Boost Efficiency & Retention: 7 Time Management Strategies
If you're struggling with declining employee performance, productivity, and retention, have you considered time management strategies?
When employees don't manage their time well, they take on too much, rush through tasks, and miss deadlines. They have low energy and a poor work ethic.
And while time management is an individual's responsibility, managers play an important role in providing employees with a manageable workload and helping them meet their priorities. If this is not the case, employees will burn out and leave the company, negatively impacting employee retention.
Time management can transform your team and your company. In the remainder of this article, you will learn how and what you can do to give more time back to your employees.
The positive effects of efficient time management strategies
Healthy, satisfied employees are the heart of every successful company. Fortunately, time management is linked to employee health and well-being.
For example, poorly managed time can increase stress. Workers feel like they have so much work to do and not enough time to do it, leading to high levels of stress and a decline in productivity and efficiency.
In addition, stress can not only lead to anxiety, depression and other mental health problems, but can also affect physical health, with consequences such as:
- Muscle tension;
- Frequent migraines;
- Shortness of breath and rapid breathing;
- Pain, bloating and other intestinal problems;
- Increased risk of high blood pressure, heart attack or stroke.
Long working hours due to inefficient time management also affect your employees' oral health.
You don't get as much sleep, which can lead to teeth grinding. You will be too tired to attend to dental visits and oral hygiene. Plus, all the coffee they drink to stay awake stains their teeth and promotes bad breath and tooth decay.
Not only will their oral health improve, but so will your employees' overall well-being when time management is a priority. Employees are less stressed, which leads to greater satisfaction and productivity. They are mentally and physically fit enough to do their best every day.
Improving time management in your company through strategies like setting goals and leveraging automation also results in:
- Streamlined processes;
- Improved work-life balance;
- Consistently meeting deadlines;
- Better industrial relations;
- More time to work on projects that advance your business;
- Improved trust between managers and lower level employees.
There is no denying that efficient time management can have a positive impact on your employees and your business.
What can you do to improve your time management strategies?
Given the above benefits, you're probably wondering what you can do now to improve time management in your company.
Start with a simple brainstorming session on how you can send your employees home early without compromising results.
1.Flexible scheduling
When your employees can go home at a convenient time each day, they have the chance to better balance their work lives and be more productive and happier. This will also make them want to stay with your company longer.
Therefore, consider flexible work schedules that allow employees to choose the days they work in the office or remotely, as well as their working hours.
A 4-day week is another way to help your employees spend more time at home and on their personal passions. Employees learn to work more efficiently during workdays, while also having enough time to relax and engage in their personal lives, which improves their performance.
There are a few other steps you can take to make good use of time in your company.
2.Remove unimportant things
When entrepreneurs sit down and analyze the day-to-day operations of their team, they will find at least a few things that are not vital to their business and can be eliminated or reduced. Take meetings, for example.
If you were to add up all the hours you've spent holding meetings with your employees that turned out to be unnecessary, you'd probably come up with a staggeringly high number. All the time you spent on these meetings could have been used elsewhere or on something more urgent to the success of your business.
Cut meetings and anything else you deem “unimportant” to your team so they can have more time for meaningful work.
3.Start every day with a clear goal
Many entrepreneurs neglect to start their team's day with a clear focus. Tasks are simply carried over from the previous day and the teams work on them until they are finally finished. This leads to a stagnant team with low energy.
Even if you focus on the same or similar task as the day before, you should reinforce the day's focus every day. It will then be much easier for employees to plan their day. It also helps them prioritize tasks when they know what is most important to get done.
4.Training employees in time management strategies and techniques
Sharing information about time management techniques with your employees isn't enough if you want them to adopt these strategies.
Make this part of the formal training you provide your employees when they are hired. Then add time management courses as you learn additional strategies that will benefit your specific team. You can also be proactive when hiring and try to create job descriptions that will help you find candidates with good time management skills. This will also help you retain applicants over time. Because that way you know you hired the right person for the job the first time.
It is also a good idea to regularly review your training processes and ensure that your employees are regularly informed about good time management practices. Create opportunities for your team members to share what works for them as company processes change and evolve. You can also evaluate your current workflows to see if there are ways to streamline them and ensure your team is using their time wisely.
5.Optimizing workflows to better use time management strategies
Time management is not just about how a team member works and what their priorities are. It's also about how your company functions as a whole and how each individual employee handles projects. As technology improves, markets evolve, and the makeup of your team changes, it's important to self-examine your workflow. So you want to see if you are doing things as efficiently as possible.
If you want to improve workflows in your company, you should consider why process improvements can fail. Make sure your process improvement is as simple as possible and that someone is responsible for the new plan to overhaul daily workflows. Involving employees in this process can also help ensure everyone is excited about the new procedures. Below are some ways you can improve your workplace processes.
6.Use digital tools
Technology can be a huge benefit to your team members when used correctly. You can determine what the most important tasks are and ask your team members to prioritize their workflows to complete these types of projects. These projects often require creative thinking, quick rethinking or have high stakes. Other projects with lower stakes could benefit from automation or other streamlining measures. Often your employees can complete these tasks when their energy levels are not high.
Additionally, these tasks are often repetitive.
Let's say you want to update your careers page with job descriptions that will help you find the best candidates. However, you only have limited time and resources to do this. Instead of writing each posting individually, you can use AI and automation to create job descriptions without having to spend countless hours.
Using technology in this way is also particularly useful if you don't want the final copy to contain racial or gender bias. These problems can arise when a human writes the descriptions alone.
Remember, using technology to improve your time management at work doesn't have to be complicated. Even using a cloud sharing app like Google Drive to store important information that everyone needs to access can ensure that no one has to spend time searching for a file. In this example, you could even create a job description template that you can get started with right away to take the guesswork out of the process.
7.Focus on collaboration
Collaboration is an essential part of time management, as having multiple people working on a project can be highly beneficial - if done right. An excessive number of team members or those who are unclear about their specific tasks can complicate the process and sometimes cost you time.
Technology can help you do this by giving you the collaboration tools necessary for this process. This could be project management software, shared calendars, or document sharing in the cloud. This way you can ensure team members have the right information at hand when they need it. They can also provide real-time feedback and updates.
Your knowledge base should also be shareable and on a platform that encourages collaboration. This means all employees can access information about processes that they may not use regularly. For example, depending on the size of your company, hiring processes may only be effective a few times a year. This also means that you can continually update your knowledge base. This will save you time in the long run. When you have the most up-to-date information, your team can avoid making mistakes based on outdated information. This also means that you don't have to start from scratch if you need to redesign your business processes in the future.
Implementing effective time management strategies can revolutionize your workplace culture, leading to happier, more productive employees. With tools like IceHrm, streamline workflows and foster a more efficient work environment.