Quick Ways to Improve Routine Task Performance

Every new employee gets into an organization with a defined set of attributes. Employee behaviors often dictate their work ethic. Every company aspires to recruit trustworthy, accountable, reliable, polite, ethical and positive staff who are keen to shoulder responsibility and be proactive. Employee behaviors are the foundation of their contribution to the accomplishment of the organization’s goals. So, whether the task ahead is designed around routine, creativity or adaptive procedures, staff must be poised to transform organizational resources into acceptable goods or services. How can your organization improve employee behaviors and routine task performance to maintain efficiency, productivity and effective time management?

What is a routine task?

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A routine task represents repetitive duties and tasks that must be done consistently, either on a fixed or regular basis, for a particular purpose. They are often managed under a defined organizational standard by a team or a single employee.

Routine tasks for project managers often comprise stepwise sequences of tasks, guided by standard procedures, with stipulated start and end points to achieve expected outcomes.

For example, in a manufacturing company, the employees will be charged with planning, manufacturing, packaging, shipping, marketing and sales for greater profitability. Effective task management guides the planning and performance of routine tasks. This task management involves setting task-specific goals, defining the sequence of tasks, assigning resources and providing task lists, schedules and templates for task execution.

 

 

What does “routine task performance” mean?

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Routine task performance translates to employee responses to the demands of everyday work. The predictability of the work lies in the fact that the activities vary neither in the sequence of activities nor in skills.

Routine task performance defines organizations, and most organizations that excel at what they do often use effective tools. These tools comprise programs and procedures defined by standards associated with the task objectives of the company’s operations.

The responsibilities of employees of an organization are dictated by the settings of the workplace. Thus, the staff should be people with the required knowledge and skills to meet with normal job expectations and enhance organizational goal accomplishment.

The routine category of job performance involves the use of various resources and follows simple instructions that are similar in different departments of the organization. The simplification of job performance is to lower the possibility of the occurrence of errors while promoting organizational goal accomplishment.

For managers, the ability to manage company resources, including time, will make all the difference in determining employee responses and ensuring overall quality in the work output. The manager’s responsibilities of improving the company’s operations, overall quality of work output, efficient recruitment of new employees, reducing heavy workloads and improving employee responses to task demands will depend on the effective use of task performance tools.

Delegation is vital to ensuring positive employee responses to growing task demands. However, planning work schedules, especially for staff who work in shifts, is difficult. This is where a duty roster is invaluable. TimeTrack Duty Roster helps managers create a perfect overview of work schedules and employee shifts. Effective planning tools assist business owners to personalize shifts based on location, skills, work areas and staff. The duty roster considers employee availability to ensure balance and reduce heavy workloads.

How do you improve routine task performance?

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Improving routine task performance requires the understanding of how to elicit constructive employee feedback and application of key time management techniques that will free up time for better task performance. Some of the best strategies to enhance task performance are detailed below.

Prioritize task performance

Effective time management begins with time efficiency and the best way to maximize time is to plan your entire day. The easy way to do this is to create a to-do list, which will help you prioritize with precision. This will allow you to focus on the day’s most important routine tasks. Start with a list of smart action items and categorize your task demands into low, medium and high-importance categories. The Eisenhower Matrix for determining task urgency and priority is vital. This priority list will help you combine routine and non-routine work effectively.

Keep distractions at bay

According to Udemy’s research, 70% of employees admit they feel distracted at work, and this situation is worse for Millennials and Gen Z, with a whopping 74% admitting to feeling distracted. Whether the distractions come from social media, emails, personal issues or random thoughts, you must make conscious efforts to limit their interference with routine task performance. The first step in eliminating non-productive time is to identify the sources and devise preventive measures to reduce daily distractions.

Daily review

How do you feel about your performance at the end of the day? One of the best ways to ensure you excel at what you do is through constant review. This will also involve frequent job analysis to determine the extent of task performance. At the end of each day, consider what you have accomplished using your to-do list and mark the incomplete items for the following day.

The end-of-day review provides you with the opportunity for self-reflection about your routine task performance. It will help you determine what is and is not working for you. It will also help you identify your worst time consumers.

Batch time

When you have a group of similar tasks, batch them together to save time. Grouping this work helps you complete them with minimal brainpower and energy. Apply this time management principle regardless of the routine task’s performance. Minimizing multitasking is key to improving employee behaviors and routine task performance. The ugly thing about multitasking is that it lowers your productivity while wearing out your mental energy as you switch from one task to another. To make the most of your time, complete one task at a time before moving on to the next task list.

The impact of routine task performance on time

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• Routine task performance is instrumental in fostering a productive work ethic in the office. It serves as a working template for measuring employee performance over a period and provides the organization with an overview of how to evaluate the work routines of specific staff.
• Streamlined work routines save time because the process has been ritualized, allowing the staff to become more efficient.
• It enhances training and onboarding processes to become seamless, allowing recruits to adapt easily to work standards.
• Routine task performance improves employee behaviors by promoting ownership of their work. Thus, no-one will have to police employees on task completion. This will allow team management to focus on strategic objectives.

Tip

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How much time are employees spending on productive tasks? What are the common stumbling blocks that cause distractions, waste time and contribute to missed deadlines?

An organization can save countless hours by monitoring employee time, which in turns, positively contributes to the bottom line. TimeTrack Timesheet helps managers and account personnel save essential work hours by allowing them to create automatic timesheets that can be imported into the accounting system for immediate use. The end result is a seamless method of tracking time management and routine task performance.

Conclusion

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Planning and managing effective routine task performance requires understanding of behaviors and employees’ responses to rising task demands. As a manager, you must ensure the efficient application of time management strategies.