13 Best Workload Management Tools for Teams in 2024
Your team’s productivity is largely determined by how efficiently you allocate workload, and this is especially true when you have to balance multiple projects and priorities at the same time.
When employees are overburdened due to unbalanced workloads, deadlines are missed, overall team performance suffers, and employees feel burned out—7 out of 10 people feel burned out at work.
For your team to maintain peak performance, you must have a strategy for allocating resources to the right projects and tasks at the right time.
This is where workload management tools come into play.
These tools help you organize and oversee projects, tasks, employee workloads, and more. They come with features that allow you to assign and prioritize your most important tasks, create dependencies, and view progress on projects at a glance. So, today, we’ll explore 13 of the best workload management tools for teams in 2023.
Best Workload Management Tools for Teams
1. Monday.com
Best Overall Workload Management Tool.
Unless you’re a Luddite or troglodyte with a taste for punishment, you surely find managing workloads with spreadsheets as incredibly frustrating as the next person.
Staying efficient in today’s hyper-accelerated world requires much more sophisticated tools than the humble vanilla spreadsheet.
And that’s where Monday.com comes in.
Monday.com is equipped with tools to help you track every conceivable metric related to the performance of each of your team members, including time worked, resources used, revenue generated, and much more.
Being able to track your team’s performance with such granular detail means that you can identify and preempt patterns that could lead to burnout in your employees.
With Monday.com’s time tracking tools, you can measure how long it takes your team to complete common tasks and find ways to optimize your workload accordingly.
The resource management tools allow you to deploy your resources in the most efficient ways and avoid cost overruns.
The platform also boasts collaboration tools that help you bring your entire team together on a single platform. There are features for file sharing, video conferencing, instant messaging, notifications, tagging, and so on.
Centralizing communication like this brings all your data into a single source of truth, eliminates silos between departments, and increases organizational transparency.
You can even add context to your tasks by adding comments to each item. And you can brainstorm ideas in real-time with your team.
There’s also the option to set permission levels so that only the necessary eyes see sensitive information. The platform offers native integrations with over 40 other tools, including Slack, Dropbox, and Google Calendar.
To ensure that nothing slips through the cracks, Monday.com provides different ways to visualize your workload and distribute work more intelligently, with views like Gantt charts, Timeline View, Map View, and Calendar View.
Pricing
- 3 Work Boards
- 2 Team Members
- Unlimited Docs
- 500 MB Storage
- 200+ Project Templates
- Unlimited Boards
- Unlimited Team Members
- Unlimited Viewers
- 5 GB Storage
- 1-Week Activity Log
- Calendar, Timeline, Map Views
- 250 Actions for Automations
- 250 Actions for Integrations
- 20 GB Storage
- 6-Month Activity Log
- Unlimited Guest Access
- 25000 Actions for Automations
- 25000 Actions for Integrations
- 100 GB Storage
- 1-Year Activity Log
- Dedicated Customer Agent
- 250000 Automations
- 250000 Actions for Integrations
- Enterprise Analytics
Find out more Monday pricing or Monday review
Monday.com offers a free forever plan for 2 users and a 14-day free trial. Then pricing starts at $8 monthly per user with a 3-user minimum.
Pros
- Provides a comprehensive collection of helpful templates that are ready-to-use
- Highly customizable and can be tailored to suit practically any workflow
- Updates are regular and frequent
- Provides ongoing learning opportunities to teach users how to get the best out of the system
Cons
- No spreadsheet view
- No native scrum management
- The timeline view is a bit basic and might not be appropriate for people managing complex projects with many tasks and many dependencies for whom the timeline view is critical
2. ClickUp
Best Overall Free Workload Management Tool.
ClickUp’s Workload View allows you to plan and monitor your team's work capacity. This feature allows you to visualize your team's capacity and helps you to allocate resources most efficiently.
It is available on ClickUp’s free forever plan—although it can only be used 100 times on this plan. You get more uses on the Business and Enterprise plans and can see effort tools for other groups, as well as customize capacity per day.
The platform measures capacity in many different ways, including by Hours, which is the amount of time each person has available; Tasks, which is how many tasks each person can perform in a day; Points, which is used in systems like Scrum to size tasks relatively; and Custom Fields.
The Workload View also compares how much work has been assigned to each person on a day-by-day basis with their pre-set capacity.
