Are you looking for ways to improve your staff’s productivity and help them meet deadlines? In this blog post, you’ll learn how to teach time management to employees and empower them to work more efficiently and effectively.
You may have brilliant employees in your organization who have the potential to make exceptional contributions through their hard work and knowledge. But, some of them need help with the effective use of time.
Although people often feel shame for not having a good sense of time, it is not a personal weakness but a skills gap. A person can overcome the problem with proper time management training.
If you are an employer or manager, you can help your staff overcome time management problems by following some approaches. This article will guide you on how to coach your employees to manage time efficiently.
Importance of time management for employees
Time management skills offer various benefits in personal life and the workplace. In a workplace, this soft skill is one of the keys to better productivity of employees. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, employees get more things done efficiently. Here are some of the benefits of time management for employees.
- Improves performance: Employees who learn to manage time correctly avoid wasting time and doing unimportant activities. Instead, they prioritize tasks, schedule them, and remain focused on doing essential things. As a result, they get more accomplished, and their performance improves.
- Deliver work on time: This is the most apparent advantage of time management for employees. When they effectively manage time, they allocate time according to due dates and plan tasks accordingly. Thus they meet deadlines properly.
- Deliver better quality work: Knowledge of time management helps employees to understand the importance of focused work. Also, they know how to schedule time for deep work and avoid distractions. Consequently, they work with full attention and deliver quality work.
- Boosts confidence: When employees know the 4 D’s of time management and apply this idea in their daily activities, they remain on top of their workload. They can reduce stress and trust their abilities. They feel empowered and confident.
- Improves work-life balance: Time management knowledge helps employees establish a balance between their professional and personal lives. They know the value of time and the importance of family and emotional well-being. Thus, they spend time on the things that matter most. The employees feel more relaxed and get the opportunity to recharge themselves.
How to address Time management issues with employees
Before you can help employees manage time better, it is essential to understand their working patterns and habits. For example, failure to meet deadlines is an obvious sign that an employee needs to do better to manage time correctly. But, there are more ways to identify your employee’s time management issues more specifically. Here are some practical ways to follow.
1. Observe symptoms
In the workplace, most people check their email first thing in the morning, keep it open, and check it frequently throughout the day. In addition, some people are perfectionists, while some employees say yes to too many things. Therefore, you must first know poor time management symptoms to fix your employees’ time management issues. Also, understand your employees working habits and how they spend time. Here are some common signs to observe.
- Missing deadlines and rushed work,
- Physical and mental exhaustion,
- Increased backlog and frequent mistakes in work,
- Perfectionism and procrastination,
- Lack of motivation and overwhelming to-do list.
2. Conduct a survey
To learn more about your employee time management issues, you can ask them through an anonymous questionnaire. This simple survey will help you get information straight from the source. For example, you may ask the following questions about your employees’ time and workload management patterns.
- Do you frequently finish projects at the last minute or request extensions?
- Do you designate time for scheduling and planning?
- Do you know how much time you devote to each of your tasks?
- How do you determine what projects and activities to handle first? Do you employ goal-setting?
- Do you plan for “the unexpected” to happen in your schedule?
- Are you aware of the high, medium, or low priority of your everyday activities?
- Do deadlines and obligations cause you to stress?
- Do you frequently get distracted while working on essential tasks?
- Do you often find yourself working from home to complete tasks?
- Do you order the items on your to-do list?
3. Use apps
You can use technology to dig deeper into employees’ working habits. For example, time-tracking apps are handy for understanding how much time your employees spend on which work or platform. You can also encourage them to do a time audit for a week. Here are some time-tracking and productivity apps you may consider.
- Clockify: An automated time-tracking app that monitors and tracks activities on the computer. At the end of each day, it gives an overview of an individual’s spending pattern across websites, apps, and documents.
- RescueTime: Tracks working hours and the amount of time a person spends on websites, apps, and programs. Send a report in the mail giving a summary of daily and weekly activities.
- Traqq: An intuitive time-tracking app that even tracks offline working hours. Reports summary of apps and URL use and activity level.
