Any business struggling to keep its team organized, productive, and on the same page likely lacks sufficient work management. If you’re constantly battling crises, miscommunication, or projects that don’t hit the mark, then it’s time to rethink.
While the concept of work management may seem complicated at first, it's a relatively simple approach that brings a sense of calm to any team. Suddenly, everyone will know the directions they need to head - from their own responsibilities, to collaboration and budgets.
In this easy-to-understand work management guide, we’ll explain the work management process and show you how it can boost your team’s productivity on your next project.
What is Work Management?
Work management is a system applied at an organizational level to optimize the workflows and workloads of a team, including resources, time management, and employee understanding. It applies a structure to the movement of information, reducing delays and misunderstandings.
Often applied via a work management platform, it gives managers a better overview of the way their team works and completes tasks. Put simply, it is all about discovering and implementing the optimal way to work.
What’s the Difference Between Work Management and Project Management?
While project management is a part of work management, they are entirely different ideas. Work management is a broader system and often includes everyone involved in a company or team. It applies to the general way in which projects, communication, and planning work. You can think of it as joining the dots between employees, managers, and teams.
Project management, however, is a more zoomed-in concept and may only apply to those working on it. It’s about the logistics of completing a project, such as timelines, contingencies, to-do lists, and resources.
The Key Areas of Work Management
Resource Management
Through an improved allocation of work, resources can be better managed to maximize effectiveness, such as people, intellectual property, materials, funds, digital tools, and equipment. It can also reduce waste, which in turn can improve budget spending.
Project Management
Having a workflow structure inplace can help improve project management, with an effective workloading schedule, budgeting system and communication flow. These factors can allow for a clearer overview of project planning, from budget implementation to timelines.
Time Management
Work management can put time allocation systems in place to maximize productivity and divide employee time into optimized blocks.
Doing so can reduce stress and improve employee motivation. While some employees may have strong time management skills, having a holistic system in place can keep the entire team aligned and moving like a well-oiled machine.
Task Management
Task management ensures every team member has a crystal clear and in-depth understanding of their tasks and to-do lists. Without it, projects can come to a complete halt.
A work management solution could, for example, allow team leaders to add objectives, task lists, milestones, and notifications to a software.
Reporting
A well-implemented work management system allows managers to track and report a wide range of information, from performance and productivity to budgets and client feedback. Doing so can improve decision-making and work performance.
Through data collection and analysis, you’ll be able to get a better picture of your team and improve decisions.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Although a relatively minor part of work management, there is also a positive impact made on the customer experience as you’re able to build insights about their relationship with your business, by tracking the quality of work, feedback, and project requirements.
How Does Work Management Boost Productivity?
Work Scheduling
By creating practices and systems that can clarify and fine-tune schedules, you can help employees work on the areas where they excel at best and minimize them while waiting on others to move the project forward.
According to Harvard Business Review, time management techniques can tackle procrastination and improve productivity by 20%.
Improve Resource Usage
Tasks and projects can be designed to deliver the highest returns on investment, with employees and resources dedicated to making the maximum impact.
Meet Client Needs
Human resources and managers will have the tools to increase project delivery and reduce hurdles such as delays and avoidable disruptions. Doing so naturally boosts client approval rating and therefore revenue.
Helps Employees Understand Roles
Did you know that just 46% of employees know what is expected of them at work? When multiple team members are working on the same project, it’s easy to get unsure about who is doing what, causing wasted time and potentially overlooked aspects.
Work management can clarify the roles people have and increase collaboration. Imagine it like a football team - everyone becomes clear of their position (and therefore their roles), from the defense to the attack. Without these roles, they’re just running around blind.
Improve Flexibility
With a clearer structure in place, you’ll find your business is more adaptable. Managers can quickly adjust workflows and roles, with clear objectives and requirements. They can also build new strategies based on the improved reports and team understanding.
Promotes Collaboration
Finally, teams that collaborate well are 35% more likely to outperform individuals working alone.
With roles clearly defined and communication improved, it becomes simple to know who to turn to and what areas to let others thrive. Stepping on each other's feet is significantly reduced and the idea of a collective objective becomes the norm.
What Is the Work Management Process?
1) Identify Your Goals and KPIs
The first step in any work management plan is to identify what the goal is. This should be as clear and detailed as possible, including outlining the project(s) that are required to get there. You’ll also want to clarify the timeline and KPIs.KPIs (key performance indicators) are metrics that track the progress your team is making towards the goal. They also help you identify which areas need improvement and the success of the project.
2) Create a Plan
Next, it’s time to zoom in as much as possible and detail your plan. This should act as a clear roadmap from start to finish, including the identification of roles, responsibilities, and communication lines.
Remember to:
- Breakdown goals into smaller tasks.
- Allocate resources, including employees and budgets (for each task).
- Set deadlines and milestones so progress can be tracked.
- Complete a project risk assessment.
- Clarify how and where communication and information sharing will take place, such as through software.
3) Schedule
Now that your lines of communication and roles are clear, you can schedule the tasks and projects. This requires assigning tasks and deliverables to employees based on the optimal fit of skills and roles. But also, availability. You’ll find it easier to swap out employees who may be on leave for a period, now that the roles are clear. Consider task dependencies, deadlines, and constraints.
Gantt charts can be of great help here.
4) Begin and Track
Getting to work is the moment when you can see the cogs of your work management system in action. You should be able to review if tasks are completed on schedule and within budgets, as well as employee performance.
Reporting and communication will gain extra value here, too, as your reports will allow you to modify plans and resources where necessary to ensure performance and deadline targets are being met.
Documenting is crucial during the working process, for ongoing accountability, transparency, and the potential for future improvement. Keep records on everything from progress updates and the decisions made, to complaints and the impacts of changes made.
5) Review
Once the project is complete, work management should see a full review of the project, including what should be emphasized more, what should be removed, and what can be tweaked. All stakeholder feedback should be included to reveal:
- The successes and failures of every aspect.
- The difference between the results and your original KPIs.
You can then implement the changes for the next project.
Work Management FAQs:
How does remote work management operate?
Work management can be especially useful in remote work setups, where digital tools can help you improve workflows across various teams regardless of location. In an office, you may encounter colleagues by chance to communicate, but as this is impossible in a remote set-up, your scheduling and communication lines must be bulletproof.
What features should I look for in a work management platform?
When choosing a work management platform, you should prioritize features that enhance productivity, communication, and collaboration. This is usually found in platforms with real-time collaboration, file sharing, and task/project tracking functions.
Any platform that advertises scalability is also a green flag, as you’ll be able to adapt it to your needs over time without the hassle of changing platforms.
Is work management suitable for creative or non-traditional teams?
Yes. Work management platforms are suitable for all teams, regardless of their objectives - commercial or not. Platforms offer flexible structures for creative and design teams to track revisions and maintain clarity in a way that benefits the creative process.
What are the common challenges when implementing work management platforms?
Without clear onboarding, some users may have resistance to training or struggle to pick up the new system. This can cause issues with aligning and understanding new workflows.
Using a reputable workflow platform can get around this, as they’ll offer great introductory support and migration from any previous system you may be using.
Request a Demo
If you’re unsure of which platform is right for you and your team, you can request a personal demo with Workamajig to understand how it can transform your projects into profits. Workamajig is a solution for teams and agencies looking to streamline their work management process.
Originally published July 21, 2025