7 Tips To Enhance Workflow Management To Improve Productivity

Workflow management plays a crucial role in meeting deadlines and increasing productivity. Whether you run a startup, SME, or a large enterprise, your operations should be highly efficient, and proper workflow management makes it possible.

However, managing workflow is quite a task and you need to remain alert every time. Here are some of the useful steps you can take to enhance workflow management and increase productivity.

1. Be Organized

It all starts with making a to-do list for daily tasks. A proper to-do list can make your workflow more organized and streamlined. You can either use a simple task planner or a robust task management software to make a to-do list. This list can help you set priorities and delegate responsibility to your team.

2. Set Priority

The key to improving productivity remains in the manager’s capability of setting the priority of tasks. It is imperative to separate important tasks from urgent ones to streamline the workflow. Productivity tends to suffer because of the inability to prioritize day-to-day tasks. It is the manager’s responsibility to distinguish between urgent and important tasks while assigning them to employees as per their skills. However, task management software can help them balance the time between these two types.

3. One Task at a Time

What makes the manager’s job difficult is the fact that almost all tasks demand their attention at once. It makes delegation of tasks cumbersome, and at times, it results in a complete mess. Therefore, it is essential to focus on each and every task separately and motivate employees to accomplish it in the same way. The task management software can show the real-time status of every task and you can assign other tasks to employees based on this status.

4. Measure Productivity

It is fair to mention that it is impossible to determine whether your workflow is streamlining properly without comparing various metrics. It is, therefore, essential to take steps for measuring the productivity of your employees in terms of taking time to accomplish various tasks. The customized task management tool can show the performance of every employee in real-time.

Managers can see who is working on which projects and how many tasks have been accomplished on an interactive dashboard. It helps them measure the productivity of employees. It also makes employees more productive and efficient as their performance is viewed closely.

Also Read- How to Manage Your Workload Using a Task Management Tool

5. Improve Delegation

When it comes to delegating responsibility, as an entrepreneur or a project manager, you need to consider the productivity of your employees. It happens when you give your workers more responsibility, their productivity improves. It is because your employees have a feeling of ownership over projects and they put more effort. Here, you can utilize the task management software. It can give you the entire data of the employee’s efficiency, past work history, and overall productivity for particular tasks. You can delegate more responsibilities to employees based on this data.

6. Opt for Automation

Workflow automation is a buzzword in the corporate sector and advanced task management tools can help companies bring automation into the workflow. These tools streamline the processes while reducing paperwork. It can save hours in coordinating and communicating between multiple individuals. Also, workflow automation can enhance the efficiency of your employees. You can get rid of extensive paperwork and save big on resources and effort.

7. Remove Miscommunication

The biggest hurdle in the way of smooth workflow management is miscommunication. Therefore, it is necessary to improve communication in the team. Thanks to the advanced project management software, all the team members can easily stay connected to each other and collaborate for achieving a common goal. You can also improve communication with the help of a cloud-based system that facilitates your employees to share necessary documents in real-time and in a secure way. Also, it is better to focus on improving the company’s culture and establish strong relationships among workers.

Concluding Lines

It is necessary to streamline workflows to meet the deadlines and increase the productivity of your employees. We have covered all the necessary aspects to enhance workflow management in these seven useful tips. You can count on TaskOPad for managing workflow and tasks. What’s more, you can generate reports and track the progress of your team in real-time to ensure the growth of your business.

Originally published at https://www.taskopad.com on November 27, 2020.

The 6 Causes of Professional Burnout And How To Avoid Them With Task Management Software

 

When the fog of burnout engulfs your employees, they feel annoyed, unaccomplished, and unappreciated. These days, burnout has become a buzzword in the corporate sector, and working professionals often face this situation amidst a busy and challenging schedule. Employee burnout is a bigger threat for modern enterprises because it is responsible for up to 50% of the company’s annual workforce turnover.

Let’s understand the top factors that lead to burnout and figure out ways to address them. But before digging deep into the causes of burnout, here is an introduction to the term employee burnout.

What is Employee Burnout?