As such, you can immediately tell who’s overburdened and at risk of burnout and redistribute work to those with unused capacity.
Finally, you can assign tasks to multiple people and group tasks.
Pricing
- 24/7 Support
- 100 Automations/Month
- Built-in Time Tracking
- Kanban & Calendar View
- 100 MB Storage
- Live Chat Support
- 1000 Automations/Month
- Guest Access Control
- Unlimited Map & Gantt Views
- Unlimited Storage
- Unlimited Dashboards
- 10000 Advanced Automations/Month
- Unlimited Teams
- Timesheets Integration
- Unlimited Timeline Uses
- Priority Customer Service
- 25000 Pro Automations/Mo
- Unlimited Subtasks in Multiple Lists
- API calls: 1000/Minute
- Custom Capacity for Workload
Find out more ClickUp pricing or ClickUp review
ClickUp offers both a free trial and a very generous free account. Then pricing starts at a remarkably affordable $5 monthly per user.
Pros
- The free plan supports unlimited users
- The entry plan is relatively inexpensive
- Supports application management
Cons
- No budget tracking/job costing features
- Does not support activity management/planning
- No ad-hoc reporting and data visualization features
3. Teamwork
Excellent Workload Management Tool for Agencies and Other Organizations That Work With Multiple Clients.
Teamwork’s Workload feature helps you to maximize team resources. It gives you a quick overview of the capacity of each team member, allowing you to quickly reassign tasks, manage projects more effectively, and ensure that you deliver projects on schedule and within budget.
In real-time, you can manage your team’s resources, get a clear picture of everyone’s capacity at a glance, and easily get additional details about tasks.
The platform helps you avoid bottlenecks, ensuring that your projects have enough resources to meet their deadlines and the flexibility to shift priorities as changes occur.
It also provides powerful insights via its reporting features. These insights allow you to see which team members are overloaded or at capacity and which can take on more work.
You can easily reprioritize and re-assign work based on changes to deadlines and priorities, and adding resources to projects is as simple as drag-and-drop.
Teamwork also helps you assess your team’s capacity at any given time so you can make informed decisions about project delivery timelines and gauge whether you have the capacity to take on new projects or clients.
Agencies will also find Teamwork useful for managing workload across multiple client projects.
Pricing
- 5 Users
- Different Project Views
- 2 Project Templates
- Time Tracking & Dashboards
- 2 Projects & 100 MB Storage
- Customer Support
- Gantt Filtering
- 10 Project Templates
- 500 Automations/Month
- 100 Projects & 50 GB Storage
- Unlimited Client Access
- 3 Custom Fields
- 20 Project Templates
- 1000 Automations/Month
- 300 Projects & 100 GB Storage
- Project Budgeting
- Unlimited Custom Fields
- 50 Project Templates
- 2000 Automations/Month
- Workdown Capacity
Find out more Teamwork pricing
There’s a 30-day free trial and a free forever plan. Then pricing starts at $6.5 monthly per person.
Pros
- Excellent for employees who have some experience with project management tools
- New features are added regularly
Cons
- There’s no support for file imports
4. Wrike
Top-of-the-Line Work Management Tool With Impressive Resource Management Features.
Wrike’s new Workload view takes the guesswork out of workload management, giving you much-needed insights into which of your team members might be overburdened and which might be available to take on more work.
This fully-interactive feature allows you to optimize your team’s schedule with a drag-and-drop interface. As with Wrike’s Gantt charts, you simply move tasks around and edit them as you like.
And when you add any new assignments or make any changes to schedules, your team is immediately alerted via the Activity Stream and email notifications.
It is intuitive, very easy to use, and can be used to plan your resources, adjust workloads for team members, or create an entirely new project schedule from scratch.
In addition to giving managers the tools they need to balance their teams’ workloads, Wrike also boasts many other features that give them the visibility and flexibility they need to optimize performance and manage their operating expenditures better than ever.
With its resource allocation tools, you can easily distribute task hours and minutes independently from task duration so that team members know what they should be working on and when.
You can also visualize work assigned at the individual level and adjust task hours, duration, required effort, and assignees in real-time as you see fit. Or you can assign tasks from your backlogs whenever your team is available to take on more projects.
Re-prioritizing tasks is also a breeze with Wrike’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface; you can move projects forward and reduce unexpected operating expenses, even when situations change.
