Time management at work – Eternal meetings for problems that could be solved with simple email projects constantly in the redefinition phase, processes that are too long … In short, manual and repetitive tasks that contribute little to the final result. Do they sound familiar to you? Well, they are the causes and consequences of poor time management at work.
Some activities can be time-consuming, both at the individual and departmental level, and poor time management represents a major obstacle to company productivity. Therefore, it is essential that the company establishes a clear policy against wasting time and encourages this practice among its employees as well. In addition, it is important to have tools and systems that help employees to record work time and organize their tasks. In this way, the company is also able to monitor the productivity of the team and detect any patterns that are out of the expected in regards to the performance of the employees.
In this article, we explain how to develop efficient time management in the workplace, how it relates to company productivity, and we will give you leadership tips to promote the organization and team performance.
What are time management and control at work?
Time management is nothing more than an organizational process to better manage employees’ working hours, with the aim of increasing their efficiency and productivity, which in turn translates into cost reduction and greater financial profitability.
Time control and signing are essential in a company, and this also helps plan work shifts and evaluate what works and what does not. But do not think that this only concerns managers, since good time management results in greater success in carrying out activities, which contributes to greater personal satisfaction.
Finally, it can lead directly to new opportunities for professional growth within the organization, and this is because by better managing their time, the employee tends to optimize the execution of their activities and achieve better results.
Consequences of poor time management
If, on the one hand, good management and organization of time at work generates a great impact for the company and for the employee, it is also true that poor time management leads to exactly the opposite. Some of its negative consequences are:
- Unfinished projects.
- Impaired productivity.
- Breach of deadlines.
- Dissatisfaction and even loss of customers.
- Failed meetings.
- Conflicts at work with other team members.
- Increase in overtime.
Software or app for time management at work
The digitization of Human Resources and the daily processes of the company is increasingly urgent. With the increase in people teleworking, the importance of being aware of technological innovations has become evident.
In this sense, there are some functionalities that can optimize employee productivity, ensure more effective management of the working day and facilitate the work of the HR department.
Advanced HR software, such as Factorial, has time and attendance tracking capabilities built into their system. These applications go far beyond the digital clock, and it is also possible with the software of this type:
- Quick and easy transfer, anywhere and through the application.
- Extraction of monthly reports of the hours worked by each employee.
- Verification of the overtime of each worker (and why!).
- Agile approval of vacation and absence requests.
- Management of team and work shifts.
- Visualization of the calendar of the entire team, with the hours and absences of each employee.
- Monitoring of objectives, both general and individual, quantitative and qualitative.
- Tools for Employee Performance Evaluation.
- Digitized document management and electronic signature.
- And much more
6 tips to improve the productivity of your employees
In addition to the individual organization in terms of work time, there are some key points for your employees to make the most of their work time and achieve a higher level of productivity.
Here are some tips that can be used on a day-to-day basis:
1. Clearly define roles and responsibilities
Oftentimes, the productivity losses of a team are the result of failures in the division of tasks and responsibilities of the team. This division must be done in a clear and detailed way, and everyone must understand exactly what their role in the team is and what their responsibilities are to help the company achieve its goals.
2. Set individual and collective goals
If the objectives are not clear, how can the employee be held accountable for not achieving them? Managers must communicate the objectives of the company as a whole and also in each department. It is important that everyone knows what needs to be accomplished and what it takes to achieve it.
3. Ensure good internal communication
Internal communication involves communication between all members of an organization. This is essential and serves to share results and define the business strategy. The use of commonplaces, internal emails, or software can facilitate this communication.
This includes information on objectives, the internal organization of team activities, and even clear communication of the tasks that a new employee will perform. In this way, you ensure that employees know how to do the job in the best possible way, working as a team and using the resources at their disposal.
4. Provide ongoing feedback
It is the manager’s duty to monitor his team to ensure that all employees meet defined expectations and goals . When the employee’s performance is not as expected, the leader needs to know how to communicate the fact with tact and subtlety.
