10 Reasons Why You Need Team Management Software

63% of managers say their biggest challenge as people leaders is “juggling managing their team with other responsibilities.” It is a huge responsibility! As a manager, you’re the:

• facilitator of meetings (team and one-on-ones), 
• the person others approach when faced with challenges, 
• the responsible person for reporting team progress on goals and initiatives during company-wide meetings. 

Source: unsplash.com

Keeping tabs on everything shouldn’t add any stress to your daily workload! That’s where team management software comes in. The best team management apps offer a collaborative workspace for teams to come together for increased engagement, communication, and productivity.

It should give leaders a clear overview of how their team is doing on a daily basis as well as insights for tracking that progress over time.

In this article, we’ll take a look at 10 reasons why you need team management software to manage your team’s workflow and make your life as a team lead a bit easier. 

10 reasons you need team management software

With each reason, we strive to help you understand what features a team management tool could have that would help you achieve each of the 10 benefits. We answer the question: What should I look for in software for managing my team?

1. Increase the productivity of your team

Software designed specifically for the use case of team management will often have some status reporting and planning features that entice employees to actually use them for their own benefit. Productivity soars with status reporting methods, like Plans, Progress, and Problems – mostly because it’s intuitive, and helps employees’ personal workflow!

Some software offer gamified productivity stats that tell you which days are your most productive and what percentage of completion you’ll likely achieve by the end of the week. This is useful on a personal level – after all, you need to understand your habits too!

What should I look for in team management software? Status reporting, weekly planning, scheduling (meetings and due dates), and productivity dashboards based on real-time team data

2. Improve team collaboration 

With everyone on the team engaged in their new habit of status reporting – you’ll see how everyone’s tasks are connected to each other. There will be more communication and collaboration between team members as they continue in this way. 

What should I look for in team management software? File sharing, commenting, mentions, and notifications! 

3. Get an overview of team happenings at a glance 

When managing a team, it’s crucial to understand everyone’s priorities and progress at any given moment. Having this option in a single dashboard reduces your tendency to micromanage. Everything is in sight for you to check in on, without having to poke someone and remind them of a task that needs tending to on a project!

What should I look for in team management software? Various dashboard views to see happenings on an individual and team level.

4. Promote transparency and accountability in teams

Since you can see everything in one dashboard or choose from different views within the tool, everyone on the team should have the same ability! A team management tool should also act as a collaboration tool for teams – allowing coworkers to connect and work together collectively. Meaning that everyone reports: 

• their tasks for the day, 
• how they’ve progressed during the week, 
• and any problems they’ve run into

These updates are visible for everyone and offer a chance for others to chime in and help if need be! 

What should I look for in team management software? Employees should have access to and see the same platform as their manager – just without admin rights!

5. Maintain focus on goals 

When you’re actively using team management software, and have everyone involved, it allows you more time to focus on the progress of your team. You get to see the big picture in how your weekly tasks help drive the needle forward on your team and company goals. 

With the transparency of status reporting, you can see that: 

• X didn’t get done, but Y did 
• Project Z is behind by 20% for the quarter. 
• And more!

Seeing these details will help you make clear decisions moving forward and help you make active changes based on what’s working – the metrics and proof are all there!

What should I look for in team management software? You should have a space to set goals as a team and input metrics used to measure their progress over time!

6. Give and receive more effective feedback

Team management software should provide you with the correct information and features to improve your leadership approach. Since you’ll have real-time information about your team’s performance and progress daily, you’ll be able to engage more actively and provide them feedback when it matters most – right away! If you see something, say something! 

What should I look for in team management software? Look for a tool that allows you to give your employees feedback! This can be in the form of pulse surveys, 1:1 chats options between leader and employees, icebreaker questions, high-fives, or even some kind of employee spotlight!

7. Boost employee engagement 

In that same realm, feedback helps to boost engagement in the workplace. Over the course of the last 2 years, there has been a lot of discussion about disengaged employees in the workplace. According to Hubspot, 69% of their employees said they would work harder if they felt their efforts were being recognized! Wow! Engagement is certainly linked to feedback! 

As a manager using software built with these pain points in mind – you’ll be more active, and so will your team! Since you all can see what’s happening and how goals are being measured – you’re given more opportunities to connect and collaborate as a team! 

Source: blog.hubspot.com

What should I look for in team management software? Similar engagement features fall under the employee feedback arena. Look for things like daily questions to your dashboard, recognition emojis, and custom engagement templates. Others include: linking documents and commenting on coworkers’ tasks and updates!

8. Facilitate meetings with a clear agenda

It’s easy to get lost in a meeting quickly without having a well-thought-out plan going into it! This can easily be solved with a progress report template and setting designated roles and times for discussion. Team management software, again, brings everything together – including budgets, goals, plans, projects, challenges faced, and more.

By having all of this in one platform, you don’t even need to print anything out or spend too much time before the meeting preparing or brainstorming topic points. Instead, you can move into your important topics of discussion right away simply by looking at your team view!

What should I look for in team management software? Automated progress reports, team view, custom engagement templates, feedback surveys, and integrations with Google Calendar

9. Visualize and understand your team workflow 

There are of course days where some team members are more productive than others, but as a manager – it would be nice to know who’s working on what and when! This can be improved by the transparency offered by a management platform and collaboration tool for teams! 

Having everything at your fingertips will help you understand your team on a deeper level. For example, suppose you know that one team member gets most of their work finished by Wednesday.

In that case, you ask if they’d be willing to strategize a new project with you, help a struggling team member with a different task, or even give them a few hours of extra flexibility in their workday at the end of the week to support their positive effort and engagement!

What should I look for in team management software? Gantt charts, Kanban boards, calendar views, and more! Test different tools to see which style is most aesthetically pleasing to your eye!

10. Progress reporting made simple 

Source: slite.com

There is nothing more time-consuming than remembering a list of tasks, projects, and activities completed at the end of each day or week! However, this is one of the most important points that managers have to assess, analyze, and report to higher levels of management. You answer the questions about:

• how you’re progressing toward meeting your quarterly goals, 
• what initiatives you’re taking as a team 
• and what room for improvement can be made – where can the company benefit from more resources? 

Team management software helps you collect all of this information based on your team’s daily reporting habits. When they input something, it becomes publicly available to you and everyone else. You can gather this information in real-time and use it for reporting to higher management whenever it’s needed! 

What should I look for in team management software? Automated progress reports, weekly check-ins, status reporting, or task management features 

Concluding thoughts

Your time as a manager is valuable, so you need to treat it like so. Review various team management software and apps on the digital market. Many companies offer free trials with access to their full range of features to test whether it suits your needs.

Consider the reasons above and the relative benefits you’ll experience in your team. Whether you’re looking for collaboration, productivity, or a better management solution altogether – we hope this list helped make your decision to invest easier. Now, start testing those features!

Chirantan Patel

Chirantan Patel is the Product Manager at Softwaresuggest & Callhippo, an Inc. 275 company that researches and analyzes software to educate, advise, and connect buyers and sellers of business technology.