Over 23.7% of employees (i.e., 4.6 million working professionals) had high stress levels due to unmanageable workload in 2023, according to a report by the Labor Force Survey.
One reason for stressful and unmanageable work is too much focus on individual projects or tasks rather than work as a whole. As the way of working collectively evolves, organizations need to evolve how they manage projects and people alongside.
There are multiple projects within a company, and with increasing scale and clients, pressure to deliver value within deadlines causes chaos. To avoid this, implementing work management can help teams deliver value without burning out their employees.
In this article, we will walk you through what work management is, what the process looks like, and whether a work management system is the best choice for your team.
What is work management?
Gartner describes work management as a process that streamlines how information and work move through different departments and people to create higher performance and results.
Daily work management is a way of working that considers the broader scope beyond project activities to avoid friction and burnout. It is a combination of workloads and workflows for better execution of the overall company’s goals.
Typically, a work management module includes:
- Process management
- Client relationship management
- Resource management
- Business intelligence
Now that we know what work management is, let’s look at the work management process in detail.
What does a work management process look like?
A work management process contains six major steps:
- Work identification
- Work planning
- Work scheduling
- Work execution
- Work follow-up
- Work analysis
To create a work management process for your team, follow the steps below.
1. Identify your goals and OKRs
The first step in understanding how to manage work involves identifying what you want to achieve with work management.
But before we jump to goal setting, knowing what the current team, department, and process does is vital. Once you figure out their roles, it’s time to assess your goals and the scope of the new workplace management process.
Consider:
- What needs to be tackled immediately?
- Why do we need to handle it immediately?
- What are the end goals of employing a new process?
- How will these goals drive the company forward?
Answering these questions brings clarity and gives direction to your new work management system flow.
2. Form a detailed plan
Once you identify the goals, it is time to devise a plan to execute them. Creating a detailed plan for daily work management includes:
- Outlining which tasks need to be prioritized along with their objective
- How these tasks will be executed
- Who will execute these tasks
- Which resources are needed to execute these tasks
- How much time will it require to accomplish these tasks
This is also the time to map out strategies to accomplish work and create tactical plans.
Implementing a work management software from this stage can help maintain a clear plan of action for every person involved in your company.
3. Create a schedule and timeline
After creating your plan, you should now create a timeline and schedule that will work as a guideline for your team. It will help them understand what needs to happen when and mitigate the chaos that comes with handling multiple projects.
A good schedule should account for built-in buffer time to solve problems that might arise while executing the work.
4. Workflow execution
Your plan, resources, and schedule all come together during the execution stage.
Here, strong communication and quick collaboration are critical to get your project up and running. If you do not have strong communication in place, bottlenecks will be created, or the scope will increase, resulting in failure to execute.
Tip: A work management tool is vital to get your work plan off the ground. It tracks resource capacity, handles end-to-end task management, maintains timesheet data, and much more.
5. Build a follow-up plan
Despite building a buffer time, sometimes things do not go as planned. So, creating a follow-up plan from the get-go is vital.
Once you lay out all tasks in a work management system, assign team members, and add priorities, regular check-ins become important.
With a follow-up process in place, you can identify bottlenecks before they happen and brainstorm backup plans in advance.
6. Analyze and improve
Most businesses implement a new workplace management process and get done with it.
But this is the time to analyze:
- Which parts of the process worked
- If you missed any objectives and why
- How much difference did the new process make
- What else can be improved to make the process smoother
Work management vs project management: what is the difference?
Work management and project management can seem like two similar processes, mainly because they deal with planning, resource allocation, scheduling, execution, and analysis.
However, the main difference between the two is the scope they deal with. Let’s look at the main differences between project and work management systems.
Table of differences:
Work management | Project management |
It is an enormous scope of work with larger goals and objectives | It is a part of work management which deals with goals and objectives specific to one single project |
It sets processes and guidelines for multiple projects and other ad hoc tasks | It sets processes and guidelines for one single project only |
The end goal of work management is to impact the overall business goals across projects, teams, and departments | The end goal of project management is to impact the goal of one particular project and team |
It has a flexible and evolving structure based on the business need | It is a rigid structure made to be followed strictly to achieve targeted goals |
It is a long-term process | It is a short to medium-term process |
It involves the entire company or business | It involves only one team working on the project |
Benefits of work management system for businesses
A work management system is a great tool to invest in as it can help you through all the six stages of work management. Some benefits of a work management system are:
- Clear communication
- Timely collaboration
- Reduced bottlenecks or blockers
- Workload visualization
- Resource allocation
- Task estimation vs actual time
- Tracking work + progress
- Single source of truth
- Scalability
Start your work management journey with 5day.io
According to a survey conducted by the National Library of Medicine in February 2021, the majority of employees said that:
A supportive work environment and the ability to set goals motivated them to work better based on their skills, abilities, and knowledge, ultimately boosting the company’s revenue.
This means that with the right structure, tools, and processes in place, companies can let go of micromanagement and truly support their teams.
5day.io is a work management tool that supports your team with end-to-end project, timesheet, task management, and team collaboration. Whether you are just starting out or a full-fledged big business, a tool like 5day.io can bring your entire company’s processes in one place and create a single source of truth.
Try all the premium features completely free for 90 days.
