Workload Management

What workload management means

Workload management (إدارة عبء العمل) is the distribution of tasks across a team in proportion to the capacity and the time available, together with the monitoring of that distribution and its adjustment whenever it falls out of balance.

The yardstick in the definition is the pair it names, the capacity available and the time available. A distribution is measured against what the team can take on in the time it has, and the work of managing it does not end once the tasks have been handed out: the distribution is followed while the work is under way, and it is changed when it no longer matches that pair.

Why counting tasks is not enough for workload management

A count of tasks treats as equal things that are not equal. A task that takes an hour and a task that takes a week each appear in the count as a single task, and the number that results is the same for both. Two people with the same number of tasks can therefore be carrying different amounts of work, and a count that shows them as level hides the difference between them.

A sound measure of workload combines three elements:

• Estimated time. It is the time a task is expected to take. It separates the task of an hour from the task of a week, which a count places side by side as if they were the same.
• Complexity. It is the degree of difficulty a task carries. It is a separate element of the measure, standing alongside the estimated time and not in place of it.
• Concurrency. It is how many tasks a person has open at the same time. Moving from one open task to another uses up time, and that time is not counted in any of the tasks: it appears neither in the estimate for the task being left nor in the estimate for the task being taken up.

The time lost to switching is what a list of tasks does not record. Each task on the list carries its own estimate, but the time spent switching between tasks belongs to none of them, so the estimates on the list leave that time out when they are added together.

Where the imbalance that workload management corrects comes from

• Invisible work. It includes answering queries, reviewing the work of colleagues and attending meetings that produce no tasks. None of it appears on any task list, yet it takes up real time. A distribution drawn up from the task list alone leaves that time out, and the person who does this work carries more than the list shows.
• Assigning work to the reliable. It happens when an urgent task goes to the person who can be counted on to get it done. Good performance is then rewarded with additional load, because the person who delivers is the one to whom the next urgent task is given.
• No room to decline. It arises when turning down a task is not an option open to the person it is given to. A refusal is an indicator that a person’s capacity is full, and where refusing is not possible, that indicator disappears. The task is accepted whatever load the person is already carrying.
• Permanent emergency. It describes a team in which everything is treated as urgent. When every task is urgent there is no priority among them, and the load that falls on each person can then be set by whoever asks most loudly rather than by any agreed order of work.

What workload management asks of a manager in practice

1. Making all of the work visible. The team’s work is brought together in one place, including the invisible work: the queries, the reviews of colleagues’ work and the meetings that produce no tasks. Work that cannot be seen cannot be distributed, so anything left out of that one place stays outside the distribution.
2. Setting a ceiling on concurrent tasks. Each person has a limit on the number of tasks open at the same time. It is a measure that can ease the feeling of being swamped without waiting for a change in the capacity available to the team. The ceiling adds no people and no hours; what it limits is how many tasks one person holds open at once, which is the concurrency element of the measure.
3. Setting priorities explicitly. Two questions are answered openly and in advance: which task is delayed when a new one comes in, and who makes that decision. The first answer fixes the order in which the work gives way to new tasks, and the second names the person who sets that order.
4. A short, regular review. At set intervals the team looks at how the work is distributed, and not only at what has been completed. A review of completion shows what has been done. A review of the distribution shows who is carrying which tasks, and whether that still matches the capacity and the time each person has.

What shows when workload management is neglected

A persistent imbalance in workload can show itself in indicators before anyone states it openly:

• A rising absenteeism rate. Absence from work increases, and the rise appears in the absenteeism rate (معدل التغيب).
• Small tasks slipping before large ones. Delays reach the minor tasks first, ahead of the major ones.
• Accumulating leave balances. Leave builds up in the balance instead of being taken.
• A search for an alternative. The person carrying the heaviest load starts looking for an alternative to the current job.

These indicators are what make an unfair distribution of work a question of retention, and not only a question of fairness.

How workload management differs from workforce planning

Workforce planning (تخطيط القوى العاملة) answers a question of capacity: how many people does the organisation need, and with what skills? Workload management answers a question of distribution: how is the work shared out among the people the team has now?

The two also differ in their time horizon. Workforce planning is a decision for the long term, while workload management is a weekly practice. Workload management takes the people the team has at present, and the capacity they bring, as its starting point.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.