Build an effective task management process

Any business needs to build an effective task management process. This is an important factor to help optimize resources, limit waste of time and is the foundation for the sustainable development of the business.

However, building an effective job assignment process, suitable for businesses, requires a lot of knowledge and certain skills. Join with BEMO and find out more deeply through this article.

1. Why should you develop a task management process?

A task management process is a set of tasks performed in a fixed order to convert inputs into outputs. Depending on the nature and functions of the departments, the working process and assignment of tasks are also different.

Although it takes a lot of time, requires knowledgeable and skilled human resources, building a task management process is necessary, laying the foundation for business orientation and development. An effective process will help businesses solve the problems in time and bring many benefits such as:

• Improve productivity: when employee know their task clearly, the amount of work solved increases. Managers no longer waste time manually assigning and tracking.
• Limiting operational risks: when all the tasks are clearly and specifically divided for each employee, the worry of overlapping and not being able to control the manager’s tasks is also reduced.
• Control and evaluate work efficiency: the progress of the departments are displayed visually on the same system to help managers easily follow up and evaluate the working efficiency of employees. For employees, they can monitor and update their own work progress and have a method of allocating time and resources to accomplish the KPIs.
• Optimizing human resources and operating costs: standardized processes, managers assign appropriate tasks to employees to help cut out redundancies.
• Enhancing competitive position: in the digital transformation era, an effective task management process will create a strong foundation and be a springboard to increase competitive positioning in the market.

With these benefits, it can be seen that building and operating the task management process is the first step to the success. So how to build a suitable process? Let’s find out in the next part with Bemo.

2. Steps to build an effective job assignment process

While building an effective workflow is never easy, it’s easier when you understand these 5 steps.

Step 1: Identify job needs, scope and goals

The first step managers need to determine the purpose, scope, needs and tasks of the work to form the next steps for the process. Only when the job purpose is determined, the enterprise can well control the execution time and the frequency of each individual’s work. In addition, the scope of each process will help managers understand the amount of work that will be assigned to each individual and each department. In this way, the business will operate the process more smoothly, create an effective connection with employees and promote work productivity.

Step 2: Specify each step in the workflow.

 To be able to deploy quickly and effectively, managers need to define the steps in the working process and write them down in descriptions. This will be a document that helps the staff understand and follow the actual workflow to complete them in the best way.

Typically, managers use the 5W – 1H – 5M model to analyze and shape a process. This model helps managers have an overview, coordinate the resources of the organization more effectively, focusing on the main goal of the work. The specific content of the 5W – 1H – 5M model is:

• Why – define goals, job requirements

Managers when building any process need to answer these questions

• Why build this process?
• How does it help your business, your department?
• If not, what will happen?

This is the way to determine the goals and requirements of the job, from which the manager always focuses on the work, controls and evaluates the final effectiveness.

• What – defines the job content.

With the goals and requirements of the job set, the company need to determine the specific content of the work  and the steps to perform that work

• Where, When, Who – Identify the place, time and human resources to perform the work.

Managers need to flexibly respond to the following contents depending on the size, characteristics of the work and the process.

• Where: where will the work take place?; In which department to check?;…
• When: when is the work done?; which stage need attention?;… In addition, managers need to pay attention to determine the urgency and importance of each type of work to build the most effective process.
• Who: who is the main person responsible for this work?; Who is the supporter?;…

• How – Determine the method of doing the work.

This is considered a step to help managers communicate the process to their team by describing how to do work, evaluation criteria, how to operate machinery, equipment and other documents that can relate to.

• 5M – Identify resources

There are still many managers who make the mistake of focusing only on the task and forgetting about the resources to do them. Without resources, the plan will remain on paper forever. Therefore, effective management and use of resources is the foundation for efficient operation of the process. Resources include the following elements:

Man – human resources: does the project implementation staff meet the skills, qualifications and experience of the job?; If additional backup resources are needed, who and how many people will support?…

Money – budget: how much budget does this job need?; How many times and in what period will the disbursement be done?;…

Material – materials/supply systems: what technologies will you apply in the implementation of the work?; What are the standards for equipment and input materials?;…

Method – method of work: how is the work done in step-by-step?

Step 3: Delegating in a process.

“The right person for the right job” not only promotes the efficiency of a process, but also helps the managers to track, monitor, and evaluate from a certain source instead of disjointed data from many departments and employees. Therefore, personnel involved in the work need to be appropriately and effectively decentralized and usually include the following 3 groups:

• Executors: are the employees who directly perform the work in the process.
• Supervisor: is the person responsible for the results, the process of implementing the tasks for the executors. They also contribute ideas and comments, orienting the executors to handle the work more effectively.
• Supporters: are those who give suggestions, experience advisors, and provide professional support to the executors. Although not directly involved in the implementation of the work in the process, this is an important team and makes the success of the work.

Step 4: Checking and controlling the process.

Along with the models mentioned above, managers must simultaneously measure and determine methods of controlling and checking regularly, thereby, evaluating the effectiveness of the task managing process and optimizing them in a better way.

Determine control method

Setting KPIs is one of the methods that businesses often use. Depending on the task and the feature of each department, the manager will give appropriate indicators. These KPIs will be a measure of the quality and performance of each employee or department and are the driving force behind each individual’s work productivity. Typically, process control is accomplished through the following elements: measurement units of work, tools and methods of measurement, control points and critical control points of concern.

Determine the test method.

This is also an important step in the process of building a task management process and businesses need to determine: what steps need to be checked?; how many times do these checks need to be done and who will perform them?; or where is the critical checkpoint?…

Answer the above questions, the test process will be as effective as expected. In addition, businesses also need to follow the 80/20 principle to make the process more perfect because when checking 20% ​​of the quantity, they find up to 80% of the volume of errors.

Step 5: Summarize the report

A process without reports will have no meaning in evaluating effectiveness because the business has nothing to measure and conclude the activities and results achieved by employees and departments. Therefore, the last step in building a process is that businesses need someone to complete or receive, summarize reports from employees and departments and transfer them back to the BOD.

In the digital transformation era, businesses don’t need to waste resources on writing and compiling reports when they already have technology solutions to support and extract any type of report managers need. 

 With the above basic steps, Bemo hopes that your business will build the most appropriate and proper task management process. However, depending on the development stage of the business, there are different processes that require a more complex and diverse construction, that’s when ERP – the overall management system is the ideal solution that you can consider.

An effective business when there is a clear working process, rights and duties are divided specifically to each employee. That will be the foundation to help businesses increase efficiency, create development opportunities for employees and the business.

If your business is still struggling to find the right assignment management process and only on a single platform. Please contact Bemo for advice on suitable solutions and keep up with current technology trends.