Business organizations operate in a dynamic world and have to handle not only stiff competition from their rivals but also face the legal and political factors along with changing customer’s tastes and preferences. This seriously dents their capability to hire more employees and spend more on the wage bill. The pressure generated upon the organization ultimately gets transferred to its employees as they are required to work more.
Hence, business enterprises prefer to hire those employees who are multi-tasking and willing to perform several business tasks in a single working day and that too in a time-bound manner. Performing and executing several tasks in a single day is in itself a challenge and to meet the expectations an employee has to establish as well as adopt an effective prioritization technique. This article aims to cover all the useful and widely used prioritization techniques that will help an employee to execute all the tasks well before the deadline.
Five Best Prioritization Techniques
1. On The Basis Of Difficulty
The several tasks allocated and assigned to you will never be identical in difficulty. They will surely differ with some tasks being on the easier side and some being quite difficult. Prepmycareer advises employees opting for this strategy to prioritize the tasks on the basis of their difficulty levels. The tasks which are tough in nature and require a greater application of mind, skills, and expertise must be executed initially, only to be followed by the tasks that are easier to be executed.
This would enable you to not only finish your tasks well before the deadline but would also allow you to maintain your productivity and efficiency levels. In the morning or at the time of starting of our shift we have a fresh mind and a greater ability to handle as well as resolve complex issues.
2. On The Basis Of Time Consumption
Some tasks are simply too time-consuming, lengthy, and require greater research as compared to a few other tasks that are short in nature and require less time to finish. An employee under this strategy must try to finish the time-consuming tasks at first and then work upon the short tasks. This would help you to gain a psychological advantage and develop a sense of comfort, as after executing your time-consuming tasks you will be relieved by the fact that now only those tasks are left that are less time-consuming. This sense of relief would also help you to better your productivity and performance.
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3. On The Basis Of Importance
Some tasks are simply more urgent than others. These urgent tasks must be the number one priority of an employee working in a business organization and must be executed at the very beginning of the shift. An employee can divide the tasks for the days into two parts, the first one comprising of the tasks that are simply important, and an organization can not do without them. In the second part, mention the tasks that are less important and can be prorogued. This technique is effective and used widely by the employees that are simply lagging behind the work schedule and crumbling under the long list of pending tasks.
4. On The Basis Of Yield
This strategy is more relevant and meaningful for employees that are working in the middle or top-level management and are involved with strategic decision-making. In a business organization, there is always the main task which is surrounded by several ancillary tasks. For Example, When designing a marketing campaign is the main task, it is surrounded by several shorter tasks such as:
- Getting approvals from management
- Finalizing the idea to be promoted
- Identifying the group of customers to be targeted, and
- Deciding the budgetary requirement.
Now one can clearly divide these tasks on the basis of the percentage yield of completion which these would provide. ‘Percentage yield of completion’ refers to the share of each individual task in completion of the main task. The tasks mentioned above are divided as under:
| Name of the Ancillary Task | Percentage Yield of Completion | Reason for Yield Allocation |
| Obtaining approval from management | 20% | The management is determined to give approvals, hence this task is given a lower percentage. |
| Finalizing idea to be promoted | 30% | The idea in a marketing campaign plays a huge role that determines its success as well as takes care of the overall brand awareness, thus it attracts the second-highest percentage. |
| Finding target customer group | 40% | Customers are simply the king, and without finding an appropriate target group an organization is bound to fail. Thus this task obtains the highest percentage. |
| Establishing budgetary requirements | 10% | The marketing department is the richest department of an organization. Thus, establishing budgetary requirements would not contribute much towards the execution of the main task. |
The tasks with the highest percentage must be executed initially only to be followed by the tasks that attract a lower percentage yield. An employee after assigning the percentages must rank the tasks in accordance to the yield percentages, as explained hereunder:
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| Name of the Ancillary Task | Percentage Yield of Completion | Ranking of the Tasks |
| Obtaining approval from management | 20% | Rank III |
| Finalizing idea to be promoted | 30% | Rank II |
| Finding target customer group | 40% | Rank I |
| Establishing budgetary requirements | 10% | Rank IV |
5. On The Basis Of Profitability
Profits are the essence of every business organization and serve as the very basic reason for their existence. Thus, arranging tasks on the basis of their profit contribution is an effective prioritization factor. The senior managers of an organization are stuck with several tasks to be executed in a single day. These tasks must be arranged and managed in ascending order, on the basis of their profitability.
The tasks that have the capacity to return maximum profits to an organization must be executed first. Order must be established, and tasks that have the highest contribution towards the profit earned by the organization must be prioritized and taken up at first.
Step By Step Guide To Prioritize Tasks
Prioritization is an effective and important technique when it comes to time-bound execution of tasks and maintaining productivity. This technique has been further simplified and arranged into several steps, which are:
1. Collection Of Tasks
The first step that goes into the prioritization of tasks, is the collection of all the tasks themselves. Always prepare or obtain a written list.of the tasks for the day, as this would give you a clear idea as to how many business tasks are there and what is their nature.
2. Choose An Appropriate Prioritization Strategy
This article has covered five unique and most effective prioritization techniques, that have been written after careful market research and analysis. After understanding the nature of the business tasks to be performed, a professional must consider and choose one prioritization strategy to be implemented.
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3. Sort The Business Tasks
The business tasks to be performed must be sorted and arranged on the basis of the prioritization technique chosen. Prepare a written report of the tasks and assign them rankings so as to eliminate any kind of confusion and for the sake of convenience in practical execution.
4. Be Ready To Adapt
When you were a student, you must have encountered those out-of-syllabus questions that used to irritate and annoy you. Well, life is not simple yet, and in fact, it has become even more complicated. While working at an organization, apart from the daily tasks, there will always be surprise or special tasks, waiting to be executed. You can be assigned these tasks, at the very beginning, middle, or even at the end of your shift. Just be ready for these tasks too, and always leave some margin of time, as these are also to be executed with the same level of finesse and expertise.
Always Refer To The Pareto Principle
Pareto principle is one of the widely followed principles and techniques in the corporate world using which several working professionals, as well as business organizations, have tasted success.
Often known as the 80/20rule, as per this principle, about 20% of the tasks that you undertake are responsible for giving you about 80% of the results or outputs or benefits.
Thus, a working professional must strive to identify and prioritize those 20% tasks that would yield him 80% benefits. This way an employee would not only be able to improve his own performance but also enable his organization to rise and earn considerable profits.
References
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Sandeep Bhandari is the founder of PrepMyCareer.com website.
I am a full-time professional blogger, a digital marketer, and a trainer. I love anything related to the Web, and I try to learn new technologies every day.
All the team management, content creation, and monetization tasks are handled by me. Together with the team at PrepMyCareer, the aim is to provide useful and engaging content to our readers.