Don’t forget to allow yourself enough time to provide (and receive) constructive feedback that leads to proactive solutions.

How to plan a team’s workload in 7 steps?

We’ve explained what workload planning is and its benefits. Now it’s time to take you step-by-step through the workload planning process.

Note: you can implement this workload planning process as is, or adapt it to suit the needs of your project or team.

1. Plan and prioritize your workload: start with an overview

Before you get into the details of your workload plan, start with the big picture and gain clarity. List everything your team will need to do to complete the project, and break each step down into clear tasks.

Your list should reflect :

• Project objectives
• Budget restrictions
• Important steps
• Resource availability
• Administrative time
• And for bonus points, team development objectives

You’ll also need to consider the level of difficulty of the tasks. Does a task require a specialist? Do you have enough people in-house to manage every stage, or will you need external resources such as freelancers?

Taking an overall view of the project gives you a more realistic picture of exactly what’s involved, and the resources you’ll need to distribute tasks fairly and for maximum efficiency.

2. Workload capacity planning: review team availability and workload.

With project scope at the heart of your concerns, it’s time to plan workload and capacity. At this stage, you need to assess the existing capabilities of each project team member. This will help you to distribute workload and responsibilities fairly, and ensure that the most competent people are available for each task.

Pro tip: Talk to your team right from the capacity planning phase. Ask them what tasks are involved in their daily or weekly schedule. With Teambook, you can easily consult the availability profile of each member of your team. Do they work 6 or 8 hours a day? What time zone do they live in? Then use this information to calculate the total time each person can devote to the project.

Teambook example: Thanks to Teambook’s planning view, you can instantly visualize the availability of each resource. Color-coding allows you to quickly identify situations of under- or over-capacity, facilitating a balanced distribution of the workload.

To draw up a table of “productive” working hours, consider the following elements:

• Vacation, lunch, sick days
• Administrative time required
• Time for less concentrated work
• Plan tasks that will take longer than expected

3. Strategic task allocation: use the 80/20 rule

You now have a realistic idea of how much time your team can devote to the project. But how much of that time – bearing in mind that the human brain is programmed to work in a focused way for around 4-5 hours a day – should be devoted to “focused” or “productive” work?

We suggest using the 80/20 rule to determine an approximate baseline at the start of the project, and recommend examining utilization rates as the project develops (more on this later).

The 80/20 rule means that a team member should never devote more than 80% of his or her time to a specific task. The remaining 20% is used for administrative tasks (phone calls, meetings), downtime or solving urgent problems.

A word about skills

It’s also important to match tasks to people with the most suitable skills. Matching individual talents to available positions improves clarity, performance and creates a more fulfilling team environment, as everyone is more involved in their role.

Teambook example: Teambook’s tag-based filtering functionality enables you to quickly identify resources with the required expertise for each task. By simply dragging and dropping, you can then allocate these resources to the appropriate projects.

We’re also sure you’d prefer to avoid the horror story of “entrusting your front-end developer with the task of creating a social networking strategy”. You know it, we know it: the wrong skills for the job spell disaster, not success.

Determining the importance of the task

Once you’ve decided how much work to assign and to whom, focus on delegating the highest-priority tasks. A standardized process or framework will help eliminate uncertainty.

We recommend the Eisenhower prioritization matrix, which invites you to rank each new task in order of urgency and importance. This matrix will help you quickly identify priorities, especially when all the tasks on your list are likely to overload your team.

Pro tip: Time management, task duration and resource requirements will help you determine whether a task belongs in the “Do”, “Plan”, “Delegate” or “Eliminate” quadrants. Use this framework to create manageable workloads that boost team productivity and improve mental health at work.

4. Define workload expectations for the team: identify what’s “good enough”.

When assigning tasks, you need to set clear parameters and expectations. This means setting reasonable deadlines based on the workload, and identifying the successes and failures of each task. Be realistic. Your team is made up of human beings, not robots.

To avoid burnout, deadlines need to take into account potential mistakes, unforeseen circumstances and the level of performance required. When defining your performance expectations in relation to tasks, determine which are “good enough” and which require a higher level of performance.

