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Sales • Mar 17th, 2020 • Guest Writer

Task Management: How To Make Your Organisation More Accountable

We look at how you can use task management to make your organization more accountable, considering the software tools available to help.

Accountability implies taking responsibility for delivering your commitments. It is a guiding practice that determines the behaviour of managers and employees alike. In regards to work, accountability is a complex notion comprising multiple aspects.

Ultimately, accountability underlines the ability of your business environment to:

Provide a multi-perspective view of the project

Ensure actionable feedback on task performance

Maintain workforce efficiency on the high level

Holding accountable requires wise managerial policies, consistency, and strategic vision. Furthermore, for guaranteed success, it must ‘apply to one and all’.

Why Accountability Is Important 

Accountability belongs to proactive attributes meaning that it must be stated prior to the project performance: this way, it helps prevent errors and achieve the set goals according to the plan. 

At the retrospective stage, accountability allows introducing the results of work in a transparent manner including utilization of time, money and resources.

 In the long run, building accountability translates into: 

Creating a better estimation of the time allocation in the future

Allocating resources with more precision for upcoming projects

Meeting deadlines in time

Distributing the workload among the team evenly

Preventing pitfalls in project performance

Maximizing the chances of success

accountability breeds responsibility

How Task Management Improves Accountability

In today’s plentitude of project management tools for better planning, office workers can be actually stuck with switching between software to handle tasks. It’s inefficient and detrimental for keeping accountable, to say the least. 

Reducing the number of software to tools tailored to the specific project needs would be a solution that saves time and resources for your team. By cutting down on unnecessary tools, you get work processes streamlined, which makes business outcomes more predictable. 

One of the most effective ways to improve employee accountability in the workplace is to apply task management software that would ensure the visibility of priorities, and task interconnection and provide open channels of communication for additional flexibility. 

With the efficient task management systems, project managers:

Set tasks and projects expectations clearly

Enable team member to count on performance feedback early

Establish a culture of trust

Make rewards logical

Highlight collective objectives

In terms of improving accountability, implementing task management will help with a better decision-making process for the current and coming projects.

Whether the projects include interdependent or concurrent tasks, task managing would be relevant for maintaining a sequenced or simultaneous task performance while keeping the layout of the project details. Visibility of priorities and tasks in workflow builds solid grounds for acknowledgement of project stages and creating the accountability structure.

It should also be stated that when it comes to building accountability, time trackers and task management software are a perfect match as they leverage automation. Time tracking software integrated in task management systems ensures fusing task visibility with time metrics, thus, creating foundations for better transparency and a higher chance of success. 

Implementing time tracking in task management provides automatic calculations and ensures consistency in task performance by making workflow unbroken and smooth. Getting the means of saving time and energy on time and task management, the team realizes the set goals and takes control over tasks in one space. 

Additionally, keeping tasks and time metrics in one system also helps you get flexibility while preserving the granular detailed look of the projects at hand. The software that underpins effective task management due to its wide and neatly packed functionality comes in the list below.

Task Management Software for Better Accountability

SpotlerCRM

SpotlerCRM dashboard

SpotlerCRM is CRM software with task management that helps you organise your workload efficiently and never miss any detail on a sale. The tool provides the team with multiple options that let you focus on the customer and maximize the level of automation when it comes to communications and task management.

It ideally builds in the concept of a synchronous workplace where employees make decisions via centralised communications systems, and thus, feel more productive with the software allowing for zero-distraction deep focus work.

Benefits

View the latest correspondence

Set up tasks

Assign tasks to team members

Sync in Google Calendar

Enable activity timeline for making task performance more transparent

Automate a task shift to activity timeline upon task completion

Cost: Free for up to 2 users and 100 Accounts.

Workzone

workzone dashboard

As one of the first project collaboration tools, Workzone has stood the test of time. With it being cloud-hosted it’s suited well for decentralized teams. 

One of the other useful features is the automatic email reminders for priority tasks.

Benefits

Personalized to-do list

Dashboard provides a portfolio view of projects

The Workzone team provides excellent support and training

Adjustable permission levels for each person

Ability to import MS project files, and Microsoft Excel files

Customizable work forms and reporting

Cost: The price is $20/user/month, and with the increase of users the price goes down. 

Jira

jira dashboard

Jira is an agile tool with an extensive task management feature set. It enables teams to create tasks (Issues), assign them to team members or appoint yourself as an Assignee and track activities for creating the transparency of project performance.

Benefits

Create reports on the planned tasks

Make comments

Filter tasks

Set task priority

See the task ‘location’ in the workflow on the project map

Add description of the task

Search tasks with filters

Integrate a time tracker on the dashboard

Cost: You can start using Jira from $10 per month.

Samepage

samepage dashboard

Samepage is an online task management tool with team communication options in a single workspace. With this software, your team stays accountable as the functionality of the tool covers goal setting, task visibility, actions and results. 

Benefits

Delegate the tasks for higher efficiency

Shift due dates

Activate visual indicators of task completion

Add the unlimited number of team members for faster task completion

Notify participants of the coming deadlines

Filter task lists by team, project, assignee, priority

Cost: Basic features are available for free. 

ProWorkFlow

proworkflow dashboard

The biggest strength of ProWorkFlow is that it’s highly customizable. It provides you with time tracking and budgeting tools and a workforce requirement calculator. Integration with other productivity tools is effortless.  

Benefits

Easy scheduling

Gantt style timeline

Mobile and iPhone app

Open API

Robust reporting tool

Free trial

Cost: This tool will cost you $10-$30/user/month

TaskQue

Taskque dashboard

TaskQue is a smart task management application distinguished with the wide capability in terms of creating project pipelines.

Benefits

Automate task assignment process

Maximize resource utilization (by assigning tasks to resources)

Create different workspaces for different projects

Integrate conferencing

Enable backtracking to see your achievements

Create the alphabetical order of tasks

Manage tasks with filtering

Cost: Basic feature set is available on the Free Plan.

Conclusion

Accountability emerging on the convergence point between processes, communication and productivity makes a positive impact on employees development and, thus, guarantees to facilitate business growth and expansion.

Accountability strategy can be implemented if employees are ready to claim ownership of business outcomes, with contributing their share of work into organizational results. Managers are the first to foster this mentality within their teams.

Accountability, which is an integral part of business success, does not mean a project manager must micromanage every step of the team: such tactics cause the opposite effect. Rather than choosing the disciplinary style, it is preferable to hold the team accountable by empowering them with relevant tools for lightweight and efficient task management that lets alignment with commitments fail-free. 

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