Why is task assignment so important in a workflow management system?

The main reason for employees to struggle and resent their jobs actually stems from the actions of their managers. This is dangerous to your business because the employees ultimately passes on this resentment and frustration to your customers. There are many actions from the managers that could trigger this effect, ranging from unethical treatment of staff to overworking employees, but let’s look into one of the less sinister but more common one – confusion from task assignment.

The employees could be confused with the task assigned to them because they do not have the sufficient information to carry it out, or the instructions may be unclear. Task deadlines or role assignment may also be vaguely stated or unaccountable, further adding onto the confusion of the employees.

The execution of task assignment is important because:

1. The employees would carry out the task given to them with more ease because they know exactly what to do, with instructions clearly laid out.

1. Every individual employee would be able to represent the company better because of the clarity and accountability they have for their task and scope of work, and in turn would serve the customers better.

1. Employees would have more sense of responsibility over their tasks and would more likely to finish them.

1. Great task assignment, which is kept on record, helps in bringing accountability onto each employee because they would be fully accountable for the tasks assigned to them.

1. With a well-laid out task list for each employee, it is easier to both monitor progress and also track KPIs fairly, with pre-decided points of references.

The basis of a complete task assignment would contain the WHAT, WHEN and Why. This is not exhaustive but it should let the employee know at least what are the minimum requirements expected of this task, when it is due, and the reason for this task to be done, from the point of a bigger picture. Depending on how specific and complex the task is, other details that support the carrying out of the task should be provided to the employee in full and cut down on the need for him or her to find out information for themselves unnecessarily.

In other words, provide the employee with right and ample information clearly, so he or she does not get confused or get too involved with making out what the task is, rather than actually executing on it. This would save tons of time and effort for your entire enterprise accumulatively.

Many a times, employers would assign tasks verbally, without any track record of the task assigned. While this may seem to be a more convenient way of allocating tasks to your employees, people tend to forget and also miss out details when they receive the tasks verbally. To solve this issue, tasks that are assigned should be documented or at least recorded somewhere. This way, it is easier to trace back and reward or fault someone when they claim to have done something or otherwise. This is good to both protect employees from each other’s finger pointing, and also to reward employees who actually met or exceeded the required tasks assigned to them.

A workflow management system like Automate-Lah could help with this issue. Tasks could not only be recorded and documented, but they could be managed and automatically assigned to specific employees do best in that particular field.

For example, employee A is great at fixing floors and employee B is an expert at fixing doors. Presume this maintenance company has now a contract for fixing a client’s building, so with Automate-Lah, the floor and door fixing tasks could be assigned to employee A and B respectively because the system identifies and gives the right tasks to the right people for it.

This enhances the productivity and cuts down a lot of time and effort in manually finding and assigning tasks. Also, the quality of work increases as the system would only suggest the best people for the tasks based on history and data records.

Another important aspect of task assignment, apart from the job satisfaction and accountability of the employees, is actually overlooking the tasks and tracking the progress of each task. Valuable insights could also be derived from the tracking and overseeing of these tasks. A workflow management system like Automate-Lah should generate reports that give relevant trends and identify red flags for certain tasks, and highlight it to management as they pop up.

After all, tasks assignment and management is like a roadmap to map out each task’s progress and show the managers how it fits into the bigger picture. Automate-Lah provides a central platform for all these data to be captured in the cloud, and provide real-time statistics and statuses via a simple-to-use dashboard.

The benefits of a proper task assignment and management module in an overall workflow management system is endless, with increased visibility in process, automated notifications for prioritised tasks, and timely reports, just to name a few.

To get the best out of a task assignment module in an automated workflow system, it is best to have it customised to your specific business needs. Here at SGI, we understand that and have been doing it for a good while now. If you wish to explore more on the benefits of having a proper workflow management system or task assignment system, feel free to drop us an email at marketing@sginteractive.com.sg or call/whatsapp 9172 9726. We fully customise our systems to ensure maximum productivity in both the assignment and management of your tasks and also your entire business’s workflow as a whole.