Imagine handling a team with too many jobs, too little time, and too much stress. In the construction industry, this can happen all too often at work. When it comes to managing construction, knowing how to manage your and your team’s workload is essential.
It is your job as the general contractor or the project manager to ensure everyone on your team stays focused, works hard, and stays on track. You should also make sure that everyone on your team has an equal amount of work to do. In this article, find out how this difficult situation can be turned into one of productivity, balance, and team unity with the right mix of easy-to-use tools and strategic approaches.
What Is Workload Management?
Workload management is the process of giving work to a group of people in a way that makes the best use of the available resources. It takes into account the skills, availability, capacity, output, and anything else that might affect how much and what kind of work each team member should get. When done right, managing your team’s workload helps them do their best and keeps things out of hand, so you and your team feel relaxed at the end of each day. Team members will be sure of how much work they have to do and will be able to do it faster and better. We want it to be different from the other way around, where some project team members have nothing to do and others are so busy that they burn out or quit.
Managers, team leaders, and stakeholders who know how to handle workloads well can make project schedules that keep everyone on the team busy with work they enjoy and are good at without making anyone too busy or idle. A contractor’s best resource is its people, and it is critical to ensure their productivity and efficiency without overworking or burning them out.
Why is Streamlined and Optimized Workload Management Critical?
No doubt, the construction industry has a hazardous, taxing, and stressful work environment. Many studies show that most workers are stressed and burned out, resulting in low productivity. One way to create a good, safe, and healthy work environment is to distribute work among your team better when you handle their workload. This keeps them from getting burned out and stops them from feeling overworked in the first place.
Nowadays, many new technologies and tools for managing workloads show you in real time what jobs your team is working on. Construction management software, like Pro Crew Schedule, allows you to get a quick overview of your team’s productivity and ensure they have enough to do without getting burned out.
The Five-Step Plan for Managing Construction Workload
Whether you are a new or seasoned project manager, it is critical to continuously think of ways to efficiently and effectively manage your workload.
There are a lot of tools that can help keep you and everyone and everything going forward at the same time. However, you will also need to work on some of your other project management skills and strategies if you want a tool to help you keep track of your team members’ work.
In this section, let us look at the five-step plan for how you can handle your team’s work effectively.
Evaluate Your Team’s Capability
If you are handling many projects at once, then your team’s work may be spread out among many project briefs, plans, and tools. It is hard to see how much work you must do together. As a result, it is essential to know what each team member can and cannot do to determine what each team member can and cannot do. Getting your plans in order will help you get past that and figure out how much work your team has.
Assign Tools and Tasks That Need to Be Done
The next step is to plan who will work on what and when. Make a list of everything your team needs to do. Resource allocation can help you find the right tools for a project and put them to use. If you have never assigned resources before, here are five tips to make sure that everyone has a fair amount of work to do:
- Give out the most important work first.
- Add up the due dates and start dates.
- Make sure that each job or task has the right person for it.
- Always explain to someone why you are giving them a specific job.
- Update, monitor, and evaluate the status of each task and check dependencies
Talk To Your Team and Be Amenable to Changes
Even the most well-thought-out project plans and schedules can be hampered by problems. You must be ready to make changes quickly to avoid missing deadlines. Before you move tasks or projects around, let your team know about it so they understand why they are being pulled differently.
As a critical part of your workload management strategy, set up regular one-on-one check-ins to track and manage each team member’s current to-do list. If those check-ins show that someone on the team feels like they have too many things to do, see if anyone else can take on something else. Think about teaching them to help them be more organized and efficient, and always thank your team members for their hard work.
Equip Your Team to Be More Productive
While thinking about the big picture, tell your team to devise a way to handle their job. They must do the right things quickly when there’s much to do. Give them ideas for managing the time that works for them, like blocking or timeboxing.
Cut down on the number of talks the team has to go to. You should find faster ways to talk to each other. It is critical to help your construction crew understand project management and how time can be saved by having a well-thought-out plan.
Use Construction Technology
The idea of being able to see everything going on with each project and team member in one place is excellent. In today’s modern age and digital era, technology like construction management software can help you streamline your processes. When you use a work management tool, everyone on the team can see how their work fits into bigger teams and company goals. Because communication happens within tasks, it only takes five seconds to find the information you need instead of five minutes.
Common Problems With Managing Your Team’s Work
Project planning depends on teams’ ability to handle their work well, and the first thing that can be done to improve things is to figure out what problems teams often have. Not only does finding these problems help with balancing work, but it also boosts team output and employee happiness. Here are some common problems that teams have with their workloads.
Having Unrealistic Expectations
When project schedules do not match the team’s capacity, unrealistic expectations often arise—setting tight due dates for complex tasks without considering the team’s current job or outside dependencies. This misalignment happens often in places where goals are more important than actual due dates.
Workload management tools, like construction scheduling software, can help set more realistic deadlines by showing how much work the team can do and who needs to do it.
Uneven Division of Work
When some team members are overworked and others need to get more done, this is called uneven task distribution. It can make people angry and lower the morale of the whole team. It is critical to always find a balance and ensure that the work is more or less evenly distributed.
Lack of Resources
When there is a gap between the amount of work that needs to be done and the amount of time, tools, or people available to do it, this is called under-resourcing. For example, asking a small team to handle many project tasks without the right software or enough time can cause deadlines to be missed and work quality to go down.
Good resource management and capacity planning are required to ensure that teams have what they need to handle their work well.
Demanding Work Culture
A work culture that is too demanding often puts numbers above quality and expects team members to do many different things at once. This is clear in places where team talks happen right after each other, people constantly multitask, and hours are long.
This usually causes the team to be less productive and lowers the mood of the whole group. However, emphasizing well-being and keeping track of time can help make the setting more balanced.
Tips to Manage Workload Well
To get the most out of your team, you need to do more than find problems. As a project manager, you need to find real answers. Putting together tools for handling work and practical strategies creates a helpful and efficient workplace.
In this section, let us look at a few tips on how you can manage your construction crew’s workload efficiently and effectively.
Set Reasonable Deadlines and Prioritize Tasks
One way to manage your team’s work is to use construction software to sort tasks and subtasks into groups based on their importance and how quickly they need to be done. This ensures that the project goals and team capacity are in sync.
Utilize Agile Methods
Agile methods like Scrum or Kanban can help teams organize their work better. These methods help team leaders monitor workloads and ensure tasks are assigned based on goals and available resources.
Efficient Resource Management
Ensure you have all the resources and tools you need to finish your to-do list quickly and without problems. This will help you avoid planning issues that slow you down.
Focus on Communication and Collaboration
Hold regular team meetings and let people discuss how to divide work, tasks that depend on each other, and tasks that are too hard. Good communication and close collaboration keeps everyone on the same page and helps you maintain a good work-life balance.
Utilize Construction Technology
Use automation to speed up work and project management software to get the most out of your team’s work. To-do lists and automatic reminders can help the team stay on track and prepared, allowing you to focus more on the essential parts of managing the project.
Regularly Check With Your Team
Use software for time tracking and managing workloads to check and change the team’s workload so that tasks align with project goals and plans.
Encourage A Healthy and Safe Work Culture
Encourage a work culture that cares about the well-being of its employees, sets limits on work hours, and prioritizes tasks without sacrificing personal time.
