How SolDevelo apps can help you avoid overburdening your employees

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It's not rare for employees to find themselves overwhelmed by a multitude of tasks and responsibilities. Being overwhelmed and overworked can lead to burnout, which is both unpleasant and long-lasting. In this case, prevention is key. It's much better to ensure burnout never happens rather than dealing with its consequences. In this article, we will show how work management apps can help you manage your employees' work and time, as well as make some parts of their job easier.

It all starts with a good plan

Proper project planning is the first step in ensuring fair workload distribution among your employees. Doing it right means considering everyone’s availability and capabilities, and setting realistic deadlines. Team Planner - Resource Planning and Capacity Planning app offers several functions that will support you in achieving that. To start with, it gives you a summary of each user's capacity by showing you the number of working days available for them, the number of tasks assigned to each user, and the total estimate of tasks assigned. This way you can easily have control over each team member’s workload and adjust your planning accordingly. 

Moreover, Team Planner offers a simultaneous edition which means you can involve your employees in the planning process - they can all work on the plan at the same time, assign tasks, and give feedback on the planning process. This way you can make sure their suggestions will be taken into account too and they can control how much workload they will have. 

You can also use the ‘Estimations’ feature to see the estimated time and effort needed for tasks in your plan. You can either display it in story points or the original estimated time. In the first case, the app will sum up all your tasks’ story points and display them at the top of the plan. In the second case, the same will happen but with time estimates of your tasks instead of story points. This feature lets you quickly realize that if, for example, your team’s average is 15 story points and your plan is already showing 21 story points, people might be overloaded and the plan needs to be altered. 

However, the assistance doesn’t end with the planning process. At the top of your plan, there's a section where you can write down your project’s goal and deadline. When you set Team Planner to show the estimates, a progress bar will appear above the plan. It will allow you to compare the goal with the progress and quickly assess if the team is on track to meet the deadline or if there’s still too much work to finish on time. Then, if needed, you can provide additional support to the team, ensuring the timely competition of the project without overloading them with work.

Proper time insight equals the right balance

Data will tell you the truth. Using a time tracking app Worklogs, you can generate detailed time reports and see clearly if anyone has been working more than average.  Numerous reporting options allow you to track time spent on specific epics, issue types, or any other issue fields. You can deepen your analysis using different custom fields, timezones, JQL filters, and user groups, and create customized time reports. This kind of insight will help you draw conclusions and implement improvements. If timesheets show employees doing overtime, especially over an extended period of time, it may signal that they are burdened with too much work. Analyzing time logs can also help you forecast the time and resources needed for future tasks. This way you will maintain a balanced workload and minimize pressure on your team. 

Tasks off your mind, but under control

You can also reduce your employees' burden by removing some additional tasks and the need to remember procedures. Keeping track of instructions, making sure all the necessary steps were taken… the activities around the actual task occupy mental space. Lucikly, they can be lifted off your employees’ shoulders with the Multiple Checklists for Jira app, freeing their minds and allowing more time for the actual, creative tasks that need their attention.

To start with, you can save your checklist as a template and then use it quickly whenever needed. From marketing campaigns to the design process, checklists have wide usage, remembering all the steps that need to be taken for you. Moreover, you can configure a checklist template to be automatically added whenever you create a new Jira issue. 

There’s no need to worry that something will be omitted, which can especially be the case for newer employees. All things to be done are written down, but that’s not all - you can set Multiple Checklists for Jira to only allow a status transition if certain conditions are met, for example, all items have been checked off. This removes the stress of having to remember multiple activities and what needs to be done within them. Also, with a clear pattern to follow, people tend to be more productive and complete tasks quicker.

Last but not least, unchecked items from your checklist can be converted to subtasks - whenever an employee feels they need help with their work, they can quickly and easily share some of it with other colleagues.

The broad waters of work management

There is no magic formula for good human resources management. Every little improvement adds up though, making a bigger difference over time. Adapt a mindset to always search for them, no matter how small they might be. Make sure to regularly question the way your company does things and how they could be done better, and soon you might find yourself on the path to improving employee satisfaction gradually. 

Summary 

Utilizing work management tools can be one of the ways to prevent overwhelming your employees. It starts with good capacity planning which can be supported by a good insight into historical time log data. Also, work management apps will let you automate routine tasks and ensure all necessary steps are, taking it off your employees’ minds. These can be the steps to improving your employees’ job satisfaction and making sure they don’t end up overworked and burnout.