Research: Alleviating Workload Stress

[JoeTice]

Description

We are seeing recurring feedback from team members feeling overextended or working at '110%'. We need to understand the specifics of these feelings in order to hope to devise strategies for mitigating the stress factors. This task involves creating a research plan, collecting and analyzing data, and presenting the findings.

Tasks

• [ ] Design Research Plan
  • [ ] Define the objectives and methodology
  • [ ] Create questionnaires or interview templates
  • [ ] Identify the participants
• [ ] Conduct Research
  • [ ] Conduct surveys (producing quantitative data)
  • [ ] Interview team members (producing qualitative data)
• [ ] Analyze Data
  • [ ] Categorize feedback into broad areas of concern
  • [ ] Determine the frequency and severity of each issue
• [ ] Report Findings
  • [ ] Draft a summary report
  • [ ] Present the findings to the team and leadership

Acceptance Criteria

• [ ] A comprehensive research plan has been created and executed
• [ ] The data collected has been analyzed and a report has been drafted
• [ ] The findings have been presented to the team and leadership for action

Theoretical Focus Areas

Based on preliminary feedback and reflections, the research will focus on the following potential stress factors:

1. Context Switching: The impact of shifting between different tasks, roles, and teams.
2. Community of Practice (COP) vs Project Work: Balancing these responsibilities.
3. Support Rotation: Short-term (T2) and long-term (T1) support roles.
4. Team Transitions: Challenges when transitioning between teams.
5. Urgent Reallocation: Stress related to being suddenly moved due to urgent needs.
6. Career Progression: Opportunities for growth amidst team switching.
7. Meeting Overload: Review the necessity of in-person meetings, advocate for async communication.
8. Last-Minute Involvement: Unexpected pulls into internal meetings/projects.

Please note that these areas are initial assumptions, and the actual research might reveal additional or different areas of concern.

[JoeTice]

Discussed with Naomi beginning to put a research plan into this to get a deeper understanding of team member feelings in this.

[naomimarcussen]

@JoeTice Here is a draft of the research plan. Please review and comment :)