To avoid career insecurity and leadership dissatisfaction, managers need to know how to provide ongoing support and freedom to employees. For this, it is important to know how to give constructive feedback.
5. Organize internal processes
If the company does not have internal processes, it is understandable that employees spend more time performing their activities. In these cases, the ideal is to seek standardization :
- Spread the knowledge of the established processes.
- Standardize the execution of activities.
- Establish quality standards.
In this way, employees understand the rules and limits for the start, progress and end of each activity.
6. Offer resources and solutions
Having resources to maximize efficiency, reduce bureaucracy and streamline the execution of secondary activities is the best way to increase the productivity of the company and achieve better results.
After all, every minute your employee wastes on repetitive manual tasks is one minute less spent on their core business.Â
But what can optimize time management and work organization in companies? Relying on technology and new market solutions is essential.
How to manage time at work?
First, it is important to understand that time management has to do with organization. Structuring the tasks and the duration of each one is the first step to better time management, and it can be done on a daily, weekly, and even monthly basis.
As new duties and activities emerge, the schedule must be adapted to redistribute the time available. As a starting point, we suggest three easy steps:
Make a to-do list
It is impossible to organize your work time without having visibility of everything that has to be done. It may sound simple, but it is a step that is often overlooked in the rush to start a new project.
We recommend listing all the steps and dividing the larger tasks into subtasks to encourage progress and maintain control over the project. Then more information about each task will be added, such as the time it takes to complete them, the priority level, and the completion date.
By having all the activities in one place, you will have an overview of what needs to be done, the amount of work required, and what needs immediate attention.
Set priorities
Of course, the method chosen for prioritizing tasks depends on the nature of the job and the individual characteristics of each worker.
However, our advice is to evaluate the activities on the daily list for their importance and urgency to decide how to organize them and even delegate them or ask for help from the manager or colleagues. After all, prioritizing also means saying no when necessary.
Plan the week
The next step is to plan the entire week. And if possible use how many days between calculator to plan all weeks of a month. An interesting model is the analysis of the flow of the week, suggested by a Google executive to all the employees of the company in an email that has been turned into an advertising campaign.
According to this idea, our energy and work rate vary throughout the week as follows:
- Monday: Energy boost after the weekend, useful for tasks like goal setting, organizing, and planning.
- Tuesday and Wednesday: Energy boost, great for solving complex problems, writing, creating, and generating ideas.
- Thursday: The energy is down again, ideal for meetings that require consensus between the teams.
- Friday: This is the lowest energy level of the week, suitable for deadline jobs, long-term planning, relationship building.
Effective time management and work productivity
Without a doubt, time management is closely related to productivity at work. In fact, there is a certain tendency to summarize productivity in a simple formula, with inseparable elements that allow us to calculate and understand the performance of our company. For a long time it was calculated as follows:
Units produced / Hours of labor required = Labor productivity
While we should not ignore this calculation, today we know that labor productivity goes beyond counting hours. Furthermore, the working day is not the only resource in question since there are other variables, both qualitative and quantitative, that directly affect the achievement of results by companies.
Therefore, it is essential to establish productivity and performance indicators to objectively measure what can be done to improve. And we are in luck because there are several models and even systems that can help define and monitor these metrics.
How to optimize the working hours of your team?
Managers must remember that each employee has their own job profile. A team member, for example, can be extremely meticulous and take longer to complete tasks. His partner, on the other hand, does more work per day, but without the same level of quality.
These differences can be an advantage; after all, a multidisciplinary team has room for both types of professionals. And it is the manager’s responsibility to assign the correct activities for each person’s profile: the most urgent for the most agile employee and the most demanding for the most detailed.
It is also up to managers to listen, analyze and, where possible, accept employee suggestions. This type of action improves corporate culture and organizational management, which must include a structured and properly managed overtime policy.e
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