What is Administrative Burden in Research, and How Can You Reduce It?

Virtually every job has an element of administrative burden. For research professionals, this includes the ancillary tasks of reading and replying to emails, making phone calls, following up on tasks, creating or updating spreadsheets or reports, collecting signatures, managing documents, and more. Changing regulations also add an extra layer of administrative burden, where teams must constantly adjust their processes and practices to maintain compliance.

All of these tasks are important, but they can create an imbalance in workload and ultimately job dissatisfaction if not handled properly. That’s why research organizations have conducted studies to evaluate how these new and revised regulations are affecting research organizations.

This blog post will cover some of those groups and their studies, key areas that each saw as the most burdensome for research administration, and ways to assist in some of the more troublesome areas.

Administrative burden studies and findings

The National Science Board (NSB)

The NSB formed the Task Force on Administrative Burdens, which highlighted the following top-reported burdens in a report:

• Financial management
• Proposal preparation and submission
• Required reports: progress reports and others
• Effort reporting

Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB)

The FASEB conducted a survey that found several common sources of administrative burden:

• Proposal preparation and submission
• Personnel management
• Effort reporting
• Financial tracking and reporting

Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP)

The FDP conducted a survey that examined how faculty conducting research spent their time when focused on their research efforts. The survey found that time was spent on the following activities:

• 7% on active research
• 4% on proposal preparation
• 6% on post-award administration
• 6% on report preparation
• 7% on pre-award administration

Report conclusions

According to these reports, the primary overlapping areas of burden are proposal preparation and submission, and post-award activities such as creating reports, managing finances, managing personnel, and reporting effort.

The reports and surveys also found other time-consuming activities, such as compliance (humans, animals, hazardous materials, etc.), monitoring subcontracts, and the growing amount of training requirements.

Three ways to reduce administrative burden

Identifying the most common areas prone to administrative burden is just the first step. Using this information to start reducing administrative burden can help any research office regain a sense of control and improve overall job satisfaction.

It all starts with a few simple changes:

Automate processes

Manual processes take time and energy to complete. That’s just a fact. So, to reduce some of your administrative burden, it may be time to look at alternative options to automate and digitize your manual or disconnected systems.

For example, think about how long it takes to route documents for review, approval, and signatures in person or through an internal mail process. Chances are, the process is time-consuming and labor-intensive, especially when trying to meet deadlines and work around busy schedules. By digitizing some of this work, your team can house these important documents in a centralized location with easy access by required stakeholders, which in turn will shorten the time needed to route and finalize documents and reduce the stress involved in the whole process.

Automated processes and systems can also help your team manage the communication between stakeholders to ensure everyone has visibility into the current status and all details associated with a research project. Not only do these tasks take time, but they are also inherently prone to human error.

As an alternative, consider adopting a cloud-based solution, like the Cayuse Research Suite, to streamline processes, increase visibility, improve efficiency, promote better collaboration and communication, strengthen and scale your programs, and most of all, reduce the pressure and workload on you and your team. Cayuse can serve as an extension of your team, taking on some of the administrative burden so your team can focus on more important activities.

Boost team collaboration

Believe it or not, effective team collaboration can have a positive effect on your team’s ability to reduce administrative burden. When teams collaborate well together, they not only can proactively identify areas for improvement and come up with creative solutions, but also celebrate successes together and accomplish more than any one person could do on their own.

To help your team boost positive collaboration, consider trying one or more of the following ideas:

• Adopt a culture of collaboration. When everyone is encouraged and empowered to work together, the results can be truly amazing.
• Provide shared tools for better, more efficient communication. Think outside of simple email and chat tools. Yes, those are great and familiar, but there are other options to help improve efficiency and visibility with communication. For example, leveraging a research administration solution like Cayuse can help your team collaborate on various activities throughout the research lifecycle, and maintain visibility for key stakeholders, ensuring everyone has access to the same information. This visibility, in turn, promotes healthier collaboration.
• Lead by example. Collaboration starts at the top. Show your team that collaboration is important by championing open communication, making time for group discussions, and enabling your team with the tools necessary to collaborate and communicate effectively.

