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Task management is one of the main activities within a company that involves several actions in order to achieve a desired goal.
In this sense, it can be said that it’s essential for aligning the team with the organization demands, avoiding multitasking and taking advantage of collaborators’ main skills.
When effectively executed, it guarantees more productivity for the business, since each team member knows exactly what is expected of him.
If you want to learn more about task management, you came to the right place. We will dig deeper into the topic, as well as the main types of task management and the best way to implement it in your company. Keep reading!
You may also be interested in this article about the Eisenhower Matrix, for better prioritizing and managing tasks.
Is the management of actions performed by employees focused on ensuring more standardization, productivity, control and speed in the execution of company processes in order to maximize business profit.
By adopting the automation of activities in your management, you reduce your team’s overload. Thus, they work happier, which contributes to improved productivity and results.
In addition, this is a way to bring out the best from each employee, delegating activities that are more compatible with their skills.
Check out 6 top task management tips:
The person responsible for managing tasks has a very important role within the company, since he’s in charge of:
One of the roles of the task manager is to delegate activities to each member of his team. They need to be careful not to overload anyone when distributing tasks.Therefore, the manager doesn’t just assign roles, but instead finds the right aptitude of each employee to get the best out of them. Besides, the task manager needs to set deadlines and track productivity.
Determining priorities is essential so that the employee doesn’t waste time with useless tasks. To avoid this, you must prioritize the most important activities within the department.
By identifying all functions and delegating them based on priorities, it’s possible to get the best out of each employee, increasing your team’s productivity and delivering better results in less time.
Monitoring the execution of tasks is essential for achieving results. In addition, it allows the manager to provide all the necessary support for his team. Basically, you need to:
When these functions are well performed, employees will see you as an authority on the subject, respecting you and working to achieve the goals.
Read also:
To ensure effective task management, it’s necessary to follow a methodology or technique that guides managers in all the activities. The main ones are:
GTD stands for Getting Things Done. This method foresees the completion of activities in four stages: collect, process, review and do.
Therefore, the collaborator needs to complete each of the steps before moving on to the next one. This is an effective way to not disperse when performing an activity.
The Kanban system is one of the most well-known methods where the manager organizes the visual boards considering the workflows in progress.
See the definition of Kanban:
That is, each board represents a stage of activity in the project and has a person responsible for performing it. For example, consider producing a blog article.
Imagine that there are three boards in this system: content production, content review, content publication. Each of them will have a responsible person, that is, someone will produce, another will correct and a third one will publish the article.
Through this method, you can see if the producer’s delivery was made on time, as well as the reviewer and the person responsible for the publication. In a company, this system facilitates the visualization of activities, as well as those responsible for them. The Trello tool is a good example of Kanban.
This is a very unusual technique that consists of celebrating the achievements of the day. In this case, they are divided into three categories:
As this method encourages the celebration of achievements, it ensures more productivity for the team, keeping it always motivated to achieve results.
This is a technique that organizes daily tasks based on time tags such as 15 minutes, half an hour, one hour, three hours and six hours.
Before starting production, the activities are distributed in each of the tags according to the time they will take to complete. In this way, when there is some spare time between appointments, a pre-tagged task is allocated.
This method starts the night before performing the tasks. A sheet of paper is divided into three equal parts from top to bottom.
The first part describes the three main goals for the month, the second, the main objectives for the week and the third the activities performed throughout the day.
By having clarity on larger objectives, upcoming goals and activities to be performed, it’s easier to guarantee priorities and improve the productivity of your business.
Another way to prioritize tasks is using the GUT Matrix. Do you want to know how to do it? Check out this post:
How to use the GUT process prioritization matrix?
For effective task management you need to find the best method for your business. There are several ways to do it; remembering that human, technical and organizational aspects must be reconciled within the project.
However, there are 4 main steps to guarantee a successful implementation:
The first step to successful task management is to be clear about everything that needs to be done. To achieve this, the manager must list all the activities involved in the process.
This improves understanding of the most urgent activities, those with a looser deadline and those that are still in the planning phase.
A proper categorization allows to delegate functions to the entire team easily, prioritizing urgent tasks and those that are behind schedule.
Once categorized, activities need to be organized. In this phase you can break the larger tasks into smaller parts to systematize the progress of each step.
This makes the process clearer, since each person knows exactly which step they are going to perform, and the manager knows which people will be in charge of each part.
There’s no way to think about efficient tasks execution without setting deadlines. Therefore, each task needs to have a time limit to be delivered.
This makes work easier for both the manager and the employees, because collaborators will know exactly when to finish activities, and the manager will know if there has been a delay or if everything is proceeding in accordance with the plan.
For task management to really work, it needs to be clearly communicated to the entire team. Therefore, after categorizing and organizing tasks and once deadlines are established, it’s necessary to show the team how it should be performed.
A successful team understands the organization’s management and works to achieve the objectives. Realize that communication is as important as the previous steps.
As we’ve seen, task management helps to organize the activities of a company so that managers are more efficient in monitoring them. This brings numerous benefits such as:
It’s more than proven that the more specialized a professional is within an organization, the more productive they will be. Doing a little bit of everything, makes employees very busy but unproductive.
Therefore, task management collaborates to optimize productivity, since functions are delegated according to each employee’s skills.
This facilitates skills’ improvement for collaborators and allows managers to allocate human capital the best way possible. The result is a constant increase in performance.
Another benefit provided by task management is the prioritization of activities. Since needs are categorized, there’s no risk for a not urgent task to be prioritized.
This avoids delays and loss of customers. As a result, the company’s image is reinforced, the employees’ quality of life increases, and the company gains efficiency in its management.
An important advantage of applying task management is that deadlines are met more easily. First, because there is a prioritization of activities, and second, because there’s more clarity in communication.
In addition, it avoids disorganization and overload on employees, since activities are organized in a more realistic way, preventing frustration in meeting deadlines.
When there is more organization, everyone knows what to do and what not to do, and communication improves substantially. That is, everyone knows what their duties are and what their colleagues’ roles are.
In this sense, the manager doesn’t ask an employee for an activity that is not his job to perform, and collaborators can talk to their coworkers if somebody is delaying a service that could compromise their work.
Organizing and prioritizing tasks can be facilitated using the Eisenhower Matrix. Read this post to learn more about this methodology.
For effective task management, it’s necessary to create indicators that assess your team’s productivity level. This allows the manager to better understand the level of commitment of each collaborator. The main indicators are:
In addition, the manager creates and monitors indicators related to the achievement of goals. For example, if each employee’s individual goal is to deliver X amount per day, he evaluates whether or not they were met.
Creating and monitoring metrics is essential to achieve the objectives settled by the company within the established period.
With technological advancement, the choice of an internal communication system is essential for prioritizing and organizing the activities performed by each employee.
After all, the system allows the manager to have more clarity in visualizing the activities of each employee, better understanding where the bottlenecks in their department are.
It’s worth mentioning that an effective system enables the generation and monitoring of indicators that provide relevant information for business decision making.
STRATWs One is an internal communication system that helps with task management, creating customized reports and connecting them directly with the information sources.
Thereby, you’ll be more accurate at tracking information, standardizing results meetings, and creating tasks and action plans for each employee.
As it is a cloud system, the implementation process is very simple and the cost of maintenance, as well as ownership, is very competitive in the market. Like it? Then schedule a free demo:
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