How to teach time management in the workplace
After you identify underlying time management problems in your employees, your next step is to take necessary measures to educate them for efficient time use. Here are six ways to coach employees about time management.
1. Play time management games
Training sessions often include various games or physical activities to make the training engaging for its participants. Some of the activities are related to time management. Through these fun games, participants understand the value of time and its management while having fun.
You can occasionally arrange time management game sessions in the workplace. These activities will motivate employees for efficient use of time and energize them for work. Here are six easy and effective time management activities listed that you can occasionally run in your workplace.
- $86,400: The participants will know the importance of using time wisely from this activity.
- The ribbon of life: The participants will realize the exact time we get to succeed.
- Circadian rhythm: Find the optimal time in a day for critical tasks or deep work.
- The mayonnaise jar: Importance of setting priorities and doing the most important things first.
- The ace of spades: Understand the importance of organizational skills for better time management.
- Time squad: Identify time wasters and find ways to increase the productive time.
2. Conduct training
Arrange an in-house training session combining time management activities and PowerPoint presentations.
Although many downloadable ppt files are available online for free, make sure your downloaded presentation includes the solution your employees need. That is why it is an effective way to prepare a presentation based on the needs of your employee or team members.
Here are the essential things to include in the time management presentation.
- Key time management skills – goal setting, planning, prioritizing, scheduling, organizing, and delegating.
- Effective time management techniques – Pomodoro, Eisenhower Matrix or 4Ds, GTD, Time Blocking and 80/20 rule.
- Time management tips – The to-do list, Biorhythm, avoid multitasking, forget perfectionism, task batching, take breaks, etc.
Alternatively, you can buy customizable training course material from a courseware provider. The best part is that the course packages include everything to run a training course successfully. That includes assessment worksheets, training manuals, instructor guides, PowerPoint slides, and certification. Here are a few course material providers included.
- Time Management – CorporateTrainingMaterials.com
- Training course material to teach time management
- » Time Management: Get Organized for Peak Performance
- Time Management – Velsoft
3. Hire a time management coach
A coach is an expert in presenting ideas and conversant on all tools and techniques of time management. Usually, mid and large organizations hire a coach to teach time management to their employees.
Here are two lists of time management coaches:
However, you can also search for a local coach that provides training in your area or send your employee to soft skill development workshops.
4. Buy time management courses online
As you’ve identified the time management problems of your employees, you know better what things you need to fill the skills gap of your teammates. Here are five online courses on time management you can purchase for your employees.
- Productivity and Time Management for the Overwhelmed
- Time Management Mastery: Do More, Stress Less
- Time Management Fundamentals
- Ultimate Time Management – Unique Time Management Strategies
- Get Productive: Time Management Hacks, Strategies, and Tools!
Online courses are convenient because they can be completed at one’s own pace and within a couple of hours.
5. Motivate regularly
It is a worth considering approach to help employees pay attention to time management skills. An employee can undergo this process without having any training. Here are a few ways you can do this in your workplace:
- Send short emails on time management tips once a week,
- Use time management quotes in different places
- Hang time management affirmations on the wall
Such initiatives will increase time awareness among employees.
6. Have one-on-one sessions
Everyone works differently. For example, some people prefer to do critical tasks in the morning, while others feel energized in the afternoon. Similarly, some people are comfortable with group work, but others prefer to be alone for deep work.
Therefore, you need to talk or handle it individually whenever required. For example, suppose an employee is a perfectionist and often misses deadlines because of this habit. In that case, you can ask the employee to show an intermediate draft instead of waiting for the final work. This way, you can solve your employee’s poor time management symptoms without formal training.
These approaches are not only applicable to employees but also to teach time management to any adult. All you need to do is identify the signs of bad time management and apply an approach that best fits the person’s situation.
Conclusion
The goal of improving time management skills is not to get employees to take on additional workloads. It is to help them manage time efficiently while having a work-life balance. By teaching time management to employees, you’ll find them more productive, happier, and healthier. They will feel empowered and capable of contributing to the organization more.
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