Wrike also offers customizable reports and views—which include Gantt charts and Table View—giving you enhanced visibility that allows you to improve your resource planning and utilization in the future.
Pricing
- Unlimited Users
- AI-Powered Processes
- Custom Work Views
- Different Project Templates
- Available in 8 Languages
- 2-25 Users*
- 2 GB Storage/User
- Custom Fields & Workflows
- Project Dashboards
- Calendar and Gantt Chart Views
- 5-200 Users*
- 5 GB Storage/User
- 200 Automations/User
- Enhanced Collaboration
- Resource Management Features
Find out more Wrike pricing
Wrike has a free version and pricing starts at $9.80 monthly per user.
Pros
- Allows you to customize processes for your organization
- Allows you to work from any location
- Provides documentation of processes and decisions for project and employee management
Cons
- Reviewing HTML emails in Wrike is not possible through the app. You have to use a web browser
- Due dates cannot be set at the collaborator level
5. Smartsheet
Spreadsheet-Based Workload Management Tool.
Smartsheet’s Resource Management feature helps you to effectively manage the who, what, and when of your projects. It helps to build the ideal team for projects, keep project schedules and budgets on track, and forecast resource needs.
You can visualize the capacity utilization of each team member, find the best person for each task, and reduce the overall cost of your projects. The platform lets you import an employee or collaborator’s roster from any spreadsheet file.
You can add clients and their projects in a structured way and build elaborate schedules for the tasks of a project by assigning resources from the roster. There’s a simple slider via which you can set hours, time frames, etc.
Your team members can track their time in different formats like itemized hours, minutes, and 1/2 days. There’s also a robust Analytics Page that pulls data and metrics from across your projects so that you can filter and group that data into insightful reports.
There are features for project budgeting (which allows you to compare planned versus actual hours spent on projects so that you keep projects within budget), portfolio management, and time tracking.
Pricing
- 1 User + 2 Editors
- 2 Project Sheets
- 500 MB File Storage
- Several Project Views
- 100 Automations per Month
- 10 Users + 10 Paid Editors
- Unlimited Project Sheets
- 20 GB File Storage
- Unlimited Reports
- 250 Automations per Month
- Unlimited Users & Free Editors
- Activity Log
- Proofing Support
- Easy-to-Use Document Builder
- Unlimited Automations
Find out more Smartsheet pricing
Smartsheet offers a 30-day free trial. It is divided into three tiers of service: Pro, Business, and Enterprise. Pricing starts at $7 monthly per user with a 3-user minimum.
Pros
- The spreadsheet-based interface means a shallow learning curve for teams upgrading from project management in spreadsheets
- Offers streamlined internal communication that makes sharing information across different teams easy
- The easy-to-use dashboard gives a comprehensive view of projects across the entire business
Cons
- No free plan
- The platform is seriously lacking on the integration front
6. Scoro
Amazing Workload Management Software That Handles All Your Business Needs.
Scoro easily stands out as one of the most comprehensive workload management solutions, with a combination of project management, reporting, and billing features on one platform.
This all-in-one work management software helps you handle your entire project portfolio with ease. Its customizable views let you visualize work progress, avoid overlapping, prioritize assignments, and set deadlines.
Coupled with these are project and task management tools that not only monitor project timelines, view project budget but also go as far as monitoring all planned activities that contribute to the completion of your projects.
You are also able to sort out and allocate billable and non-billable work, ensuring that employees are properly remunerated for completed projects and clients are billed accurately for the time spent on each project.
You can also manage your project portfolio with configurable statuses and tags and this is one feature that places Scoro ahead of so many other work management tools.
The Scoro Planner helps you to schedule work, assign tasks, and it gives an instant visual representation of each team member’s workload.
Users can also schedule meetings with a shared team calendar, and attach events to individual projects and customers.
Some other features of Scoro’s include individual task lists, time tracking, easy invoice creation from tracked time, and detailed work reports.
In addition to all this, Scoro also provides integration with multiple third-party applications.
Pricing
- Kanban-Like Boards
- Task Lists
- 1 GB Storage
- Customizable Dashboards
- Gantt Charts
- Project Templates
- 3 GB Storage
- Phases & Milestones
- 20 Custom Fields
- Timesheet View
- 5 GB Storage
- Task Management
Find out more Scoro pricing
Scoro’s pricing is divided into four payment tiers: Essential, Work Hub, Sales Hub, and Ultimate.
