Time nowadays is an important asset both in personal and work life. If you want to be productive, you have to learn how to manage it wisely.
The same rule works for businesses: proper employee time management helps to free up time for new activities and increase overall and personal productivity.
So use these tips as a part of your company’s culture to maintain high efficiency and excellent time management skills on a permanent basis.
1. Practice 5-minute focus before starting a task
The reason for why the task might take longer is because an employee does not visualize the eventual outcome.
Having thoughts tossing inside the head brings nothing except for chaos.
Make it a company practice to take some time (5-10 minutes) to focus on starting the activity. E.g., if it’s an article – make a plan to know exactly what to write about, if it is an infographic – visualize its finished look.
2. Teach employees to find the difference between urgent and important
Everything in a working day seems to be urgent. But you can’t do everything at the same time equally good.
That’s why you should teach your employees to prioritize.
If the work that employees do affects the work of their co-worker, or the paper they do has to be on manager’s table in 20 minutes, then it’s urgent. The rest is important.
3. Encourage employees to spend less time on social media
Employees might want to check one of their social media accounts just for a moment, and then lose it and end up surfing for an hour. The time we spend surfing in real life runs so fast. However, we don’t feel that. That’s why it’s better to leave social media for the after work time.
Yet, some employees feel more productive when they have the possibility to hang around on social media for a while.
In order to maintain employee productivity, use a time tracking software like Yaware.TimeTracker that allows both managers and employees keep social media usage under control.
4. Teach employees to ask for help
Ever heard the saying “Two heads are better than one”?. Well, four hands are better than two as well.
Teach your employees that asking for help when you’re in trouble is fine and that they can solve it much faster with co-workers’ help.
Also, if there’s something urgent to do, then it does make sense to ask for help more than doing everything by oneself.
5. Let employees take a break
Breaks might feel like an unproductive time, but we all need time to unwind and relax. Keeping the brain in constant tension reduces productivity and hurts employee health. I.e., not taking enough breaks can quickly result in headaches and bad vision.
It’s great to take a 10-minute break every hour or so. Or anytime when an employee might feel like s/he wants to take a break.
But, it is also important what kind of breaks employees take. If it means switching to Facebook, then it’s no good. Encourage physical activity, because employees lack it so much during the day.
6. Know where the time goes
One of the main rules of time management is always knowing where your time goes.
Implement an automatic time tracking system within your company to let employees find that out. This way they can reevaluate how they work and determine the time, eaters.
Using an automated time tracking software is the best way to track time because it’s effortless and provides accurate data.
Conclusion
Admit that good employee time management is a part of a company culture, and you can affect it, and you will see some great results.