Back in 1970, Herbert Freudenberger, an American psychologist coined the term burnout for describing the outcomes of severe stress and high ideals in busy professionals who remain ready to sacrifice their needs to help others. As per Freudenberger’s definition, ‘burnout is a state of mental and physical exhaustion caused by one’s professional life.’

Though burnout can affect anyone- idealists, stressed out careerists, perfectionists, success-driven celebrities, or overworked employees. However, here, we keep the scope of burnout limited to overburdened employees and discuss the top factors contributing to burnout.

Top Factors that Cause Burnout among Employees

1. Lack of Planning Leads to Heavy Workload

First things first. When employees have a workload that matches their capability, they can easily and effectively get the work done on time. They can also find time for professional growth and recreation. But, when your employees feel overloaded, all these opportunities remain non-existent for them.

You can address the stress of workload by focusing on three key areas- planning, prioritizing, and performing. A task management app can come in handy when you are trying to address these three areas effectively. Companies can also opt for some proactive measures to reduce the employee’s workload, thereby reducing the feelings of burnout.

2. No Tracking of Contribution Results in Lack of Rewards

Employees work for money, but it is not their only goal. Extrinsic and intrinsic rewards can play a vital role in making the job interesting for your employees. When rewards do not match the amount of effort and time they put in, chances are high that employees get frustrated and they feel stressed.

The task management software can show you every team member’s contribution in real-time. You can motivate your high-performing team members with more positive feedback or rewards to keep them productive and efficient in the current work environment.

3. Improper Task Allocation Brings Lack of Control

Many times, employees feel that they have limited access to resources and they are not entitled to make decisions. This can gradually take a toll on their professional life. At times, priorities keep on shifting within the workplace so employees can never get ahead or you, as an entrepreneur, could not find resources that can effectively perform various tasks.

In such a situation, a task management app remains handy. You can easily allocate tasks to your employees as per their liking and capability. It gives them a feeling of involvement in various projects and your employees never get the sense of lack of control.

Also Read- The Importance of Task Management Software for Businesses

4. Biased Approach and Lack of Fair Treatment

Now, keep yourself in the employee’s shoes and find the answer to the following questions-

• Do you get an appreciation for your contributions?
• Do other individuals get praised for your work?
• Does an individual get regular extensions in deadline and access to additional resources?

If an answer to any of these questions is in ‘Yes’, then there is a serious issue known as a lack of fairness. At times, seniors or managers are unaware of their biases and employees need to draw their attention toward this issue.

5. Conflict of Values between Employees and Company

There may be a disconnect between your core values and the same of your organization. Companies tend to mention or highlight their mission statements and core values on websites and marketing collateral. But, when it comes to implement them, only a few companies can go ahead. The conflict between the employee’s values and the company’s values can be a potential reason for the employee’s burnout.

6. Lack of Community or Departmental Support

It is a fact that we cannot choose our colleagues and clients, but we can improve the work culture. All we need to ask them how their day is going and listen to them carefully, or we can just send them an email containing appreciation of their presentation. It is fair to mention that burnout can be contagious and therefore, as a manager, you need to shift the morale of the group to elevate the engagement of employees. None of your employees should ever feel that they do not get support from the community. Otherwise, they may consider a job change.

Concluding Lines

Burnout goes beyond the feeling of tiredness. It is a complex and multifaceted issue that needs a robust and accurate solution. Hope these six sources of burnout and their solutions will help you address this issue effectively. Finally, a feature-rich task management tool can assist your employees to get rid of burnout by motivating them to make changes in their work style.

Originally Published On: https://www.taskopad.com/blog/six-causes-of-professional-burnout-how-to-avoid-them/

How To Manage Your Workload With a Task Management App?

Delegating work, managing workload, and accomplishing tasks play a crucial role in ensuring your company’s success amid growing competition. As a team leader or a manager, you need to keep all team members motivated, focused, and productive. To achieve this goal, you need to divide your team’s workload in a fair manner. In other words, it is your responsibility to balance your team’s workload.