The Essential plan goes for $26 per user per month with a minimum of 5 users while the Ultimate plan is their customized payment plan.
This work management software also provides a 14-day free trial to new users.
Pros
- It is an all-in-one work management solution
- Great for and professional or creative service provider
- Excellent at tracking quotes and orders
Cons
- Sending emails with Scoro is complicated and can easily get lost
- Might be difficult for beginners to understand
7. Asana
Easy-to-Use Software That Wraps Work Management in a Modern and Flexible Design.
In regards to simplicity, ease of use, and a Kanban-style user interface, Asana easily outperforms other work management tools.
Despite being packed with a ton of useful features, Asana only takes a few minutes to startup. This work management software was created to help businesses focus on productive tasks.
Its Focus Mode breaks projects down to tasks and subtasks, sorts out assignments by name and deadline, and tracks projects progress. You can easily upload a file, either from your local device, Dropbox, Google, or Box, for each project.
Another benefit of Asana is that all projects, tasks, and subtasks will be included in the Activity Feed, which helps you tag team members who will need to use this information.
Asana is also equipped with a powerful search filter that helps you find tasks easily and even lets you tag them as a favorite so you don't lose sight of them.
With its highly customizable dashboards, the progress for each task can be followed separately, and the status of each participant can be seen.
Its dashboard can be used for group conversations since this is where notifications first appear. The dashboard can also be used to monitor leads, customer queries, and job applicants.
Asana’s Smart Inbox gives you a place to handle all of your business’ communication without the need for third-party apps and services.
This feature will be beneficial to large enterprises who will appreciate the fact that project communication is neatly stored, with no risk of missing updates as can be the case with email inboxes.
Asana also provides some of the best views in the industry. You get a prioritization list that provides automated notifications. Naturally, you get to decide which are the most important and pending tasks, picking them from the outstanding Asana Calendar.
Pricing
- Unlimited Projects & Tasks
- Unlimited Storage & Logs
- 100+ Free Integrations
- Status Updates
- Calendar View
- Unlimited Dashboards
- Workflow Builder
- Task Dependencies
- Task Templates
- Timeline & Milestones
- Workload Management
- Advanced Reports
- Built-in Time Tracking
- Create Custom Rules
- Premium Integrations
Find out more Asana pricing
With a free account that accommodates up to 15 team members and a 30-day free trial, Asana is a work management tool that is worth a shot.
The paid accounts are divided into Premium and Business accounts. The Premium account is priced at $10.99 per user per month while the Business account goes for $24.99 per user per month.
Both paid accounts are billed annually.
Pros
- An amazing free account
- Its interface is flexible, modern, and very fast
- Offers a long list of useful features
Cons
- It's not the best for graphic intensive work
8. Jira
Best Work Management Solution for Agile Teams.
Jira Work Management combines some of the best features and functionalities required for agile software development teams to effectively manage their work together.
The List view is one of the features it offers. It lets you visualize work at the issue level from a single place, and helps with work editing and management. This feature also allows inline editing.
Another amazing feature of this workload management software is its Calendar view. This is one of the elements that helps administer tasks on a month-to-month basis and is ideal for visualizing your delivery dates.
Its Timeline view includes some form of Gantt chart that includes information about team members that have been assigned to a task and the status of said task.
With this view, you can plan and establish the dependencies for large projects. These projects may span periods over one month.
As one of the most favored functions of Jira, Forms helps you create drag-and-drop forms with which you can collect information from different teams to ensure better coordination within the work progress.
The platform also offers 23 project templates that cover the most common project types. This shaves time off the start of every project and helps you get started immediately without having to worry about configuration.
All the templates come with their own configurations, custom fields, permissions, workflows, and issue types.
In addition to all this, Jira also includes a dynamic dashboard, a long list of automations, and reporting features that distinguish it from the pack of work planning tools.
Pricing
Jira provides a 7-day free trial with a free account that can handle up to 10 users.
Pricing begins at $7.50 monthly per user. There are two additional paid accounts, Premium and Enterprise.
