Earlier this year, Cayuse released The 2026 State of Grant and Research Management Benchmark Report to share the combined experiences and insights of over 700 global research professionals representing more than 500 organizations. Though some trends remained consistent with the results of the previous Benchmark Survey, other new patterns emerged in response to rapid changes and increased uncertainty around federal research funding and regulations in the United States.

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at the report’s most notable trends, new challenges, and how teams can adapt with strategies discussed in our recent webinar on growth, change, and adaptation.

Key takeaways

• Respondents experience and anticipate increased workloads while facing challenges that include resource limitations and manual processes.
• Uncertainty about future resource availability emerged as a new top concern, while some teams appear to have reverted back to manual processes despite their limitations.
• Addressing uncertainty requires providing the right tools, shaping more efficient processes, and preventing stress and burnout.
• Moving away from manual processes can help increase efficiency, resilience, and employee satisfaction.

What stayed the same

To get started, it’s worth examining the baseline state of research and grant administration in the first half of the 2020’s and the trends that haven’t changed in the past few years.

Increasing workloads

Since Cayuse’s first Benchmark Survey in 2021, respondents have consistently indicated not only that their current workloads have increased over the past year, but also that they anticipate an additional workload increase in the year ahead.

While this trend peaked in the 2022 survey, with 84% noting higher current workloads and 82% anticipating further workload increases—possibly driven by post-pandemic growth initiatives—the figures have remained in the 70% range since 2023. 

This year, 71% of respondents indicated their workload increased in the past year, while 75% expect their workload to further increase. Reasons for these high current and future workloads include growing pressure to create revenue and revenue opportunities, a more unpredictable research landscape, greater overall proposal submission volumes, and more complex proposal requirements.

Resource and process limitations

Another consistent trend that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic is the prevalence of resource limitations. As was the case in the previous Benchmark Report, staffing constraints remain the single most common challenge listed by participants. Budget constraints were the second most common resource limitation, rising by 3% since the previous survey.

Unsurprisingly, when asked why administrative activities consume so much time, a clear majority of respondents once again blamed manual processes. This fits with the second most common challenge listed in both the previous survey and this year’s survey: inefficient processes.

New developments

While workload increases, resource limitations, and inefficient, often manual processes remain common pain points for teams represented in the 2026 Benchmark Report, a few new trends emerged that are worth consideration in relation to the larger industry picture.

Uncertainty about future resources

While staffing constraints (19%) and inefficient processes (16%) remain the top challenges for research teams, a completely new challenge came in third at 15%: uncertainty about future resources.

This should not be a surprise for teams operating within or collaborating with U.S. research teams dependent on federal funding, as the presidential administration that began in January of 2025 launched initiatives to deny and withdraw funds for research broadly defined as involving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), limit indirect costs, and freeze and reduce overall available federal funding. 

For many organizations, these changes mean more difficulty planning for the future, as well as more scrutiny of project details from both funders and leadership within institutions. While in some ways this has brought more positive visibility to research activity, the new requirements and attention also mean higher workloads and more stress for administrators and researchers, especially at smaller organizations.

The speed with which these changes arrived and limbo created by ongoing legal pushback against them has left research teams with tangible losses like unexpected grant revocations and uncertainty about how to plan for future research. For now, it seems as though the industry is braced for continued turbulence at least through 2028.

Manual processes remain entrenched

Despite the fact that respondents indicated that manual tasks are by far their biggest time sink and noted a clear preference for electronic processes, especially when consolidated in a single system, the prevalence of manual workflows increased slightly in some areas of research and grant administration. Overall, 30% of all tasks included in the survey are still completed manually, as opposed to the use of vendor or homegrown software systems.

There are several potential reasons for this reversal, but the most likely relates to the new resource uncertainty introduced in early 2025. However, given respondents’ overwhelming preference for vendor technology and frustration with manual processes, it also appears likely that the trend will reverse once again as institutions move from reacting to federal uncertainty to increasing resilience in the face of change with more efficient, flexible, and reliable eRA solutions.

Overcoming today’s top challenges

To help examine the results of this year’s benchmark report and what they mean for research and grant management teams, we invited Kennesaw State University’s Rachel Kinney and the Denver Health and Hospital Authority’s Amanda Breeden for a webinar discussion on the industries biggest challenges and how to overcome them. 

While the full webinar discussion is available to watch for free, here are some of Rachel and Amanda’s biggest tips for teams facing uncertainty and looking to move away from manual processes.

