Asana Workload should help prevent burnouts

Asana has launched a new feature for its paying users, which should help to prevent burnouts. The Workload feature does this by making it easier for companies to distribute work fairly across teams and redistribute it if necessary.

Asana is a work management platform led by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. The company states that the most productive and happy teams are those who have clarity about who does what and when.

Today’s workplace has more ways to communicate and collaborate than ever before, but the majority of teams still use outdated spreadsheets and email calls to plan and manage work, says Alex Hood, Head of Product at Asana, opposite TechCrunch.

Workload

Workload has to help with this. The function provides a central overview of how much work a team can currently handle. Team members can, for example, indicate their working hours.

The function has already been tried out by various companies, including fast food chain Panera. Jenny Williams, marketing traffic manager at Panera Bread, says the company didn’t have an easy way of seeing what a team could do per week for the position.

Williams indicates with Workload that it is easy to see what the assigned tasks are and that team members can negotiate the deadline.

Many people with complaints

Asana herself also states that burnouts are a major problem. According to the company’s own research, 80 percent of the knowledge workers worldwide feel constantly overworked and close to a burnout.

According to TNO research from January, employees in the Netherlands feel more and more pressure and the number of burnout complaints is increasing, NRC wrote at the time. For example, in 2017, nearly 40% of workers said that their working week often or always places high demands on them, compared to 35% ten years earlier.

No figures are available on the actual number of burnouts in the Netherlands.