9 Workload Management Strategies to Balance Team Capacity

Workload management is the process of assigning projects and tasks across your team based on capacity, skills, and priorities.

The goal is to maximize team members’ billable availability and experience levels, keeping them in a 70-80% utilization range.

If you give team members too much work, they’re prone to burnout and making mistakes while rushing to meet deadlines. And underutilized staff become disengaged and represent lost opportunities to bring in revenue. 

For example, instead of giving three urgent projects to one experienced designer, you would distribute them among available team members with relevant skills.

By balancing workloads and using team skill sets and project priorities to guide your staffing choices, you prevent bottlenecks, protect your margins, and keep clients and team members happy. 

Benefits of better workload management

Effective workload management replaces a haphazard “whoever’s free, takes it” approach. This method prevents quality issues from mismatched assignments and keeps workloads balanced across your team.

Here are three ways thoughtful workload management pays off:

• Better work quality: When your team has enough time and space to focus, they’re less likely to rush through work and make costly mistakes. 
• Less team burnout and turnover: The Society for Human Resource Management notes that burnt-out staff “are nearly three times more likely to be actively searching for another job.” Balancing workloads is key for retention and protects you from the costs and disruption connected to replacing staff.
• More accurate project timelines: When you distribute work across your team based on their skills and actual availability, you can set realistic timelines. This helps you avoid last-minute issues like overbooked team members, emergency reassignments, rushed work, and missed deadlines.

Workload management strategies to balance your team’s capacity

The key to workload management is balancing three critical factors: your team members’ capacity, their specific skills, and your project deadlines—all while being ready to redistribute work when unexpected challenges arise.

Use our tips to balance assignments, keep projects on track, and keep your team engaged in enough billable work to maintain your margins:

1. Clearly define the scope of every project

A structured project scope sets the foundation for team assignments. This way, you’ll know exactly which roles you’ll need to get the job done. And can make sure you have enough coverage so there are no last-minute staffing scrambles. 

A clear outline also helps prevent costly scope creep and overservicing.

Create one by using a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), where you list out the phases, deliverables, timelines, and responsibilities upfront.

For example, for a website redesign, your WBS might look like this: 

Deliverable	Tasks	Timeline
User research report	• Create user personas • Conduct competitor analysis • Gather client requirements • Define site architecture	Week one to two
Wireframe package	• Develop page layouts • Create user flows • Design navigation structure • Client review and feedback	Week three to four
Design suite	• Create style guide • Design homepage mockup • Design inner page templates • Develop responsive layouts	Week five to seven
Functional website	• Set up development environment • Code front-end components • Implement CMS integration • Test cross-browser compatibility	Week seven to nine
Approved final site	• Conduct usability testing • Perform QA review • Fix identified bugs • Final client approval	Week 10

Once you’re finished, review your WBS with your team and client to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

2. Forecast your team’s workload

Use resource forecasting to predict your team’s future bandwidth based on their current schedules, deadlines, and incoming work.

This way, you can anticipate potential bottlenecks and resource shortages and have time to redistribute work or hire additional resources (like freelancers).

The basics of this capacity planning include:

• Reviewing team utilization rates
• Mapping out upcoming project timelines (including buffers)
• Identifying and resolving potential resource conflicts

Use Scoro’s “Bookings” module for easy capacity planning. 

This color-coded calendar gives a clear view of your team’s schedule: 

• Green for current bookings
• Red for overbooking
• White space for available capacity
• Yellow corners for leave time
• Solid backgrounds indicate fixed bookings (confirmed work)
• Striped backgrounds show tentative bookings (unconfirmed work)

Separating fixed and tentative bookings lets you test scheduling scenarios and see their real-time impact on team capacity before finalizing commitments.

Imagine you receive a request for an emergency website fix from a valued client. Due to a security vulnerability, they need it completed within 48 hours. Using the Bookings module, you could instantly visualize your team’s availability.

