The Acadia 9.12 release now makes it possible to skip tasks without marking them complete. This can be helpful, if something unexpected is blocking a team member from successfully completing a task. They can now move onto the next task but still indicate to their team lead that the procedure wasn’t completed as expected. This helps provide clarity in reporting and can also highlight parts of your process that may benefit from improvements.
Here’s how it works.
What team members see
As a team member works through an assigned task list. They may encounter a step in the task list that doesn’t apply to them. The team member should not mark the step as complete, if they didn’t actually perform the task. Now they can click the dropdown and choose to skip this task.
They can also include an explanation for why they skipped the task.
This helps process owners gain additional insights into procedures. If they see a step is being skipped consistently, that could be an opportunity to improve the process or get rid of the step altogether.
The completed task list results are now available to view in reports.
What team leaders see
To see what tasks were skipped and why, navigate to the Reports tab.
Then scroll to the “Tasks” section and click “View More”.
This generates a list of all task lists that have been distributed.
You will see the percent of tasks skipped in the Status column. To see which tasks were skipped, click the blue icon to the left of the task to expand the list. This is also where you can see any comments left by your team members, indicated by the red icon.
In this instance, just one of the tasks was skipped. Click “View” to display comments left by the team member.
Behavior Change in Action
When procedures are easier to follow and team members know they’re accountable, they’re more likely to do it the right way. When they can provide actionable feedback to improve the One Best Way, team members will become more engaged in their work.
Here are some examples of Acadia customers who have effectively used Task Lists to create positive behavior change within their organizations.
- One of the world’s largest CPG companies –managers use task lists after switching production from one product to another. This ensures quality and eliminates waste by making sure the changeover process was managed correctly before full production ramped up again.
- Super-regional bank with 1,400 branches – branch management procedures such as opening / closing procedures ensure things like arming the alarm and locking the vault and front door aren’t forgotten.
- State health department – when onboarding new team members, the department uses a manual with procedures that get converted to task lists with due dates for each new employee. Team members themselves get a task list to complete and the onboarding manager gets one as well.
Start today!
When getting started with behavior change programs, it’s easy to get hung up in the implementation process. Trying to get everything perfect before you start loses sight of the purpose of continuous improvement and organizational change. Whether you start small or start big, you will learn and improve just by starting.