Block time to focus

It’s easy for smaller tasks to consume our days when we don’t have a structure in place to create boundaries. As the name suggests, this strategy involves literally blocking time on your calendar to handle specific tasks. This enables you to focus on each project or deliverable without distractions, which will help you dramatically increase productivity. There are several methodologies to time blocking, including setting aside blocks of time for a specific projects or tasks (e.g., 30 minute block to follow up on signatures for proposal documents); designating an entire day or two to focus on projects, leaving other days open for meetings and other tasks (e.g., meeting-free Monday); or setting time limits to certain activities (e.g., work on X project for 60 minutes, then you can move on to another task).

The purpose of time blocking is to help you gain control over your day. Start by identifying your priorities for the day or week. Do you have any major projects or deadlines coming up? Add time blocks into your calendar to give yourself dedicated time to complete those tasks. Overestimate how long things will take (at least to start). Next, look at your meetings. Is it possible to cluster meetings together? If so, this could help you free up time to focus on other tasks. We have all had days with meetings sprinkled throughout, making it challenging to get into a good focus state. Finally, think about when you’re the most productive. Do you find some tasks easier to complete in the morning? Great – schedule that in.

Time blocking may feel strange at first, but before long, you’ll have a great system in place. Your team will quickly adapt to these new expectations and boundaries (and they may even follow your example to take control of their day, too!).

How Cayuse can help

Research administration software significantly reduces administrative burden by automating repetitive processes, enabling better transparency and collaboration, and centralizing activities to help administrators focus on essential tasks and deadlines.

The Cayuse Research Suite is designed to ease administrative burden across the research lifecycle, and particularly in three major areas covered by the NSB, FASEB, and FDP studies:

Financial management

The Cayuse Research Suite contains two solutions designed to ease administrative burden around financial activities: Fund Finder and Fund Manager.

Fund Finder, powered by GrantForward, helps institutions and researchers identify, match, and pursue the right funding opportunities faster. Institutions using Fund Finder typically see a 20-30% increase in proposal volume, higher funding diversity, and significant time savings in opportunity search and distribution. Burden-reducing features and benefits include:

• Automated funding opportunity alerts reduce manual search time by 70-80%
• Custom search filters, saved lists, and analytics streamline internal funding campaigns
• Reduce the time spent searching multiple agency websites from hours to minutes

Fund Manager gives researchers and finance teams real-time visibility into grant spend and projections, enabling spend-to-zero performance on 75% of awards. Institutions can reallocate 0.5-1 FTE per $50M in research spend by freeing grant/central accountants and finance teams from ad-hoc data pulls. Burden-reducing features and benefits include:

• What-if forecasting supports proactive resource allocation
• Grant-friendly language and dashboards clarify financial standing without unnecessary jargon
• Visibility into encumbrances and projections means fewer spending surprises

Proposal preparation, submission, and management

The Cayuse Research Suite has two solutions that can help address administrative burden related to proposal preparation, submission, and management: Sponsored Projects and Proposals (S2S).

Sponsored Projects automates the full research project lifecycle from proposal routing through award closeout, reducing administrative burden, improving submission accuracy, and accelerating time-to-award. Burden-reducing features and benefits include:

• Automated routing, approval, and compliance workflows save 8-10 hours per proposal
• Centralized, transparent proposal records and status updates cut manual tracking times in half
• Easy proposal initiation with one button to start a new proposal, and the ability to add multiple users in a collaborative workspace

Proposals (S2S) eliminates redundant data entry and ensures accuracy for first-time federal submissions, reducing rework and last-minute errors. Burden-reducing features and benefits include:

• Autofill and smart validations reduce form completion time by up to 50% and prevent late or failed submissions, reducing compliance risks
• Sensitive language detection with 700 flagged words and combinations screened on forms and attachments
• Cross-application record linking with Sponsored Projects 4.0 means federal submissions stay linked to the internal proposal routing and award setup, providing a robust audit trail

Effort reporting

Project Effort automates federal effort certification and payroll verification, reducing audit exposure and freeing hundreds of administrative hours annually. Burden-reducing features and benefits include:

• Digital routing and approval trail cuts certification cycle time by 70%
• Easy-to-approve, automated effort sheets take minutes instead of hours
• One-click approval capacity from desktop or mobile applications

Full research lifecycle coverage

As you probably know, administrative burden extends beyond finance, proposals, and effort reporting. That’s why the Cayuse Research Suite covers all areas of research administration, including IRB, IBC, IACUC, and COI Compliance Management, Vivarium Management, and Technology Transfer.

Explore the full Cayuse Research Suite to learn more, or submit a request for information below to get in touch with a Cayuse representative.