Don’t forget that a higher level of performance = more time required, so factor this into the deadline.

5. Create a flexible workload plan: review, reassess and adjust if necessary

As the project schedule progresses, you’ll want to evaluate what’s working and what’s not. This is how you optimize workload distribution to support team sanity, success rates and your bottom line.

Don’t hesitate to actively solicit feedback from your team throughout the project. This will give you valuable information about the situation. Use this information to determine whether team members are currently over- or under-capacity.

Teambook example: With Teambook’s real-time dashboards, you can instantly monitor your team’s utilization rates. Visual indicators alert you as soon as a resource approaches maximum capacity.

Try to maintain a team utilization rate of around 80% to keep everyone engaged, mentally healthy, creative and performing at their best. A rate above 85% can lead to errors, costly delays and burnout, reducing productivity.

Ultimately, your workload plan must evolve with the project. So, if you find that a team member is overloaded with work, you can take them away from a pencilled-in task and free up their schedule so they can concentrate on higher-priority work.

6. Different approaches to workload planning: choose what’s right for you

Every team and every project is different, and your approach to workload planning needs to reflect this. Project management methodologies will help you meet team and project needs by offering:

• A structure – to show you how to plan and organize your workload
• The ability to track specific tasks in your workflow
• A “mindset” to adopt when planning your workflows

Agile and Kanban are two popular methodologies.

Agile methodology

Rigid project schedules are perfect in principle, but generally unrealistic in practice. In reality, project deadlines and requirements vary according to resource availability and other unforeseen circumstances.

An agile workflow recognizes that as your project needs evolve, so does your strategy. With agile, the emphasis is more on flexibility and planning incremental development steps. This approach allows for change and leaves you room to react to last-minute problems.

Agile infusion: Adopt an agile mindset when defining your workload expectations. Aim for the minimum viable product (whose value increases over time) rather than expecting an immediate “perfect” result. Perfectionism” can make you a demanding leader who pushes his team to burnout and decreases productivity, rather than a respected leader who encourages work-life balance.

Kanban methodology

Kanban management is a visual planning system designed to reduce waste, continuously improve processes and keep projects moving forward. Kanban uses charts and cards to visualize the project schedule and the status of each task. It’s a powerful task management tool that provides a clear path for delegating and tracking tasks.

Here’s how it works:

1. Divide the Kanban board into three columns: “To do”, “In progress” and “Finished”.
2. Try to limit the number of tasks in the middle “In progress” column, and concentrate on the tasks in progress in the “Completed” column.

Kanban integration: Think of the Kanban approach when assigning tasks to reduce the risk of multitasking (which undermines efficiency). Following a Kanban framework can also help you identify bottlenecks upstream, giving you enough flexibility to reallocate workload before problems impact project productivity or your team’s mental well-being.

7. Automate workload planning: simplify your life with scheduling software!

Project and resource management becomes much simpler with a workload management tool at your fingertips. These tools centralize project scope, workload capacity planning, individual and team utilization rates, schedule availability, task assignment and specific skills.

Teambook example: With Teambook, all this information is brought together in a single, intuitive interface. Resource allocation is a simple drag-and-drop operation, and recurrence options allow multiple bookings to be entered at once.

Having this information readily available and grouped together in a single dashboard makes it easy to track employee capacity and utilization in real time, monitor task status and visualize the project schedule.

What to look for in workload planning tools?

Scheduling software tailored to your needs will help you distribute your workload more evenly (improving productivity) and avoid overwork (protecting your team’s mental health). But what specific features should you look for in these tools?

Automated calculations for resource utilization and individual capacity

Access to data on individual capabilities and organizational resource utilization enables you to make informed workload planning decisions. However, these indicators can be difficult to collect or understand if the information is scattered across several reference points.

Instead of having spreadsheets and Google docs everywhere, then trying to calculate these numbers manually, find a workload management tool that calculates them for you.