Adapting to uncertainty

By their nature, the sudden and difficult to track federal changes can be very challenging to work around. However, institutions can adapt to a status quo of uncertainty by building more resilient and flexible practices while emphasizing the importance of employee wellbeing. 

Make sure everyone has the tools they need

It can be difficult to see beyond your own role or team, but adapting to uncertainty starts with making sure everyone has the tools they need to complete their work now before the unexpected makes things even more difficult.

Reach out to your teammates to discuss their workflow pain points and whether their roles would benefit from additional support resources. While extra budget won’t always be an option, you may find that issues across the team can be resolved with the adoption of a new workflow or small software upgrade. There may even be tools that your team already has, but just hasn’t been using to their full potential.

Develop more efficient processes

While you cannot predict change, you can prepare your institution by optimizing workflows to account for uncertainty or a “new normal”. Overall, you should emphasize improving your processes to facilitate easier collaboration, clear communication, and faster handoffs.

Templatizing and standardizing processes in a digital ecosystem can be an extremely helpful step towards efficiency and resilience. For example, increased attention from leadership means more frequent reporting requests, and while manually building reports can be time-consuming, setting up data flows with eRA software like the Cayuse and taking advantage of reporting software like Insights can help automate the report-building process and even provide access to dashboards with up-to-date data and metrics across the research lifecycle, saving significant time while giving leadership more detailed, accurate reports.

Make improvements one step at a time

A complete workflow overhaul is a draining process even when teams aren’t facing uncertainty or resource limitations. It helps to start small with tangible goals and make easy fixes first before moving on to more complex improvements. 

You’ll often find that a small improvement, like removing a redundant step from a workflow, can lead to huge time and effort savings down the line. Additionally, these improvements can form a more effective starting point when the time comes to make more dramatic changes, like moving workflows into a new digital platform. Ensuring your workflows are as efficient as possible before implementing a new software solution will in turn make the launch easier, eliminating the need to further review and improve processes during implementation.

Reducing stress and burnout

Uncertainty can inevitably lead to more stress and burnout for team members squeezed between higher scrutiny, fewer resources, and continuously increasing workloads. That’s why it’s essential to focus on your team’s wellbeing, ensuring that they are up to the tasks at hand and confident in their abilities.

Setting aside time for 1-on-1s with team mates can give people an opportunity to air their concerns and float solutions. Even if a problem can’t immediately be resolved, just knowing that your coworkers are aware of the issue and care about finding a solution can help reduce stress.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the stress your coworkers are feeling might not be due to traditional burnout from overwork, but instead moral injury, or burnout from feeling that the work you do is undervalued or under attack. In instances like these, process improvements and 1-on-1s can only help so much. Instead, try to focus on the good that you and your teammates can do within and outside of work: recognizing the good work of a colleague can emphasize that you are all supporting a mission together, while giving back to your community can reduce stress by making a positive, tangible difference.

Moving away from manual processes

We’ve covered plenty of the inherent issues with manual processes in this blog already—high time commitments, increased administrative burden, inconsistency, potential errors, and more—but arguing for a change to longstanding manual workflows can be a challenge in itself. While you don’t need to implement a new system by yourself overnight, the steps below can help your institution move away from manual tasks and towards more resilient processes.

Work with what you have

Odds are that you already use some electronic research management software on your team; it’s worth looking more closely at the tools and capabilities built into your existing software to see if it can be used to replace existing manual tasks. 

Start standardizing 

If your institution relies on manual processes, these workflows and processes are probably not standardized. This is a good opportunity to examine them to see what works and reshape the things that don’t. More consistency across teams will not only save time and effort, but also set you up for an easier transition to software management systems in the future.

Emphasize the pain points

Leadership may just not be aware of how much time you’re losing or how much frustration is building up from overreliance on manual processes. Documenting the pain points these manual tasks cause can help make the argument for why implementing a new management system is worth the effort. Additional tools like an ROI calculator can help estimate and illustrate the time and resource impacts of adopting eRA software.

Moving forward

While the past few years have come with new challenges for research teams, we now know that these difficulties always come with new opportunities. Seeking process improvements, building resilience, and supporting team morale can add up to a more effective team ready to face whatever new obstacles the future will bring.

As Amanda and Rachel concluded in their presentation, everything we’ve been through in the past few years has shown how resilient research administrators are; how they can rise to the challenge and support incredible work. Now more than ever, it’s worth taking a moment to breathe and appreciate our teams and how far they’ve come.