Fast and efficient delivery of services and products is of great importance for any business - after all, who doesn’t want their company to be a well-oiled machine? But, if you take on much more than you can handle, and expect continual brilliant results straightaway, you may do more harm than good - your employees will feel pressured, stressed out, and overwhelmed with work, which is bound to lead to a drop in their productivity.
However, if you structure your work days properly through effective time management and proper scheduling, you can avoid the aforementioned pitfalls.
To shed light on the importance of effective time management in any company, here are 4 benefits to time management, that show how it helps improve company culture and the well-being of your employees:
It improves employee performance
High employee performance is a vital element in any successful company - and effective time management can improve employee performance without putting a strain on the employee’s working hours.
To improve your employee performance through proper time management, it’s important to run crucial decisions past your employees, and gather their opinions, predictions, and advice on the projects and tasks assigned to them.
First, decide on the working schedule in agreement with the employees. Then, define feasible deadlines, before delegating tasks to team members based on their relevant skills and expertise.
Perhaps the employees will find the deadlines too lean or strict, based on previous experience for the same tasks or projects, so they’ll suggest different deadlines.
If a team member realistically has no time for a project, due to prior engagement on other projects, you’ll know to delegate it elsewhere.
When everyone knows what they have to accomplish, and within what time frame, they’ll be more focused and more productive with their work.
Also, they’ll feel less stressed, because they’ll know what is expected of them - feasible schedules will help employees plan out their time better, and organize tasks so that they’re able to meet their deadlines.
It makes setting priorities and goals easier
One of the most important consequences of proper time management is that you’ll understand how to set your goals and priorities - once you know how much time you’re given to finish all your assignments, you’ll be able to prioritize your tasks effectively.
Some tasks are important and you can perform them quickly, while others are trivial and take away too much of your time at work. But, if you mark all your assignments based on how important and urgent they are, you’ll be able to identify your priorities for the day:
- Urgent and important task- task that should be at the top of your list, and you should tackle it first
- Important but not urgent task- task that you should focus on second, as it is probably as important as the first task, but its lack of urgency gives you room to breathe
- Urgent but not important task- task that you should delegate to the team member who has the time, resources, and skills to tackle it, while you focus more energy on more important tasks
- Neither urgent not important task- task that you can eliminate from your to-do list altogether, as it doesn’t bring your closer to your goals, but only takes away from the time you could be spending on tasks that are actually urgent and important
It makes making decisions easier
Time is a limited resource to all companies and organizations, so swift decisions are often in order - managers have to decide while on-the-go, and, if they don’t manage their time properly and leave room to reflect on possible solutions to their problems, they may jump to conclusions and make ill-advised choices.
For example, a client asked for last-minute revisions on a project that is close to its deadline - your team has finalized 95% of the entire thing, and the requested changes will require you re-do the project almost from scratch. You have to respect your client’s request, but you also have to reshuffle your schedule, pull additional team members from other projects, and find the time you realistically don’t have. What’s worse, you have little next to no time to make the right decision for all of these points.
But, if you purposefully leave room in your schedule for unexpected problems that call for prompt decisions, such as this one, you’ll leave time to properly consider your options, as well as make a calm judgment and draw clear conclusions that will single out the best possible solution to this, and any other problem.
As a result, you’ll feel less pressured to make decisions on the spur, so you’ll increase your chances of making effective decisions for your tasks, projects, clients, and, ultimately, the entire company.
It improves communication
The key to any successful organization is strong teamwork, and the key to strong teamwork is effective communication. And, once you establish effective time management, effective communication will follow.
Communication improves efficiency and increases productivity in your workplace. Employees who receive feedback for their work, and get rewards for their successfully completed projects feel encouraged and motivated to work hard, in order to justify the commandment they’ve been given, and even improve their work further.
One of the most important points of proper communication is that it reduces the chance of misunderstandings - if a task has been properly communicated, with all the details agreed upon by the team members and supervisors, there will be a less chance that the task will need further, time-consuming revisions.
Conclusion
It’s important for company owners and managers to understand the importance of effective time management for company culture in today’s business world. By putting emphasis on proper time management within your organization, you’ll improve your employee performance and communication, ensure you make better, more thought-out decisions, as well as recognize and define your goals easier and more efficiently.
In the end, time management will help you streamline the culture within your company, by creating a cohesive environment where your team can thrive and your company can grow.
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- Benefits Of Effective Time Management To Company Culture - January 25, 2019