This blog discusses workload management and how a customized task management tool can help you achieve this seemingly difficult task. As a team leader or project manager, you must know the meaning of workload management, so we will start with the importance of workload management in modern enterprises.

Importance of Workload Management

A recent report shows that 80% of global knowledge workers feel overworked and close to burnout. What’s more, around 82% of workers have said that they feel less engaged at work when undergoing a stressful work situation. Here, workload management comes to the rescue. It enables you to distribute tasks across your entire team more effectively. As a result, employees feel less stressed and overworked.

Workload management can provide you the real-time insight into the tasks of your team members with the help of advanced tools so that you can manage the workload effectively and in a balanced way.

Let’s go through the top five reasons why you need workload management at the workplace

1. Get a clear view of the status of your project

2. Identify the process that slows down the work

3. Stay informed of deadlines and project budgets

4. Ensure proper resource allocation

5. Close communication gaps across various department

In a nutshell, a work management tool can bring all your team members onto the single platform thereby saving time and effort.

It’s time to dig deep on the ways through which you can effectively manage workload using a customized team task management tool.

How to Manage Workload using Task Management Tool

As per a report from the International Institute of Directors and Managers, only a few people have workload management skills. There, advancing technology lends a helping hand. Advanced and customized task management tools can help keep every team member in the loop and enable project managers to manage workload efficiently.

Here is a step-by-step guide to managing workload successfully using the task management tool.

1. Introduce Workload Management/Task Management Software 

It is possible that various teams in your company use a different set of tools for managing workload. However, this difference creates hurdles in assigning a task to members and monitoring their progress. Therefore, it is necessary for the company to introduce single task management software or workload management software.

The software can act as a data center for all business records and a one-stop tool to manage the employee’s workload. If you are in search of such a robust and reliable team management tool for your company, then TaskOPad can be your ideal option. What makes TaskOPad a preferred choice is an easy learning curve. Even a non-technical person can also use this tool easily after having a little idea.

2. Define Team’s Capability 

Effective workload management requires a proper understanding of the team’s capacity.

Here are some of the simple steps to identify the team’s capacity and the individual’s efficiency-

- Make a task list for the project- Take a specific project and break it down into manageable tasks. However trivial tasks are, you need to ensure that they are included in your list. For example, tasks like inbox management and process documentation should also be a part of your list. You can make a list using a task management tool and organize it as per various departments.

Delegate tasks — Here it is fair to mention that there is no need to distribute an equal number of tasks to every employee. You need to delegate tasks as per the working style, turnaround time and skills of your employees. For example, task assignments should be done in a way that technical persons should get tasks that need technical expertise, and admin people can get the tasks related to administration.

You can simply ask employees for their suggestions and feelings about their workloads. You can set a daily capacity for all employees in the task management tool. It will help you delegate tasks to them in the future. Another important point is time estimation for every task. You can use a time tracking tool of the task management software. Time estimates can enable you to predict the tentative deadline when your team will be delivered the work.

Focus on priorities — The project manager should identify the tasks or deliverables that need immediate attention and have got ASAP status. When you keep the focus on your priority tasks, you can meet the deadlines easily.

Also Read- The Importance of Task Management Software for Businesses

3. Allocate Resources 

After reviewing every factor and focusing on priorities, you can identify resources for a particular task. As a project manager or a team leader, you should assign the tasks with the highest priority first and schedule every task as per the capabilities of individuals. Here, you need to take care of due dates and deadlines. The task management tool offers a timeline or calendar to monitor workloads so that you can balance every employee’s workload.

Here, the management needs to ensure that the right people are assigned to tasks. In other words, the project manager needs to keep the employee’s skill sets and experience in mind while allocating tasks.

4. Adjust Workload

This is one of the most important factors of workload management. Plan B should be always ready and you need to be prepared for making adjustments in real-time to avoid missing any deadlines. The task management tool enables managers to monitor or track how every employee is managing their workload. It is better to set a regular 1–1 check-in with the team members to know whether the employee feels overloaded or faces difficulties in accomplishing sub-tasks. You can reassign tasks or projects to other members if you find any discrepancies or issues in accomplishing tasks.