Pros
- Highly customizable
- Provides a wide range of third-party integrations
- Useful for all types of users, even those that are not tech-oriented
Cons
- Not the best mobile application
- Reports are not reusable
- The user interface can be confusing
9. Proofhub
Work Management Tool That Centralizes Communication for Teams
ProofHub provides teams and organizations with a central place where they can easily collaborate on projects and tasks. You will be able to view up-to-date information whenever you may need it through its real-time reporting tools.
With ProofHub, you can track project status, work progress, and information about projects and resources. It also helps with the clarity of work and assignments and even lets you set up recurring tasks so you never miss them.
ProofHub recently allowed the inclusion of subscribers to each stage in a workflow, so that only the people assigned to work on a particular stage will have access to the workflow.
A team’s success depends largely on how effective their tool for communication is. With ProofHub’s communication tools, you and your team members will be able to communicate with each other in real-time, making sure that nothing is overlooked.
Discussion tools allow teams to share their ideas using files and documents attachment in just one place. It replaces lengthy, onsite meetings with online collaboration where users can write comments, using the Mention tool, and proof designs.
In addition, users can comment on discussions via email without logging in to ProofHub through the Email-in feature. You can also drag-and-drop images to upload them to chats and comments.
ProofHub combines file sharing and document storage for its users. It also includes time tracking, reporting, and invoicing features. Currently, there are multiple timers for when you might have to work on multiple tasks at the same time and still have to track the time for each.
You can start, pause, and stop the timers when moving from one task to another and then log in your time entries on the timesheet.
In regards to reporting, ProofHub helps its users make custom reports in addition to the default reports. Custom reports allow users to attach factors and details that they can pick on their own.
Pricing
ProofHub has a 14-day free trial. There is no per-user fee and the pricing starts at $45 at a flat-rate monthly, billed annually. This plan supports 40 projects, unlimited users, and 15GB of file storage.
Pros
- Very easy to set up
- Pricing is relatively cheap
- Great for discussing visual materials
Cons
- Lacks budgeting tools
- Loads slowly sometimes
10. Trello
Best Kanban Style Work Management Tool.
Marketed as an inexpensive web-based, Kanban-style work management tool, Trello is specifically tailored for small and medium-sized teams.
Trello provides an easy-to-use, cloud-based digital board that supports work visibility.
It might be known for its Kanban interface, but it has additional views that provide teams with more ways and perspectives for viewing their projects across different phases.
With its timeline view, you can see how all the parts of a project fit together over time. You also get an interactive interface that lets you add or change start and end dates or group cards by list, label, or team member to show workload or dependencies.
For projects that cut across boards, teams can use the Table view to provide a comfortable spreadsheet-style list that they can also sort through and filter.
The Calendar view shows a monthly perspective and an easy way to change the start and due dates with drag-and-drop ease. The map view organizes locations on cards and visualizes that information on a map in one click.
Trello Cards stand as the work or tasks that you can sort, label, and move across several work stages. You can carry out different functions such as adding members, checklists, due dates, and file attachments.
Trello links all information across multiple devices, be it a desktop, tablet, or mobile device. So, no matter where you are, you can collaborate with the remaining members of the team from anywhere, from any device.
The AI chatbot Butler provides built-in automation to all users, automating repeatable tasks to help teams save time and effort.
Pricing
Trello offers a free trial and also has a free account for individuals and small-sized teams.
There are three paid accounts: Standard, Premium, and Enterprise. The Standard plan goes for $5 per user per month and this is billed annually.
Pros
- It is mobile-friendly
- Comes with a user-friendly interface
- Amazing Kanban system
Cons
- You can't use it without internet access
- Limited file storage
- It does not do well with large projects
11. nTask
Flexible Work Management Tool That Provides Unbeatable Task Management Features.
nTask is a clever work management software that enhances collaboration, management, proper planning, and analysis of your team’s daily tasks.
One of the most popular features of nTask is that it comes with an unlimited supply of Kanban boards. You will experience an immediate increase in the efficiency of your team’s work with Kanban Boards.
Assigning tasks to your fellow team members is also much quicker. You can easily integrate in-built templates into your project on Kanban Boards.
This feature helps you track time, which is particularly helpful when assigning tasks and assignments to co-workers.
Apart from featuring its Kanban boards that help in planning out a project till its completion, nTask also helps you manage all your resources.
It helps summarize and handle the finances of your project as well, which in turn allows you to focus on the task at hand.
Depending on your preference, you can view your to-do list either in a list view, grid view, or even in a calendar view. The Calendar view will help you keep track of the due date, and help you sort out multiple assignees.
