It’s essential to create work practices that would improve employee time management to avoid missed deadlines, burnt-out employees, and poor work quality. By creating an environment that encourages employees to observe time management, you’d be improving productivity and work quality, and your employees would be less stressed.
In addition, poor time management can result in the company incurring overtime costs because employees work extended times to avoid deadlines. With that in mind, here are nine practices that you can implement to improve team member time management:
1. Train Employees On Time Management Practices
You can organize workshops and training sessions for your employees where they’ll be educated on how to be organized and manage time and resources while at work. Training programs are essential in making employees become aware of workplace expectations and goals and how they can manage their work schedules to match that.
Additionally, the training sessions can be essential in developing employees’ decision-making process in time management. It’s crucial for your employees to feel involved in creating time management strategies for their teams and individual projects because they’ll get a sense of independence while at work.
2. Plan And Set Goals
Another practice that can be implemented at a workplace to improve team member time management is planning and setting goals. You can work with the employees to set the objectives you hope to achieve within a specific period.
The goals can be split into manageable tasks within reasonable timelines such as weekly, daily, or monthly. For effective planning, you can encourage using management tools such as project management programs, online to-do lists, and digital calendars.
3. Create Timesheets
If you manage or supervise many employees in a company, it might be easy to use timesheets for effective time management. The purpose of timesheets is to record the time employees work, which can be used to make payments. You can opt to use either physical paper timesheets or digital timesheet templates.
When introducing timesheets at the workplace, ensure that all managers and supervisors are up to speed on their use. In addition, they’ll be responsible for implementing time management practices which they explain efficiently using timesheets. When employees realize that their payment is based on the time they put in, they’ll also be keen to adopt other office practices on time management.
4. Prioritize Tasks
It’d be best to encourage employees to categorize assignments based on urgency to ensure they meet deadlines.
The employees can assess all the tasks they have and prioritize the ones with a short deadline before moving on to the ones with a longer deadline. Furthermore, one primary element that might stand out in this practice is that communication between employees and supervisors will improve to ascertain priority alignment.
5. Delegate Assignments
You must ensure that employees are assigned the correct assignments to manage time. It’s vital to ensure that employees understand and are well-versed in the projects they’re being assigned.
As a manager or supervisor, you can work with the employees to devise a plan for handling the assignments and create a timeline to monitor the progress and finish the task. In addition, ensure that the employees have all the resources they need for the projects to avoid wasting time procuring materials.
6. Create A Structure For Your Employees
You must ensure a structure for your employees for effective management and implementation of workplace practices. A system can be created by rolling out positions with clear job descriptions and their rank in the office.
An effective structure will make it easy for your employees to recognize protocols and procedures for smooth time management in handling projects. Employees know who to consult in case of snarls in a project and the timelines for a project.
7. Manage Communications While At Work
As discussed earlier, proper communication channels at the workplace can save time, especially when working on urgent assignments. Another importance of structured communication is that employees can directly ask their supervisor which jobs have a tight deadline for prioritization. However, when employees are working on urgent matters, responding to calls and emails can derail their progress.
Thus, you can create an office practice where calls are diverted to voicemail, and employees can check and respond to urgent communicants in intervals. It can also teach your workforce to prioritize critical issues first to enable meeting deadlines.
8. Consider Productive Hours When Scheduling
It’d help if you considered assigning hefty assignments during peak performance hours for your employees. If you can diligently monitor your workforce, you can gain insight into their most productive time at work which you can capitalize on. You might also realize that team member behavior differs, and while some people’s peak performance hours are in the morning, others might be at a different time.
Therefore, you can assign tasks based on team member behavior and when they’re most productive. In addition, if you’re managing a large workforce, you can encourage them to handle bigger tasks during their productive time.
9. Encourage Balance
It’d be best if you had a productive workforce that’s well-rested and with the energy to carry out tasks at the workplace. It’s essential to encourage employees to balance activities throughout the day and after leaving work to ensure they return energized. In addition, you can establish wellness programs at the office that encourage healthier lifestyles, such as taking regular breaks to re-energize.
Conclusion
It’d be best to have a time-conscious workforce for your organization to be successful. One of the ways of instilling time consciousness in employees is by establishing practices that can help manage time.
Moreover, time management practices can help boost the productivity of your employees, meet deadlines, and reduce cases of burnout. Hence, ensure you develop time management practices suitable for your organization.
