Managing your team’s workload is more than assigning tasks, determining due dates, and chasing the deadline, which can feel very chaotic at times. It also includes helping your team do their best work without feeling stressed or burned out every day. It’s known that when your staff is happy, they are more inclined to be loyal and put their best foot forward. This goes for any business, but especially applies to gymnastics and cheer gyms, swim and music schools and dance studios.
Luckily, technology, with the help of automation, not only eases the workload but makes your team more efficient in getting things done. Let’s dive deeper into understanding workload management, what leads to workload issues, how technology can help your team manage the workload, and how Jackrabbit Class can alleviate workload issues at your youth activity center.
What is Workload Management?
Workload management is something you do naturally, whether you realize it or not. Anytime you organize responsibilities, tasks, and resources at your youth activity center – that’s workload management. The goal is to plan, distribute, and monitor responsibilities so the right people have the right amount of tasks at the right time.
When the workload is managed efficiently, the tasks are distributed evenly, goals are manageable and resources are optimized. This is the best way to bring out people’s strengths and achieve goals that are important to your youth activity center.
On the flip side, having your strongest staff members work on redundant administrative tasks is the quickest way to kill productivity, causing workload issues to arise.
What Contributes to Workload Issues?
Being able to spot workload issues before they happen is ideal. Some common causes of workload issues include:
- Ineffective planning – without a strong planning phase, there’s a risk of unclear direction, overlapping tasks, and confusion about goals and deliverables.
- Lack of resources – beyond assigning tasks to the team, your staff needs the right tools to be able to execute efficiently. When your team is spending more time completing repetitive manual tasks, they lose the option to stretch the creative and strategic parts of their role.
- Inadequate tracking – being able to track and view the progress of tasks at any given time is an essential part of successful workload management. The insight helps you find opportunities for improvement when needed.
Being proactive in identifying workload issues before they are in full force is the best way to keep your team on track to meet goals and deadlines.
How Does Technology Improve Workload Management?
Technology, in general, adds an element of automation that makes work easier and less time-consuming to complete. Beyond that, technology with automation is the perfect duo to:
- Maximize productivity
- Improve team morale
- Produce better outcomes
- Help with time management
When you think about the goals and workload of your youth activity center, a lot of it starts with the technology you use to manage your business.
Class Management Software
The core of what your business needs to function day-to-day is found in class management software. For instance, Jackrabbit Class helps you capture new family information through Online Registration, manage enrollments including waitlists and makeups, post and process tuition, manage staff schedules and hours worked, and more – all while having the ability to run reports on nearly any aspect of your program.
Class management is priceless and when you have the right one, you’ll be able to connect it to other tools and platforms your team leverages in other areas of the business.
Speaking of priceless!
Jackrabbit’s latest offering, PayPath, gives you the option to take full advantage of Jackrabbit’s core features at no cost to you. That’s right – when you opt in for PayPath, you have no monthly software bill when you pass on a nominal technology fee to all online payments made by your customers. PayPath is one of many features released so far this year. Take a peek at our 2024 Product Roadmap to see what else is coming!
Automating Processes
Automation not only saves time but it eliminates that thing we all know as human error. While we try our hardest to prevent it, automation is a much more accurate alternative. While class management software does a great job of automating tasks like posting and processing monthly tuition, there are ways you can level up automation beyond class management by connecting to Zapier.
Jackrabbit Class integrates with Zapier, making it possible to send information to another platform from Jackrabbit and vice versa so you can effectively use tools that are best suited for those tasks.
For example, you manage your pipeline of prospective customers in Active Campaign. As your prospects move through the funnel and convert to paying customers, you can simply ‘zap’ the family information (parent and student) over to Jackrabbit. This removes the need for your staff to manually enter the information that currently lives in Active Campaign over in Jackrabbit or ask the parent to complete a form with the same information you already have. The easier you make it for your customers, the easier it will be to convert them. And of course, less errors from manual entry among other tasks.
Project Management Software
Classes and enrollment are booming and payments are flowing in. But, what about the other tasks that your team is managing seasonally and regularly? Think of responsibilities like:
- Registration campaign
- Open house planning and coordination
- Automated welcome email series
- Social media content planning
- Welcome packet or gift assembly
And the list goes on!
The workload management of these tasks doesn’t really make sense in your class management software, but rather a project management tool like Trello or monday.com. The best part is, project management tools are often connected to Zapier so you can take advantage of Jackrabbit’s integration to automation create to-do’s based on particular triggers.
As we mentioned before, being able to see the workload assigned across your team and the progress is helpful for everyone involved!
Manage Team Workload with Jackrabbit Class
Workload management on top of running a youth activity center might feel a bit overwhelming at first. But the rewards far outweigh the initial efforts just from the productivity and time-saving aspects alone!
A major part of workload management is having the right class management software that can help you automate recurring tasks, run the core aspects of your business, and connect you to other tools. Having a full view of your business paired with an aerial view of your team’s workload is the best way to leverage technology and automation.
Ready to see how Jackrabbit Class can help you manage the business side effectively?