The Gantt chart function tells you where you started on your project and how far you've gone. Side by side, you can set task dependencies by using the “drag-and-drop” function of the software.
Finally, you can use Gantt charts to track your project budget and expenses so dealing with all those annoying numbers will become a thing of the past.
nTask helps you communicate easily by allowing you to hold group calls and chats. You can also invite a bulk of new members and offer each member their workspace.
You can boost time management by inputting billable and nonbillable information on nTask’s timesheet. This tool will send notifications to clients when a project or payment is due.
All you have to do is create a time entry for the task at hand, and this will automatically set up a timer on the software.
Pricing
- Unlimited Projects
- Gantt & Kanban View
- Subtasks & Dependencies
- 5GB Storage
- Custom Fields
- Risk Tracking
- Priority Support
- 10GB Storage
Not only does nTask offer a free trial but this work management tool also comes with a basic free forever plan.
It has three payment tiers which are: Premium, Business, and Enterprise. The Premium and Business plans go for $3 and $8 respectively while the Enterprise plan is customized.
Pros
- You can access most of its features for free
- Exceptional for time tracking
- Improves productivity and transparency with its task management features
Cons
- The calendar view is hard to configure
- Not the best customer service
12. Basecamp
Best Work Management Tool for Effective Communication.
Basecamp is a work management application that lets people work together and communicate effectively with one another. You can use it to keep track of all the tasks, deadlines, files, discussions, and announcements that affect your work.
The to-do list features help you to create to-do lists for all the work you need to do. You can assign a task to a team member, and add a due date and other necessary details. The software will automatically follow up on overdue tasks.
These team members are notified about new tasks with the Notifications tool. They can view tasks from multiple projects together on one screen. Thus, anyone can quickly see the progress of the projects.
Basecamp’s collaboration tool makes communication easy when handling tasks or sharing new ideas about the project. Using the Message Board feature, conversations are easily arranged within each project.
You can customize your post types, attach images or files into the message, react to messages or comments, and share with everyone or a few team members. You single place to keep up with everything without having to switch between multiple apps.
Basecamp helps keep everyone on the same page with a single location that covers messages, files, to-dos, and timelines.
All projects include a schedule that displays outdated tasks and events. A document and files page helps store all documents, files, and images for every project.
It also has Campfire, which is a tool for real-time group chatting, client access, exclusive Hill Charts, Pings or direct messages, reports, and a powerful search. You can customize every project and pick only the tools you will need.
Pricing
Unlike other work management tools, Basecamp does not offer several payment tiers or prices per user. This work management software provides a single payment plan for $99 monthly for unlimited users, projects, and 500GB of storage space.
There is a 30-day free trial while Basecamp Personal is free but limited. It covers 3 projects and is ideal for students and freelancers that cannot afford its paid plan.
Pros
- Great customer service
- It is easy to learn and use
- Offers a ton of integrations
- Pricing Is reasonable
Cons
- There is no time tracking feature
- Chat management is limited
- Limited customization available
- There are no tags or labels
13. Slack
Work Management Tool That Creates Channels for Team Collaboration.
Slack is a work management tool that helps you to set a channel for your team. You can either create one channel per department or a single channel for the whole team, depending on how you want to use it.
The platform also allows team members to communicate in one-on-one conversation threads within the same channel.
Its automation feature lets you automate most of your tasks using its inventory of programmable functions and IFTTT features. It acts like Siri or Cortana, but it offers reminders just through notifications instead of offering voice-based apps.
Slack also includes to-do lists and task management features. Instead of creating separate to-dos, you can create them in a Slack group so all members of the team can see them and work on them accordingly.
The task management feature comes with a star that helps highlight important chat strings.
Discussion can be turned into a thread just by clicking on it and commenting. The threads can have several discussions. The good thing about threads is that only people who are a part of that thread get the notifications whenever a new message is uploaded.
The tasks around project management can be very cumbersome, but Slack comes with features that help with managing most of them. It allows team members to share files easily through their desktops or a cloud storage system.
Team leaders in Slack can easily integrate tracking applications to their slack channels with just a single click. Applications you can add to the Slack channel include Workstreams, Asana, Trello, and multiple others.
For example, if you add Asana to your Slack channel, the app will help you to add projects to the chat string, assign a team member to it, add or change deadlines.
