It’s been shown that employees with effective time management are more engaged, and more successful, in their work. As employers, encouraging time management strategies and building an environment for these strategies to thrive is the secret to this success.
According to a research study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, the average employee has the ability to boost their own engagement and productivity just by planning their workday in advance. The study found that there was a strong correlation between the application of time management techniques and better outcomes with regard to engagement and productivity. That means it’s in every organization’s best interests to provide tools and training to their employees to help them make time management a part of their workday, every day […] The study found that the most effective method was for the employee to first consider how many interruptions they expected to face throughout the day, and devise strategies to mitigate them (known as contingency planning).
Employers who want their employees to perform better, need to provide the environment necessary for supporting successful time management. What does this include?
Alleviating frequent distractions and contingency planning for expected interruptions: Frequent distractions and interruptions are never going to be positive for productivity. These are a frustrating strain on an already full work day. Unfortunately, there will always be some sort of disruption or interruption in the work day. It can, however, be minimized. Structuring a work day that includes “peak hours” and “off hours” to deal with the extras that come up in a day can go a long way to alleviating these issues. Encouraging employees to schedule in time in a day to deal with these interruptions carves out pockets of time for these unexpected tasks to be dealt with (without impacting the rest of your schedule).
Uniform planning for meetings and strategy sessions: Meetings can be a huge life saver or killer when it comes to time management. When you create a uniform schedule that include staff meetings, strategy sessions, project meetings and more – you are creating a schedule for people to work around when they are planning their own time management schedules. If you can stick to a consistent schedule for these meetings, it offers enough predictability that people can anticipate the time necessary for that meeting and still effectively plan their entire days around the rest of work that needs to be accomplished.
Scheduling time to plan post meetings: If you encourage employees to schedule a bit of time after every meeting to create new tasks, send follow up emails and jot down notes to themselves, you are setting them up for success. We all walk away from meetings and planning sessions with action items to execute. A short debriefing time after meetings allows for tasks to be created and follow ups to be completed.
Employees respond positively to employers who recognize them and their efforts. This includes recognizing the amount of weight on their shoulders and the number of tasks and projects that they have to get through on any given day. Providing strategies for them to use to practice successful time management will result in more engaged employees who will feel supported and recognized. This is an incentive for people to be more invested in their careers. What are your thoughts on the correlation between businesses supporting time management and invested employees? Comment below!
