We’re now 3/4 into 2025, and resource management has never been more complex, or more critical, to get right. This new report offers a directional snapshot of how teams are approaching it today: where they’re confident, where they’re under pressure, and what they’re prioritizing for the year ahead.
We collected 500+ answers via a series of LinkedIn polls on our page (sample sizes varied from 20-125 per question). The data below will give you insight into common challenges, priorities, and behaviors across teams—and here is a sneak peek at some key findings:
- 63% of respondents believe the biggest challenge in resourcing is managing people and talent
- Workload imbalances cause productivity loss for at least 40% of teams
- Almost 50% picked having a shared schedule as crucial to effective workload management
<highlight>Get a downloadable .pdf version of this report here. </highlight>
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63% of respondents think people are the hardest part of a project to manage
63% of respondents said people are the hardest part of a project to manage. Managing people means managing more than tasks: it’s about staying ahead of changing availability, competing priorities, and shifting workloads.
Our POV: you can’t manage what you can’t see. Delivering the best client work starts with understanding team capacity. When you know who’s overloaded and who’s underused, you can plan more sustainably.
Float tip: track utilization to keep workloads balanced. Float’s Reports show how busy your team is, week by week, person by person. Spot who is over capacity and rebalance workloads before burnout hits.
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Workload imbalances are a productivity killer for 40% of teams
40% of respondents declared that an unbalanced workload is the #1 productivity blocker. What crushes performance? Not long hours or training gaps—just the reality of being overworked at times, and underutilized at others.
Our POV: visibility into capacity is your competitive edge. It’s how you protect your people and your margins. Knowing who has room (and who doesn’t) keeps your work moving and your people thriving.
Float tip:with Float’s Schedule, you can balance work based on real-time availability, not gut feel. That way, you can always see who’s at risk of burnout and who’s got bandwidth for more.
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Jacquie Ford
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Former Head of Consumer Operations at News Corp
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Capacity is critical for understanding your resourcing needs. Understanding capacity means you’re going to be on the front foot when you need to either scale up or down based on volume and forecasts.
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Considering talent needs is key to effective planning
It’s unanimous: people-first planning isn’t optional, it’s expected. When you factor in people’s needs and interests, you don’t just balance workloads: you make better choices about who’s right for the work at hand.
Our POV: empathy is a strategy. Planning with context is how you avoid burnout, boost retention, and hit your delivery goals—because when people feel seen, they stay engaged and perform at their best.
Float tip: use Tags to add skills tags to every team member, listing their individual strengths and specialties to make staffing smarter and faster. With Tags, you’re not just filling a role: you’re always assigning the best-fit for the job.
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Comfort Agemo
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Sr. Capacity Manager at Scholz and Friends
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If you filter in Float, you can learn a little bit more about your colleagues than if you were just looking in the Excel list. You can see what project they are working on and learn more about their profession and skills.
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52% see ‘clear scope’ as an underrated performance lever
52% of respondents say a clear scope beats clarity, chemistry, and leadership support—and indeed, you can’t deliver what you don’t understand. Without a clear scope, teams can’t plan effectively or work efficiently. A clear scope sets the stage for success from day one.
Our POV: when the scope is solid, the rest will follow. Great collaboration, productivity, and team chemistry all start with knowing what’s expected. That’s when teams can focus on doing great work, together.
Float tip: scope work in Float’s Project view, which helps you define what needs to happen, when, and with which resources—so every project starts on solid ground.
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Resource management happens everywhere (PS: that’s not a good thing)
We asked where people manage their resources. The top answer? All of the above. Your brain, spreadsheets, dedicated resource management software: teams are still juggling them all.
Our POV: scattered resourcing leads to misalignment. Resource management needs a single source of truth. When data is scattered, visibility breaks down—and so does trust in the plan.
Float tip: pick a dedicated resource management tool (like Float 👋 ) and connect your stack to keep workflows in sync. Once your projects and people are in Float, use our integrations or API to keep resourcing data flowing and your schedules aligned.
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Andrew Barden
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Sr. Director of Delivery Operations at Instrument
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Our HRIS pushes employees into Float automatically every night and their PTO. Because of the open API, Float really is the central resource for understanding availability holistically across the company.
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Almost 50% see ‘a shared schedule’ as crucial to manage workloads
44% of respondents picked a shared schedule a the key to solid workload management. When everyone’s working from the same plan, it’s easier to assign the right work, prevent overload, and adapt in real time.
Our POV: planning is a team sport. Resource managers lead the process, but everyone needs visibility to play their part. Shared schedules bring clarity to every level, without extra meetings or handoffs.
Float tip: make your shared schedule even smarter with custom Views. Filter by team, role, department (whatever matters most) then save and share that view with others. It’s the easiest way to give everyone the visibility they need, without the noise they don’t.
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Leah Zeis
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Former Executive Director at BuzzFeed
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We love the sorting and filtering options and being able to build and save our favorite schedule views. We weren’t able to do that in our last software, so the custom Views for us has been an added bonus with Float.
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Spotting risks early is the estimation superpower of 57% of respondents
The majority of teams declare their key strength to be risk awareness. The ability to see what might go wrong helps keep timelines intact and keep people and projects on track.
Our POV: estimates are future-proofing. When you build with risk in mind, your plan is both smarter and sturdier. Real estimates account for what might go wrong, not just what should go right.
Float tip: use Estimates to price projects right from the start. Pricing projects can often feel like educated guesswork—but you can use Float to estimate the resource plan and the bottom line upfront.