Teambook example: Teambook automatically calculates the capacity and utilization rates of your resources. Color-coding gives an instant view of under- or over-capacity situations, making it easy to take quick decisions to optimize workload distribution.

In addition to automatic calculation, consider how the information is presented. When indicators are displayed visually via a dashboard, it’s easier to get an instant overview of warning signals (such as a team utilization rate of 90% or an individual overloaded to maximum capacity).

Calendar integrations

The ability to synchronize your resource management software with your personal calendars speeds up workload planning. Even when telecommuting or working in different time zones, your team’s schedules, locations and capacities will all be visible in the same place.

Teambook example: your team members can synchronize their Teambook schedule with their favorite calendar and consult it on the move, always up to date. This bi-directional synchronization avoids scheduling conflicts and maintains perfect consistency between tools.

An integrated calendar also reduces the risk of double-booking, over- or under-assigning work, and rushing to find resources at the last minute. Having it all in one master calendar is far simpler than working across multiple calendars, Google spreadsheets and apps (potentially filled with out-of-date information).

A skills diary

A resource management tool with a skills log is a considerable time-saver. A skills log enables you to capture your employees’ skills right from the start of the project. You can even ask your team to enter their capabilities (or skills) at the start of the workload planning process, so that you have a clearer picture of the situation right from the start of the project.

Teambook example: With Teambook, you can filter your resources by skills at the planning stage. This feature enables you to quickly identify the most qualified people for each task, optimizing resource allocation according to available expertise.

You can then identify the most competent people for tasks and sub-tasks, based on their experience and specializations. If your software also integrates capacity and utilization calculations, as well as calendar integrations, you can assign tasks based on expertise and availability by filtering on these two aspects.

Integrating paid leave into project plans

Workload planning can be complex. Many elements are involved, and getting an accurate picture of your team’s availability can be complex. A workload planning tool capable of integrating leave into your project plans makes it easier to keep track of your team’s leave and other service interruptions.

Teambook example: Teambook makes it easy to manage vacations with customized filtering options. You can easily add time off for several resources simultaneously, for example to plan a national holiday or team vacation.

The ability to take into account and plan individual vacations is a great place to start. But planning time off for several team members at the same time, thanks to personalized filtering, is a real revolution, especially if you have an international team.

Use case: Imagine you need to book a holiday (like Thanksgiving) for all your American employees. Applying a filter to reserve several days off simultaneously is ideal. But you might also need to exclude European employees from this holiday; a custom filter system lets you do both simultaneously.

Overbooking management

If a resource is already overbooked, you can use overtime to report additional time, while maintaining clear visibility of the actual workload.

Pro tip: with clear visibility, you can avoid micromanagement (asking the team excessively about their schedule, for example), which often leads to poor mental health and low morale.

Some ideas for planning your workload

A realistic overview

Plan from the outset for vacations (or work periods), holidays, sick leave, administrative tasks, time for creativity and room to maneuver in case of human error or unforeseen circumstances in your project schedule.

Pro tip: don’t forget to take into account the skills (and therefore the resources) needed to make your project a success.

Watch out for double-booking of resources and over- or under-allocation of work. Poor planning can force you to find resources at the last minute and create unrealistic workload expectations for your team.

Pro tip: remember to create a master schedule for each team member. Don’t forget to ask your team to keep their schedules up to date throughout the project.

Work-life balance

Avoid burnout, improve work-life balance and manage workplace stress by distributing work and responsibilities fairly among your team.

Pro tip: a team resource utilization rate above 80% is a trigger to evaluate and readjust work schedules if necessary. If a team member exceeds 90% productivity, this may indicate an unreasonable workload. If someone with the same skills still has capacity, it’s time to redistribute tasks and responsibilities!

Take remote teams into account

Planning, scheduling and promoting work-life balance (and everything in between) can become more difficult in a remote working environment.

If there’s one game-changing thing you can do to manage your remote team project, it’s to show your confidence in your team’s working skills despite reduced employee visibility and transparency.

Pro tip: Even when working remotely, trust your team, but make it easier to work together with the right tools.