How to Help Your Employees Struggling With Time Management
As a leader or a manager of a team, it becomes your core responsibilities to help and encourage your team members to do their best. Whether this means helping them to optimize their work schedule, encouraging them to prioritize their work, and ensuring your team finishes a project on the expected time.
Regardless of what type of projects or works your team handles, for any tasks to be successfully completed, excellent time management of your team members becomes really necessary. However, not everyone on your team can have the experience and intuition to be their most efficient self. Some employees can struggle with time management issues, which can often hinder the effectiveness of the team as a whole.
The good news is that these issues can be resolved by helping your employees struggling with time management to become more efficient in using their time. Here are some expert tips that you can employ to help your team members to be more efficient in using time for more productivity.
Set realistic expectations and timelines
Most of the time the cause of employee time management issues is often self-inflicted. Employees with overloaded works and a short timeline will most likely feel overworked and stressed before even beginning the work. This usually discourages them, limiting their interest and productivity.
When delegating tasks it is important to check that the works are manageable within a set timeline. You also want to give your employees permission to share their concerns about the works and whether the timeline matches their reality. This way you can provide your employees a more realistic and convenient work environment, allowing them to complete work on time without burning out.
Encourage your team to properly plan and estimate their work time
The main element that can contribute to improving employee’s time management is the employees themselves. While you help your team understand the priority of the work and duration to complete them, you can also help them spend their time more wisely. You can start by being active in the planning works and breaking up larger projects into smaller deliverables.
Reduce distractions as possible
It’s easy to be easily distracted by a single message on the phone or the ample of information on the net that leads us to search for something different from what we should. Apart from this the workplace itself can be full of distractions. The music may be too loud, the pace may be too cluttered, or there may be just too many people sharing the same workspace. All this can easily allow your employees to spend their time doing something different rather than their work.
One of the best ways to tackle distractions in the workplace is using Pomodoro time management. The Pomodoro technique is an effective time management technique designed to improve concentration in work by breaking larger works into small ones and setting specific time periods to complete them. In the Pomodoro technique, the working time period is divided into several sets (about 15, 20 – 25 minutes each set), in which a specific amount of work or a task is set to be completed. This will allow your employees to fully concentrate on that specific task and prevent other distractions from hindering their productivity.
Effective time management can be challenging for anyone, however, it is an important skill that is required in every department and industry. If your team members are struggling to manage their time, one of the best things you can do to help them is to introduce them to the Pomodoro time management technique. Start by trying out yourself for free at Pomzen. We offer you a customizable Pomodoro timer to help you and your team manage their time effectively.