The calendar view shows your security specialist is in training sessions all week (blocked in green), your backend developer has partial availability (white), and your QA tester has completely open availability (white). 

With this immediate visibility, you could propose an alternative timeline, hire a contractor, or redistribute existing assignments to accommodate the request.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 

3. Use a project prioritization framework

Not all projects carry the same weight. Without a clear prioritization system, your team risks spreading itself too thin. Or focusing on low-value work that doesn’t contribute much to revenue or business growth.

Use a project prioritization framework that evaluates work based on two areas: importance (profit potential, client and industry value, internal impact) and urgency (deadlines and time sensitivity).

This way, you can help your team spend their time strategically. So they can concentrate on the highest-value work first rather than trying to tackle everything all at once.

To quickly assess projects and tasks, categorize work into four quadrants:

• High urgency & high importance: Critical client work with tight deadlines
• High importance & low urgency: Strategic projects with flexible timelines
• High urgency & low importance: Time-sensitive tasks with minimal long-term value
• Low urgency & low importance: Low-priority projects  to defer or decline or even internal admin tasks like document organization

Use Scoro’s “Pipeline” view to track all potential projects in one place.

Prioritize incoming work by customizing fields to track both urgency (deadline proximity) and importance factors (e.g., potential revenue, strategic client value, team development opportunities). 

Identify which projects need immediate attention, which you can schedule for later, and which you might need to decline—all before work begins and you book team members.

4. Track utilization levels

Aim to keep your team’s billable utilization between 70-80%. This range shows that they’re spending most of their time on revenue-generating work without leading them to burnout. And keeps them from getting disengaged.

And monitor how much time they’re spending on non-billable tasks. So you can protect your margins and find ways to cut down those hours, like reducing meetings or switching to a professional services automation (PSA) tool.

Case in point:

After implementing Scoro, creative consultancy Butcher & Gundersen saved 240 hours per month—three full workdays per person—boosting efficiency by 50%.

Keep info on your team’s hours accurate by having them use one of Scoro’s three time-tracking options: 

• Real-time tracking: Start a stopwatch from the quick actions menu or “Tasks” view for precise tracking
• Retrospective logging: Log time manually in the “Tasks” view or “Timesheet” after completing tasks
• Automatic tracking: Convert past calendar events into time entries 

Then, head to the “Utilization” report to review their logged hours and utilization rates.

Filter the data to show only billable tasks and activity types for a clear view of your team’s revenue-generating capacity. You can also toggle to display only non-billable activities when you need to assess administrative workloads.

The color-coded heatmap highlights workload imbalances: 

• Green for billable hours within total capacity
• Red for overutilization
• White space for available billable time

Use these insights to quickly redistribute tasks if some team members have extra room while others are overbooked. 

Say your senior designer is at 103% capacity while your junior designer is at 73%. Shifting some tasks to the junior designer will prevent burnout, speed up project delivery, and make sure more billable hours are spent on high-value work—ultimately improving profitability.

5. Factor in career goals, interests, and skills when assigning work

Beyond utilization rates, consider your team members’ skills, interests, and career goals in your staffing decisions.

Why?

This way, you can train employees to handle more complex work, strengthening your bench without having to hire more people. And a Gallup research study found that work from engaged employees had “32% fewer quality defects” than work from disengaged staff.

On the flip side, disengaged employees cost you. In another 2023 Gallup study, the organization found that “not engaged or actively disengaged employees accounted for approximately $1.9 trillion in lost productivity” in the United States.

Use resource management tools and your own knowledge of your team to align work with your team’s strengths and goals. Consider individual bandwidth and past performance on similar tasks.

Then, use Scoro’s “Quote builder” to start building your team in advance. 

1. Add your deliverables to the left. If you’ve already uploaded your services into the product database, Scoro will automatically update the prices and units
2. Assign specific in-house and outsourced roles with estimated hours for each task on the right
3. Scoro will automatically estimate project costs based on predefined role rates, helping you plan your budget before work begins

6. Create a reliable freelance roster

No one wants to scramble to get last-minute freelancer coverage.

