Asana As Your Workload Management Tool
To accomplished our organization’s objectives, each of us works diligently to complete the various projects and tasks assigned to us. There are days when we have so much to do that we feel like we never get a break.
Burnout, depression, anxiety, and stress are just some mental health problems resulting from a heavy workload. Employees may work excessive hours because they are stressed about finishing their work. When they reach this point, productivity naturally declines and impacts everyone. This is precisely the scenario we hope to avoid.
Insights like these can serve as a wake-up call for managers at all business levels to ensure their teams are healthy enough to perform at peak levels. It’s reasonable for a manager to anticipate excellent output from their staff. It could be due to the intense rivalry in your industry or the need to meet your clientele’s needs for continued revenue growth. However, it’s in everyone’s best interest if you double-check that your teams can handle everything they’re tasked with. Keeping your team motivated and on track can be achieved in part by careful attention to their workload. Workers are a company’s most valuable resource, but they may need more time to get everything done if they’re too busy or stressed out.
In today’s modern world, some tools help you manage both work and teams. One of the modern and flexible tools in the market that you can find is Asana. It is a work management tool that ensures team members aren’t overwhelmed or underworked and projects are appropriately staffed—all in one pane.
What is the Workload feature in Asana?
This feature will assist you in determining the best person to assign a task to based on their current Workload. It helps you see what your team is up to and how much they currently have on their plates.
With Workload, you can quickly reschedule or reassign tasks in the same view to resolve conflicts and mitigate risks, allowing projects to stay on track. This feature is only available to users with business subscriptions.
A team is more productive when its members are not overburdened or underutilized, so it is essential to get the right people working on suitable projects; that’s why this tool is undoubtedly valuable to all working in an organization, especially those who are in a managerial position.
The following are features of Workload:
Workload Management
Control the workload of your team in real time. Rapidly assess everyone’s capabilities and dig deeper into specific tasks with ease.
Capacity and Planning
Put a monetary or point value on tasks so you can better gauge the time commitment and identify bottlenecks in the workload.
Resource Allocation
It’s easy to rearrange the workload by simply dragging and dropping tasks. Keep your team from tiring out and becoming unmotivated by ensuring they are constantly working on the most important tasks.
How to access Workload?
- Click Portfolio, located on the sidebar.
- Click specific Portfolio.
- Find the Workload tab and click to access.
Workload View
When you click on Workload, two columns will appear. In the left column, you can see the Assignees and the projects they are working on; in the right column, you can see the calendar table where you can see the graph, which is the tasks. Clicking on the graph will reveal the employees ’ current tasks.
Let’s assume you select the [Marketing] Creative Team portfolio. Inside that portfolio, you can view their two projects, and inside those are asks that are visible on a specific Workload.
Subtask in Workload
In addition, Workload also enables you to see the number of subtasks on your regular tasks. On Workload’s drill-down view, the number of subtasks will be displayed next to the task name. See the image above.
Do you see those numbers on the graph? Those numbers correspond to how many tasks the assignee needs to work on. You can see those numbers by hovering your mouse on the assignee.
Add effort
Workload lets you monitor and adjust your team’s combined efforts.
Workload allows you to see better the amount of work scheduled for a certain period of time by allowing you to add effort and capacity. To create a new field for tracking hours or points of effort, go to the Workload tab and select Add effort.
To edit the effort for your team:
- Click “Add Effort” to create a new field for tracking hours or points.
- Teammates should have their individual carrying capacities established and enforced. A red line in Workload indicates that team members have too much work to perform if they exceed their capacity.
After you’ve set your effort, you’ll have a clearer picture of the tasks assigned to each team member.
Now let’s look at the options available at the top of the calendar table, where you can filter or modify for better planning.
Unscheduled
When you click the Unscheduled filter, it will provide a list of unscheduled tasks.
Color
This option enables you to add or remove color on your tasks bar
Filter
This enables you to filter “by people” if you want to check the tasks of one specific person.
Zoom by Days, Weeks, Months, or Years
Click the Zoom button to view a timeline broken down by days, weeks, months, quarters, half-years, and years.
Select Today to be brought back to the present.
Do you want to modify a specific task in your Workload?
Through Workload, you and your team can change the tasks at hand. Not only that, but it facilitates teamwork and regular updates.
Click the tasks on your Workload that you wish to modify. When you click the task, a pop-up tasks form will show on your screen. You can use it to update the assignee, and the due date, add projects, dependencies, and task descriptions, create sub-tasks, provide comments or suggestions, and more
Contact us if you’re interested in this Asana feature, and we’ll show you how to use it quickly and easily. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you are already an Asana user and would like assistance upgrading from the Basic or Premium plan to the Business plan.