Your team’s punctuality and time management are directly proportional to your success rate. The more time-efficient your team is, the more productive it will be. And hence, the more profitable your business will become.
However, all of it begins with time management. And ensuring time management in the workplace is quite a challenging task.
With different people, their different natures, and varying productivity rates, it’s difficult to have everybody working at the same pace and generate a uniform progress scale.
Instead, we encourage you to strive for an accelerating progress graph. Be it uniform or non-uniform.
You can do so by addressing individual time management issues in your team.
Here, we have listed six ways you can address your employees’ time management issues.
1. Cut Down Workplace Distractions
Before you jump into your employees’ personal struggles to manage time, address the external factors that distract them.
The most distracting element in a workspace is notifications. On average, people check their phones once every ten minutes. And this keeps them from being focused. It keeps their mind distracted. Thus, reducing their productive output.
So, ask your workmates to switch off their phones or set them to airplane mode when sitting down to work. The same applies to their PC or laptops. Encourage them to use tools that block social networking websites for a while.
As for human distraction, keep a check on your team. And if you notice anyone gossiping or chatting excessively, address them right away.
2. Don’t Over-engage them in Meetings
Often, meetings eat up two to three hours of work for nothing. So, before you schedule a meeting, think about it thoroughly. Do you really need their input in your next step? What’s your objective for the meeting?
If it’s doable via email or other alternatives, opt for it. But if an alternative is not possible at all, you should plan the meeting before calling one. Determine your objectives and focus on them while you conduct the meeting. Keep it short and schedule it for afternoons when people in your office are seeking an escape from their work screens.
3. Use Time Management Apps
Another great way to help your employees manage their time effectively is to manage it for them. How so?
Well, you can use employee time management apps like TrackTime24. It allows you to create an online schedule, assign positions, jobs, and tasks, and mark them complete. It also delivers notifications for upcoming and currently due tasks.
More importantly, you can track the time they spend on work. You can link the app with them to stay connected and track their arrival, breaks, and work time.
It will help them feel more accountable and responsible as well. You can see more about TimeTrack24’s potential on their website. .
4. Setup Milestones
If your team feels burdened by watching the heaps of work that awaits their attention, you can ease it down by breaking it into milestones. Break down their due tasks into mini-tasks so that when they complete their mini-tasks, they can celebrate a sense of accomplishment. It will push them further to do better and achieve more.
5. Keep the Schedule Flexible
You’re living in 2022, and there’s no shying away from being human. You are a human, and you know you have your preferences. Some of us are early risers, while some of us are night owls. Some of us are more productive in the morning, while some of us are more productive in the afternoon.
So, instead of forcing all of your workmates to adjust to your schedule, we recommend creating a flexible schedule as per their needs. Adopt a flexible culture. Make as many allowances in the schedule as you can and check the improvisation in productivity yourself!
6. Practice Planning Fallacy
In 1979, Daniel Kahneman introduced a new approach to time management. Instead of allocating the time required to complete a certain task, he proposed to let the worker decide how much time completion will take.
Often, it leads to underestimation of the time required to do the job (particularly by inexperienced). And eventually, it turns out to be in favor of the worker as he tries to complete the task under the presumed time frame.
We encourage you to adopt this concept to help your employees with their time management issues.
Final Words
When you put these ideas into practice, do not expect an immediate upgrade in productivity rate. Give it a bit of time and let these practices become a habit of your workforce. Once these are deeply rooted in their schedule, your team will be unstoppable!
