Proper resource management is crucial to your projects—if team members are overallocated, underutilized, or assigned deliverables that don’t play to their strengths, you’re setting them up for failure.
On top of that, employees can be afraid to take time off (like PTO or sick days) because they don't want to fall behind, leading to burnout and a decline in mental health, productivity, and overall performance.
What Is Resource Management?
Resource management is the practice of planning and scheduling the people (human resources), technology, money, and other resources for a project, department, or program.
Some types of resource management activities you might perform include: resource loading, resource smoothing, resource leveling, capacity planning, and calculating utilization.
11 Reasons Resource Management Is Important
Here are some of the main benefits of resource management.
- Increases Transparency
- Minimizes Idle Time
- Increases Understanding of Resource Availability & Needs
- Reveals a True Picture of Team Member Skill Sets
- Streamlines Workflows
- Empowers More Confident Decision-Making
- Reduces Overhead Costs
- Increases Profits
- Creates a Happier, More Fulfilled Team
- Staff Projects and Programs Better
- Meets Deadlines More Efficiently
1. Increases Transparency
You'll build greater trust between you and your project team, with stakeholders, and amongst the project team members while ensuring everyone knows what's expected of them.
2. Minimizes Idle Time
Idle time significantly reduces profitability and overall productivity. While no team member can be productive 100% of the time, each person should be productive more than they're idle.
Using the right resources and scheduling procedures can make sure everyone has enough deliverables to work on.
3. Increases Understanding Of Resource Availability & Needs
Resource forecasting helps you understand what's available to your team in real-time while helping you plan for the future. When you can predict available resources moving forward, you have a better understanding of what needs to be secured, so you can budget appropriately.
4. Reveals A True Picture Of Team Member Skill Sets
This allows you to place employees where they'll be most valuable, productive, and fulfilled. It also lets you see where skill gaps exist within your team so you can hire new employees or find the right contractors to fill them.
5. Streamlines Workflows
Creating plans that help you in your quest for effectively allocating resources also helps to streamline workflows. When your team members have the information and tools they need to complete projects or tasks successfully, your project runs smoother.
Consider using robust project management software or resource management software to optimize your workflows. These programs are excellent for scheduling and tracking team member time, project financials, and deliverable deadlines through the project life cycle.
6. Empowers More Confident Decision-Making
When you understand the available project resources (and the ones you're capable of securing), you can feel more confident in your decisions. Facts, statistics, and metrics take the guesswork out of important decisions.
For example, let's say you're trying to plan two projects you know will be launched soon. These projects will be undertaken at about the same time, so they'll be using your company's resources simultaneously.
With good resource management, you'll know what employees, funds, and tools are available for that time frame.
7. Reduces Overhead Costs
Using the right resource management techniques can help reduce overhead project costs by maximizing your current resources and preventing overspending.
Remember, workers' overtime hours cost more than regular ones, and purchasing supplies or tools at the last second can sometimes be more expensive. Avoiding these two situations can reduce overhead costs.
8. Increases Profits
By reducing overhead costs and helping your project run more efficiently overall, you'll likely see an increase in profits.
If your company previously suffered from poor resource management, the profit increase can even be drastic. If your resource scheduling was okay before but needed a little work, the profit increase you see may be more gradual.
9. Creates a Happier, More Fulfilled Team
You want your team members to be happy in their roles. Stressed-out, overworked team members are more prone to burnout, which can lead to mental health issues that cause them to quit or perform poorly.
With resource management:
- You can fully staff new projects, so team members aren't overworked.
- You can provide the tools team members need to make their jobs easier.
- You can supply training and negate the risk of confusion moving forward.
10. Staff Projects and Programs Better
By better understanding project and program resource requirements and how well you meet them, you can keep them better staffed. Better-staffed projects and programs create less stressed employees and ensure deadlines are met or exceeded.
Understanding the unique skills of employees (as well as what they find challenging) is a crucial part of managing resources. Placing the right employees with the right skills makes the most of your available time.
11. Meets Deadlines More Efficiently
Having the right skill sets, tools, and supplies means deadlines are met more efficiently. For this reason, effective resource management is one of the most important parts of project planning.
Ensuring project delivery when relevant stakeholders expect it (or before) can be the difference between a successful project and a failed one. Now is the time to get started if you haven't already developed a resource management strategy that works best for your company.
What's Next?
More companies are turning to resource management software in order to handle their resources and workload and manage them effectively.