A company manager or leader’s primary responsibility is ensuring that their team is performing to the best of their abilities.
However, even the most adept managers sometimes forget that quality output necessitates time and energy. But time isn’t always friendly to your bottom line.
Treading the line between increased productivity and employee burnout is a delicate task. You don’t want to be the reason why your team is underperforming, after all.
To get your team to manage their time effectively, follow these tips.
Make Your Expectations Clear and Set Timelines
This may come as a surprise, but in many cases, poor employee time management may actually be a symptom of your management style. When leadership isn’t effective, employees face the following issues:
- They don’t know what work to prioritize
- They find it difficult to say no to heavy workloads
- They procrastinate or fail to finish work they start because of unclear timelines
- They become overwhelmed with far too many tasks
- They seem to always be in reactive modebecause they aren’t sure what their team’s strategy is
Many employee time management issues are really just communication issues. That’s why you need to foster an environment where both you and your team clearly communicate how work is to be prioritized.
Don’t celebrate ‘yes men’ for always taking on tasks. The chances are that they’re unfairly overworked. Allow them to communicate that to you.
In turn, your employees should know what you expect of them. Make their jobs concrete with set timelines so they know what they need to work on first and when you’ll need it by.
Coach Them to Plan and Estimate Their Time
Most people fall prey to what psychologists call the planning fallacy. No matter how quick you think you’ll complete a task, it’ll most likely take you longer. In the workplace, this means missed deadlines, decreased productivity, and potentially lower revenues.
Your job as a leader is to stay on top of the processes your employees probably don’t factor in. For example, do your employees understand what they’ll need from other departments? How long will it take them to research? Are they realistic when setting goals?
Help your employees plan their schedules better by tracking their work with a time audit. While this may cause your team to feel like they’re being individually evaluated, make it clear that this is only an exercise that you need to assess which tasks take longer, what cause distractions, etc.
If you feel like your employees need a break to recharge, why not organize a corporate team building event?
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