When running a company, department, or an individual team, it is of the utmost importance to motivate your employees in order to obtain the best results and ensure everyone is completing their tasks. As such, properly managing tasks becomes imperative since workers will have to conduct assignments that show real results. One way for supervisors to simplify this process is by implementing task management software in their department.
Below we outline how you as the manager can keep your employees motivated and on task. Keep reading to learn all about the best task management strategies.
Five Ways to Improve Productivity and Motivate Your Team
In order for anyone to succeed in their job, they will need to have the focus and the drive to get their tasks done. A for-managers.com article outlines how to focus on work managers can help their workers improve concentration and productivity so that they have enough focus to bring results for their company. Below are the five ways you can motivate your team and boost productivity.
1. Track Time Spent Working on Tasks
Make sure that your employees are not spending all of their time working and have enough down time and a personal life to prevent burnout. You can do so by tracking the amount of time they spend working and potentially limiting that time with company outings or long lunches.
Tracking the amount of time employees spend on work can also help you see how productive and effective they are being. Finding out the amount of time workers spend on tasks can help you determine reasonable deadlines.
>> Recommended reading: Time is the most valuable currency. How are you investing yours?
2. Assign Breaks into the Work Schedule
Another way to ensure your employees remain focused is to give them breaks in order to refresh their mind. Performing the same tasks for long periods of time can lead workers to lose concentration and become bored. However, taking breaks can mean that your staff members come back more motivated to work. Concentration will be improved with regular breaks in the schedule.
3. Discourage Multitasking
Multitasking is a major way of doing work that can actually lead many team members to lose focus. The reason is because a worker is not able to focus on both tasks with the same vigor and ability that they’d be able to if they only had one task at a time. Essentially, one of the two or three tasks will suffer.
You as the manager will have to discourage employees from multitasking. It is vital for your workers to understand the importance of committing to one task at a time before moving forward with another assignment.
4. Discuss the Importance of Self Care with Employees
Stress can lead large amounts of workers calling in sick to work, which can significantly hurt the bottom line at any company. As such, you’ll want to alleviate stress related to work pressures and anxiety. You’ll need to encourage your employees to take part in self care.
Too much stress will lead to a loss in productivity. Therefore, reducing stress through self care is vital. Encourage your workers to better manage their mental, emotional, and physical health. If your workers need to take a vacation to reduce their stress, be sure to give them the needed time off.
5. Create a Better Work Environment
Often, uncomfortable working conditions and the wrong environment can distract workers from focusing on their assignments. The lack of concentration may be due to discomfort and the time workers spend on improving their working conditions.
Make sure that the work environment is favorable to all. For example, making the offices habitable by having a comfortable temperature using heating and cooling systems is important. In addition, you’ll want to make sure your workers have the right tools to complete their assignments in a more simplified manner.
Moving Away from Email Management toward Task Management Software
Often, managers have attempted to track the tasks their team members are working on through email. Using email to manage how workers are doing on their assignments may not be as beneficial. First, you need to wait until someone responds to the emails you send. Second, your workers are unlikely to provide all the information you need through an email.
Essentially, you’ll never be able to track the time spent on work among your employees or the workflow and revisions that take place by merely using emails or even face-to-face meetings. You will gain much more data by implementing task management software.
Incorporating a task management tool in your company can help you as the supervisor track the time spent on work and better manage workflow. This will give you more peace of mind since you’ll be able to see data more clearly and ensure your team is meeting deadlines. Essentially, task management software can bring better results for your company. Below we outline the main benefits of using task management software.
>> Recommended reading: Eight reasons why you should replace email with management software
The Major Benefits of Task Management Software
1. Allows You to Stick to a Schedule
By utilizing task management software, you’ll be able to set up a schedule for your team members so that everyone knows when their tasks are due and when major deadlines are coming up. This is especially helpful when you’re working on different projects across many team members.
2. Improves Task Delegation
As a manager, you’ll be able to more easily delegate assignments through the use of task management software. This type of tool can help you utilize comments to discuss which individuals will complete certain tasks and what deadlines your team members can reach.
Some of the biggest difficulties with task management include failing to make appropriate business decisions and team members not completing what was asked of them, especially when a project is complex. Luckily, task management software is able to simplify the delegation of assignments, communication between team members, and general business decision-making.
3. Simplifies Remote Work
With the use of task management tools, you’ll be able to much more easily manage projects when you have employees working in different locations or even separate cities. If your workers need to spend the day at home and complete their projects that way, you’ll be able to track the time they spend working with the right tools.
4. Helps Schedule Meetings and Calls
Mobile phone applications and task management tools can also help you more easily message workers to schedule meetings and set up Skype or video calls when others are located remotely.
5. Simplifies Tracking the Quality of Work and Performance
With the use of project management tools, you’ll be able to more clearly track the quality of assignments received and the performance of your team members. You’ll be able to check the number of revisions an assignment goes through and help your employees improve the quality of their projects.
>> Recomemended reading: 5 Key Strategies for Optimizing Your Team Task Management
Prioritizing Tasks to Simplify Work among Your Team
According to an article from Inc.com, President Dwight D. Eisenhower utilized a very effective organizational chart for prioritizing tasks according to which tasks are important and which ones are urgent.
Essentially, there are four specific levels that tasks can fall into. These four levels are:
- Urgent and Important
- Urgent and Not Important
- Important and Not Urgent
- Not Urgent and Not Important
All assignments should be completed in a top-down manner after positioning them in the organizational chart. Urgent, important things need to be completed as soon as possible while urgent and not important tasks are more minor but are still time sensitive. Important but not urgent tasks don’t need to be completed right away but are important to work on long-term. The last items that workers should complete are the ones that are not important and not urgent.
By incorporating this process in your own life and using the organizational chart to prioritize tasks among your team members, you’ll find that more goals will be met and fewer projects will fall behind.
Instead of focusing on distractions, your team will be able to concentrate on more long-term projects. Stack methodology can be used to better organize and prioritize when team members have a number of different projects to complete and various day-to-day tasks.
The manager will need to prioritize all of the assignments according to importance and urgency, which will allow workers to complete multiple parts of different projects within the same week. Stack methodology will help managers better understand deadlines, revisions, and cost of delivery. Task management software can also help you delegate and prioritize projects across your team.
The Runrun.it Task Management Tool Boosts Productivity and Prioritization
You will find that the Runrun.it task management software will help you improve productivity among your team members by helping them prioritize certain tasks and more easily meet deadlines. You’ll be able to more quickly delegate tasks using the software product and comment sections to assign projects and discuss errors or revisions.
Due to the time tracking tool available through Runrun.it software, you’ll find that employees will benefit from having their time worked automatically tracked. This will help everyone prioritize tasks and complete assignments in a timely manner.
Essentially, Runrun.it project management software gives you peace of mind. You’ll be able to gather and analyze data on workflow in order to discover ways to gain better results. If you are interested in finding out whether Runrun.it project management software would benefit your company, click here for a free trial.