Avoid delays and quality issues by putting together a list of trusted freelancers in advance. This way, when workloads spike, you know who you can turn to. And you can prevent burnout on your in-house team.

Use these tips to build a solid freelancer roster:

• Expand your network through industry referrals
• Track their performance with internal ratings for each project 
• Create a searchable database that includes each freelancer’s contact info, specialty areas, rates, availability, and project history
• Set clear agreements on rates and payment terms upfront

Standardize vetting with portfolio reviews and skill assessments.

Once you have your freelancer line-up, head to Scoro’s “Bookings” module to see if outsourcing is needed (i.e., when team members are above 80% capacity or in the red). 

This way, you can reach out for additional help before delays, burnout, and quality issues happen.

7. Track project progress in real-time

Real-time project tracking helps you spot workload issues early and rebalance them before they derail your projects, such as running into more complicated work than planned or longer client revisions.

If you’re using disjointed systems, staying on top of your team’s workloads is harder.

Scoro’s Harv Nagra experienced this frustration in a previous role, as he explains in “The Handbook” podcast:

Skip the headaches and use Scoro’s live Gantt chart. This interactive project management timeline automatically updates as work progresses. So you can quickly spot bottlenecks and adjust workloads before there’s missed deadlines.

The red line shows the current date, while completed tasks appear grayed out with checkmarks.

Hover over any task to see time spent versus time remaining—a key insight for balancing workloads.

For instance, if a designer spends 12 hours on an eight-hour task and is still only halfway done, something isn’t working. You’d know to check in and take action, whether reassigning work or bringing on another team member to help finish it.

8. Implement time-blocking techniques

As Quatalog research notes, constant task-switching kills productivity and can also cause fatigue.

Instead, help your team focus by time-blocking: structuring their day into dedicated periods for deep work, meetings, and breaks.

Try these approaches:

• Designate meeting-free days (like Scoro’s “No-Meeting Wednesdays”)
• Use 90-minute blocks to support your team’s natural ultradian rhythm—the brain’s cycle of peak performance and recovery that typically runs for 90 minutes before declining
• Leave buffer time between tasks for unexpected issues

For longer tasks that don’t fit into standard time blocks, Scoro’s “Planner” offers flexible scheduling options that promote deep work:

• Automatically fill available time slots while preserving designated focus periods
• Distribute work evenly across multiple days to maintain consistent work rhythms
• Prioritize critical tasks by fitting them into your blocked schedule (with the option to allow overtime when truly necessary)

9. Automate repetitive processes

Automating workflows frees up your team to focus more on revenue-generating work while reducing errors and delays.

Just look at Cross Media. By switching to Scoro, the agency freed up 20% more time in their schedules—letting them handle an extra 400 projects per year without increasing headcount.

Streamline activities like client onboarding, reporting, or approval processes using Scoro’s pre-built integrations or through Zapier.

With Zapier, you can design capabilities like:

• Creating Scoro tasks from new Gmail emails with specific labels
• Adding new Typeform or Google Form submissions as contacts in Scoro
• Generating Scoro invoices when deals reach specific stages in your CRM

You can also use Scoro’s “Task bundles” to further streamline project planning. These let you create templated sets of tasks for common types of work, such as “Client Onboarding” or “Social media management.”

Balance your team’s workload for sustainable success

Managing workloads is an ongoing process that requires regular adjustments as projects shift and teams evolve.

With the right workload management strategies, you can prevent burnout and disengagement, protect your margins, and ensure steady project progress.

Scoro’s comprehensive workload management tool gives you the visibility and control you need to scale your brand.

UK-based creative agency Brandality is a perfect example. After implementing Scoro, they:

• Increased efficiency by 100%
• Increased billable utilization by 50%
• Saved each team member five hours a week

Want similar results? Try Scoro for free and see how we can help you boost productivity, prevent burnout, and hit your target margins.