ManyRequests is a client portal and client requests management software for creative services.
Before we begin, here's a quick fact. According to 68% of professionals who participated in a Cornerstone survey, work overload – or a backlog of tasks – is one of the primary causes of decreased productivity at work.
With over 22.9% of the global workforce working remotely, you need better team workload management systems to keep track of client and employee task lists to avoid a backlog.
Calling your teams in for update meetings or creating long email chains is so 2019.
Today, you can use software and tools – such as ManyRequests – to collaborate with your teams in real-time. That comes in handy especially when your employees are working in different time zones and it’s difficult to get timely updates from everyone.
But even if all your teams are working out of the same office, task lists are still super helpful to have.
In this article, we’ll share tips to help you manage employee tasks. And also show you some of the best Excel templates for creating employee task lists.
Let's get started!
Tips to manage employee tasks effectively
If your work requires a lot of back and forth with clients, employees, and vendors, then you must already know how easy it is to lose track of tasks.
That’s especially true if you don’t have the projects written down in a unified fashion.
But you’re here to fix all that with employee task lists. So here are some tips to get you started with effectively managing team tasks:
- Make a list of all tasks, team members, projects, and details that you need the employees to know for each task.
- Divide projects into smaller tasks and make daily or weekly task lists.
- Prioritize tasks strategically.
- Schedule everything – even if it seems like a small task – and share the file with all team members working on the project.
- Assign each task to individual members instead of entire teams and encourage them to update the sheet throughout the day or week.
- Use flexible scheduling models that can accommodate last-minute changes in projects from clients or employees.
- Create realistic deadlines for each task and list them clearly.
- Track progress and regularly follow up on tasks that are falling behind.
Use management software or tools to keep everything organized in one place.
Employee task list templates
Now, let's look at some Excel task list templates to help you manage employee tasks:
1. Prioritized Task List Templates
This Excel employee task list template offers you multiple columns to add the information that’s most important to you.
You can add task priority, project names, employee names, due dates, % of completion, and more related information. Then you can arrange the Excel sheet in whichever order you prefer.
This is an excellent template for listing tasks in order of the highest priority.
Best feature: You can design customized drop-down menus and set priorities accordingly. It also offers a visually appealing progress bar that shows the project completion percentage.
If your agency deals with prioritization on a daily basis, consider trying out ManyRequests to conveniently create prioritized task lists and share them with your employees or clients instantly:
You might also like these two prioritized task list templates:
2. Weekly Task List Templates
This Excel template is great because you can get an overview of your employees’ entire week’s schedule while having their day’s task list in focus. You can add a tick mark or a cross sign next to each task to show if it’s completed or not.
The template comes with three smaller sections at the top which you can customize according to your preferences.
Here, you can include additional information about the tasks, deadlines, add reminders and quickly write down tasks before scheduling them in the week.
Best feature: Gives you a bird’s eye view of your week’s task list. Plus, the employee task list template makes it easy to check items off your to-do list with one click.
Alternatively, this weekly task schedule from Excel also works great.
3. Task tracker templates
If you have remote employees or clients, then this employee task list template can be a major relief for you.
Here, you can track the progress of tasks or projects by having your employees log updates about the tasks that the entire team can view instantly.
This Excel template can help you track much more than just the progress of tasks by allowing you to add as many categories as you want. So you can also track the time worked, budget utilized, deadlines of projects, add assignees, and additional notes for each task.
Best feature: Its simplicity is its best feature. You can make it as complicated or as simple as you need it to be.
Check out two more excellent task tracker templates:
4. Team Task List Templates
Managing group projects can be a lot easier if you use a task list that documents everything. The Excel employee task list example above offers you just that.
Each member of your team can stay updated with this template. You can add or remove different columns and customize the sheet to fit your needs.
Best feature: Key details of the project are mentioned above for a quick overview. Plus, project status is conveniently color-coded.
But if you need to do more, then ManyRequests is a great option to stay on top of client tasks lists more efficiently.
Here, the dashboard looks like your own app. It has filters to check workload, features for auto-assigning tasks to team members, and tagging requests to individuals or groups.
Here are some additional team task lists templates:
5. Project Task Templates
Documenting projects is made simple with this Excel template. You can track updates by categories, project names, and assignees.
It comes with a built-in calculator that can calculate work hours and duration of the project and compare that to the estimated deadlines for the project.
Best feature: Flagging columns to bring attention to certain parts of the project.
Here are two more project task templates that are great for employee workload management:
Wrapping up
Using templates to manage employee tasks can save you a lot of time, crush deadlines and improve the quality of the work.
You can download the excel templates we’ve mentioned above to track projects, manage weekly employee schedules, and create prioritized task lists.
Or you can sign up on ManyRequests where you can create customized sheets of any type by using our customizable templates.
Having a single dashboard to manage clients and employee tasks can save you from going back and forth to get updates.
It’s time to streamline your work and get more done. Check out how ManyRequests can help you do that.