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PortugalWorkplace Productivity
Evaluation of the workload of workers
Each employee has a different workload within the company. Next, you will learn how to evaluate it individually.
Isabel García
HR Consultant
26 of February, 2025
A poor distribution of the workload can cause many problems and inconveniences for employees. One of these problems can lead to diseases, for example, chronic diseases in the hands, back, and feet. In fact, there are people who have shown that they have started to suffer from emotional disorders due to the workload at their job.
Definition of workload
The workload studies the amount of work and responsibilities that the company demands of its employees. In particular, we’re referring to physical and mental wear and tear when carrying out their job and implementing their skills to meet the goals. Although mental and physical fatigue often coexist, we must know how to differentiate them:
Mental workload
This refers to the workload where knowledge and mental skills hold a greater weight compared to the physical. Analysis, teaching, design, writing and interpretation of data, and software management are some of these jobs.
As usually happens with the physical workload, if this is disproportionate or not suitable for the employee’s profile, there will be consequences. To avoid such consequences we should ask ourselves these questions:
- Is the amount of work and its difficulty suitable for the worker?
- Does the employee have enough time to accomplish them?
- Is the employee’s profile ideal for developing the responsibilities assigned to him?
- Is he dealing with health or personal issues that directly affect his performance at work?
- How is his emotional health?
Physical workload
This workload gathers tasks in which physical demands are above the mental. We are referring to, for example, a cleaning worker or a laborer.
However, when the workload is disproportionate, it can also affect an individual who spends a lot of time in front of a computer. This situation could reach a point where he presents physical discomforts such as:
- Poor posture during their workday.
- Too much time in the same position, causing fatigue and muscle tension.
- Poor ergonomics in the workplace.
- Unusual physical efforts.
How to evaluate workloads?
- Establish the purpose of the study and how to carry it out. A theoretical model should be determined in this step that must be linked with the focus that we want to make in our company. Here we can use two: the qualitative and quantitative approach.
- Qualitative approach (aimed at service companies). In this case, companies don’t want to mass produce a product, but provide services or produce something intangible. Here it’s not useful to time how long it takes. Instead, we should consider models that assess how long it takes employees to carry out their duties.
- Quantitative approach (aimed at production companies). It’s useful if the company needs to know the time it takes an employee to carry out a specific activity. This allows the company to standardize that time in other parts of the production, thus creating a model of processes and time.
- Communication. In this second step, you should communicate and explain the project to your employees. That is, notify them of the goals you wish to achieve, you can also invite them to join the committee to evaluate workload. In this way, they will be part of this process at all times.
- Listen to the employees to collect data. Use different tools to know the opinion of your employees. Through meetings you can know the perception of each one within the work area. You can also interview, conduct labor surveys, accompany activities, and others to collect valuable information.
- Interpretation of the collected data. At this point, you should answer the following questions: Is there an overload of work? What activities consume the most time of the employee? How can the time be optimized?
- Apply the improvements. Try to design some solutions for the problems found and try to optimize the processes in the company.
Assessment of workload
The assessment of workload is carried out to measure if the employees are fulfilling the assigned tasks and the times for each one of them. It should be noted that each task should be defined according to the philosophy of the company. As soon as the assignment and follow-up of the workload have been managed, it is time to assess how each employee’s performance was.
In this sense, it is essential to avoid biases that condition the measurement and review of the worker’s performance. This is avoided through a performance evaluation system, which is designed and focused according to the interests of the company.
This type of evaluations and more can be obtained and applied through a specialized HR software like Sesame. It’s a human resources computer program that allows you to optimize and automate a large number of tasks.
The performance evaluation works to gather practical and specific information about the distribution of workloads. It also objectively evaluates the performance of each worker.
It can be adjusted according to the type of management model being applied to recognize if a worker is busy, to explore how they manage assigned tasks, if they are surpassed according to their abilities, etc.
At the same time, this process works to design and develop a plan of work incentives. This will help you motivate the entire team and think about a career plan for each worker. On the other hand, this will also help you retain talent within your company efficiently. This and more are benefits that you will obtain when you properly manage each employee’s workload.
Need help?
I'm Marcos López, HR consultant at Sesame HR. Book a meeting with my team to help you.