The ways to strike balance between work and life present challenges for many in the academic and research sectors. Which have an increasingly demanding environment due to the amount of complex work the staff does. When the workload of faculty and staff is unbalanced, stress, frustration, and conflicts occur. It can result in productivity issues and missed schedules. Also, academics report less time for research due to increasing administrative burdens and teaching loads. The reasons are already enough to start talking about improving workload management. But what exactly is workload management & why is it essential to improve the staff’s efficiency? So in the following article, we are going to discuss how to increase employee productivity in 2022. Also how to manage all workloads properly.
Workload management is assigning and distributing the work equally among the employees and ensuring they have enough time to perform them.
Best Ways to Increase Employee Productivity in 2022
Often academic institutions face a challenge in managing Faculty, staff, and students so that they can interact with one another in the most effective way. Balancing projects, tasks, assignments, deadlines, lectures, research, administration… all of it can get overwhelming in no time at all, so bad management is the result of an unbalanced workload between faculty and staff. If the staff is overworked and overwhelmed, they might find it difficult to complete the assigned tasks. Hence, to increase employee productivity is very important for efficiency. Here are a few tips to improve staff’s workload efficiency.
1. Prioritize work
Taking time to plan tasks and activities and organizing them by the level of importance at the beginning of each workday is of paramount importance as it gives you a clear idea of what all needs to be done throughout the day.
2. Estimate tasks and set achievable deadlines
Setting an estimate for each task, defining the start and end date, naming your tasks, giving them proper descriptions, and putting them under a specific milestone are all crucial for increasing the staff’s efficiency. Also planning the work schedule intelligently and setting achievable realistic deadlines, no project will be hanging by the thread as you’ll have more visibility and control over your workflow, making sure not to overload or underload yourself.
3. Avoid multitasking
The human brain is not wired to do several things at the same time, at least don’t expect them to be done well. If you observe people who choose to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously aren’t doing any of them any justice and not producing the best results. Workload management requires a sharp focus, while multitasking can push you into prioritizing urgency over relevance and importance. It is quite hard to avoid multitasking, but whenever you can stay away from it-Focus on the task at hand, and take things one at a time. You’ll have more satisfaction than trying to grab everything at once.
4. Make to-do lists and break down the tasks into subtasks
Splitting the bigger and more important tasks into smaller chunks of subtasks, not only helps in completing the tasks on time but also increases your productivity and does not over-exhaust you. When you split your tasks into subtasks it will be easier to manage your workflow in case you need to reschedule something or have some part of task execution start earlier.
Making to-do lists is one of the most important workload management tips, honestly who doesn’t like to check the boxes next to the tasks you have completed? One can make a to-do list which helps in reducing the anxiety and stress of employees. Also, by bringing some order into your workflow and tricking your brain into thinking the task has already been completed. So it’s easier to focus and prioritize more on the important activities.
5. Share administrative tasks
The academic staff has been defined in specific roles with primary emphasis placed on teaching & research and secondary on service& administration. Due to the increasing burden of administrative workloads staff can barely spend any time on research. Admin work is considered a silent killer for productiveness, without any reason. Doing repetitive tasks manually and spending much time collecting data doesn’t just waste your time, but can also introduce human error and hurt your productivity. So we can find new techniques which can automate the work and can save time.
When administrative tasks are out of the way, you can focus on key operations and other primary importance tasks at hand. Why waste time on administrative work when the system can do it better for you? There are many online software and tools available to make your work easy and save you a ton of time.
An effective workload management plan ensures equity, accountability, transparency, and flexibility. It is also a fast and easy way to analyze whether faculty members are spending time on activities that are actually part of their ultimate mission/vision. By following some of these simple tips, you can find ways to manage faculty’s workload and improve their efficiency. You can read more such articles in the Blog section.