The task management tool can show the team member’s tasks in real-time and you can balance every member’s start and due dates from a single project timeline with ease.

5. Improve Collaboration and Communication

 A reliable and feature-rich task management app can help you improve collaboration and communication. This is particularly important when workloads are heavy and tasks are complicated. You can encourage your team to develop their own way to manage their workload by using the same workload management tool.

Every team member needs to check-in regularly and you can organize one-on-one meetings every day to discuss individual workloads with your team members. A user-friendly task management software like TaskOPad can enable you to leave a comment on every task and the team members can get instant notifications. Your team member can easily resolve the comment after completing the task.

Finally, you can also consider automation for mundane and repetitive tasks to maintain the employee’s efficiency and productivity.

Concluding Lines

Proper workload management is essential for meeting deadlines while protecting your team’s interests when they deal with a heavy workload and hectic schedule. Here, a robust task management tool or a customized task management app can work wonders. TaskOPad is such a reliable and dedicated task management software. It can manage various processes like workload distribution, creating reports, and tracking team progress for ensuring the growth of your business.

Originally published at https://www.taskopad.com on November 17, 2020.

Five Reasons Every Business Needs A Task management Tool!

Post Pandemic, where work-from-home or working remotely has become a norm, every enterprise, whether small or big, finds it difficult to keep a tab on the progress of many tasks and projects. That is when, a task management system lends a helping hand. Such a system not only assists companies to allocate resources properly and monitor their performance but also enables employees to manage their time and effort.

A feature-rich and user-friendly task management tool enables your business to get a competitive edge by effectively meeting all the deadlines and maintaining the efficiency of employees.

Here are the top five reasons why you should integrate the task management app into your business system.

1. Improves Collaboration and Coordination

One of the biggest benefits of a task management tool is it improves collaboration between various intra and inter-departmental teams that work to accomplish a common task. Whether the project is large or small, every team member has got a particular role and responsibility. For a smooth execution and timely deployment of the project, it is imperative to ensure that every member remains internally connected.

A task management tool keeps everyone in loop and enhances collaboration. Team members can easily share their questions or status updates with the right person to get help immediately

The task management software also enables the team to share files, documents, and keep everyone in the loop.

2. Enhances Planning and Execution

Planning is essential to save time and effort. For every project development cycle, project planning plays a vital role. The project management software can enable managers to assign tasks to different team members as per their skills and execute the project in a proper way. Project planning needs a lot of time as the team has to outline all the major steps, but the task management tool enables the management to determine the order of tasks.

3. Facilitates Resource Allocation

The management finds it difficult to allocate resources as per the complexity of tasks and capabilities of resources. It is necessary to manage resources efficiently to ensure smooth accomplishments of business processes.

The task management tool also assists the enterprises to define materials, resources, and tools necessary for running a project life cycle seamlessly. An ideal project management tool can also enable companies to hire unnecessary resources that further save overheads and increases ROI over the period.

4. Strengthens Team Workflow

Keeping the entire team in a loop is quite a task, but the task management tool makes it simple. The tool can act as a platform that brings every team member together and makes them work together. The project manager can easily track the activities of various team members and check the real-time position of assigned tasks.

It is also possible to find out how much time it will take to complete the task. The task management app especially useful for the bigger projects as the manager can put various members together for collective work. As a result, the company can leverage the benefit of a strong team workflow and accomplish all the goals on time.

5. Continuous Monitoring of Tasks

Enterprises need to track the performance of the project at every stage to obtain long-term success and ensure on-time delivery. The task management tool monitors every task to achieve this objective seamlessly. The company management can also fetch performance data of every team member and continuously monitors every stage of the project through this tool. It assists the company to optimize all the projects effectively.

Concluding Lines

A feature-rich task management tool offers many benefits for modern enterprises ranging from optimizing workflow to enhancing productivity that results in increased ROI over the period. All you need to select a reliable and future-ready task management app that your employees accept and utilize with ease.

Originally published at https://www.taskopad.com on November 2, 2020.