Finally, Slack provides a clean, clutter-free design to easily organize all these projects. It comes with multi-window operations in a single thread so all your services and tools remain in the same place, which makes it easier to move ahead with the projects.
Pricing
Much like several other work management tools, Slack provides a free trial and also includes a well-equipped free account.
It comes with 3 paid accounts: Pro, Business+, and Enterprise Grid. Its Pro plan is priced at $6.67 per user per month.
Pros
- Easy to set up
- Onboarding is really simple
- Great for easy collaboration
Cons
- Video conferencing quality is not the best
- It slows down when used heavily
- Notifications are sometimes delayed
Key Features of Workload Management Software Tools
As any manager knows, managing your team’s workload is far from straightforward. You might have a distributed team working across different time zones. Or you might have a diverse team with members having varying skill levels and availability.
In any case, some of the activities involved in managing your team’s workload include scheduling and coordinating tasks, responsibilities, and dependencies over time; monitoring and tracking tasks to make sure that deadlines are met; tracking and managing time to expose potential bottlenecks; allocating resources in the most efficient way possible; and managing finances to correlate work with revenue generated to optimize your practices.
The best workload management tools will have features to help you with all these functions and make workload management a breeze. Ideally, you want software that is available on the go and that offers customer service anytime you need it.
Let’s take a look at some of these key features.
1. Task Planning, Prioritization, and Scheduling
You’ll want a workload management system that allows you to break your work down into simpler tasks that can be more easily managed.
You’ll also want the option to organize and prioritize your tasks. This way, you can complete the most urgent tasks first and speed up the execution of the most critical papers of the project.
A good workload management system should also come with scheduling features as task planning is not complete without scheduling. You’ll want something that sends out notifications and reminders, too.
2. Time and Task Tracking
Without task tracking, it can be difficult to keep track of all the tasks done, especially in larger projects. The best workload management systems will help you see which projects have yet to be started, which are underway, and which have been completed.
You’ll also be able to search and filter tasks by any of these criteria.
Tracking time for each activity is also another important function. Time tracking allows you to measure the time spent on each task so that you can evaluate whether a task is worth the time invested in it and find ways to optimize for time efficiency.
3. Reporting
In workload management, you need a way to monitor, observe, and visualize team members’ capacities versus their responsibilities so that you can regulate their workload and avoid project delays and employee burnout.
A good workload management system will give you ample reporting tools that help you keep an eye on this crucial detail.
4. Third-Party Integrations
No team operates with a single team. In fact, the average team uses as many as 137 different apps, according to Blissfully. Imagine having to manually move data between apps every time you need to switch. That would be hellish, to say the least.
You want all your software to be able to talk to one another. Ideally, you should go for a system that aggregates and centralizes all these tools into a single location.
Frequently Asked Questions
Workload management tools are software systems that help managers to distribute workload between team members in a balanced way. They help ensure that no team member is overloaded, and they provide a place to view upcoming timelines for everyone’s tasks in one place.
Workload management includes figuring out your team’s workload and capacity, allocating resources and breaking down individual workloads, prioritizing tasks, and rebalancing workloads to ensure that no one resource is overloaded while others are underutilized.
Prices for workload management software vary widely. On one end of the spectrum, there are free options like ClickUp, and on the other end, there are more expensive options like Basecamp that cost an all-inclusive $99 per month.
There are many ways to manage high workloads, including delegating low-return tasks, prioritizing tasks, setting realistic timeframes and deadlines, scheduling regular breaks, and avoiding multitasking as much as possible.
Choosing the Right Workload Management Tool
The right workload management tool will streamline time-consuming tasks and help you to plan your workload efficiently so that your projects move forward as they should.
Investing in workload management software will not only improve your workflow management but also pay off in terms of greater success with your projects. It’s more than worth its weight in gold.
These are our recommendations:
- You simply can’t go wrong with Monday.com when it comes to workload management; it has all the project and workload management features you’ll ever need and much more.
- Although ClickUp’s Workload View is limited to only 100 uses on the free plan, it might still be your best bet if you want a free workload management system.
- Agencies will be hard-pressed to find a better option than Teamwork.
- Wrike might just offer the best resource management features of the bunch.
- Smartsheet is an excellent option that combines the power of an advanced project management system with the familiarity of spreadsheets.