What are some of the major concerns of any organization or business? Maybe, effective hiring, employee retention, employee payroll, and smooth onboarding of employees? 

Do they all revolve around employee functioning and well-being? Of course, Yes! Be it time management at work or employee engagement strategies, and the crux is clear, i.e. employee management. 

Introduction

Today, we will be learning about one of the most rewarding skillsets for employees and therefore, organization – time management tips! Managing your deliverables and time accordingly is one very important activity for any individual or team. 

Effective time management strategies for employees can be fruitful for a business as well as an employee’s personal life. 

Let’s understand the basics of time management.

What is Time Management?

A practice to manage time in order to coordinate your time with pending tasks can be called time management. It simply means – to segregate time available with respect to the number of tasks.

The objective of this practice is to utilize the time available effectively. 

Reasons Why Time Management Strategies are Important for Employees

Doing it the right way can help you save time. It helps you perform more tasks in a limited time. Effective time management tips at work can help employees lower their stress, grab more opportunities and so on.

It helps you focus and develop skills like project management, and strike a better work-life balance.

Listed below are 8 Popular Time Management Tips for Employees

1. Buying Yourself More Hours

We all get 24 hours a day. So, how come we could buy more hours for ourselves? Control your sleep. A very popular saying – early to bed and early to rise is just that. Sleeping on time and waking up early could add up extra minutes (or hours) to your schedule. 

Ideally, you require not more than 7-8 hours of sleep every day. Utilize your hours well and do not waste time snoozing. Practice this for 21 days and it will automatically become a habit. 

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2. To-do list

Before you actually get to work and start with execution, there is something very important to be done: preparing a to-do list. At the start of the day itself, you must have a habit to pen down your tasks in order of their difficulties and time consumption. 

This works for almost every kind of person every time (if followed intuitively). You can also frame down your to-do list the day before. This hack would help you in preparing mentally for the upcoming day. 

Read: How to Improve Productivity?

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3. Perform Tasks in Ascending

This is what most people do. Organizing and picking out tasks with less difficulty or less time consumption could be done at the earliest. This will help save less work for the end. Thus, less stress and more focus. 

To understand, take up this example – if you had to eat two live frogs one by one in 1 minute, what would you do?

Mark Twain had once said that eating a live frog in the early morning leaves no worse challenges ahead. The solution here is, finishing off with the toughest and time-consuming task first is smartness. 

4. Quality > Quantity

Quality over quantity is obvious and an agreeable fact. This is to say that avoiding multitasking can be a good idea. Instead, as mentioned earlier, list down your tasks and follow the order depending upon your comfort. 

Committing to 2 or more tasks at once can only be a wastage of time and hampers productivity. A study of Psychology today suggests that 98 percent of people are not built for multitasking!

 So, be proud to be among the majority and avoid burdening yourself with over – tasking!

5. S-M-A-R-T Goals

This pointer suggests not to include goals or tasks just for namesake.

While you tailor your to-do list for tomorrow, keep five things in mind:

S – Specific

M – Measurable

A – Achievable

R – Realistic

T – Time-bound

These five things will ensure you do not make a vague task list, which can not be achieved. Managing time on both these factors equally can help in the best time management. 

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6. Timesheet Manager

Keeping track of work details with respect to spending hours/ minutes can help improve productivity and helps you finish your work on time. Timesheet management is one of the successful time management tips at work. 

Managing a remote employee can be a challenge for enterprises and management. Here, online timesheet management software can be one of the greatest tools for a business. 

Read – How to Stay Motivated and Effective while WFH?

7. Distractions

Social distractions like mobile phone, television, and similar things, prove to be challenging for employees. Spam emails and calls can easily get you distracted and put you on an escalated time diner. You need to prevent and eliminate distractions as much as you can.  

Here’s a tip – Try keeping your mobile phone behind your PC or laptop while you are working!

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8. Take Breaks

Break! Break! Break! Without regular intervals or breaks, work can be less productive and unhealthy at times. 

Resting in between like a quick nap or preparing to eat can be amazing to refresh your mind. Frequent breaks (like 10-15 minutes) can keep you running.

9. Be conscious of the fact that you are spending your time

There are times when people are spending their time without being cautious of what they are doing. Time goes out of the window without taking it into account. 

One of the important time management tips would be to have certain time-check tools handy which bring accountability and measurability. The individuals can track where they have spent their time and doing what such as social media, shopping, etc.

10. Create a schedule and follow it 

Often, the individuals do not perform tasks in any particular manner, they are just doing the work, but nothing gets accomplished. They blame not having enough time for their low productivity. 

The best time management tips for employees, and everyone would be to create a schedule mentioning tasks and timelines. This allows for better utilisation of time and the individuals can perform their work by giving undivided attention.

11. Prioritise

When there are one or more tasks at hand, it becomes helpful to prioritise the work otherwise everything becomes very cluttered and difficult to manage. The best way to prioritise tasks is to break them down into smaller tasks and categorise them based on what needs to be done at the earliest and what can be done later. It can serve as important time management tips for work.

12. Set time limits

One of the effective techniques to manage time effectively is to set time limits for yourself while handling your work. If you have a full day or a week to finish a task and it can be ideally within six hours, then you should consider sitting for three hours divided into small breaks and finish that task at the earliest on the same day itself. 

Also Read: Job Oriented Short Term Courses

Takeaway

These eight popular tips can definitely help you foster your employees and improve business outcomes. Do not forget to implement them and evaluate results. See what works best for you. 

Time management can do wonders for an individual or business. Educating yourself with the right tips, and strategies can help you for sure. There are many trusted resources with the best promising content and tips for business management.

These are a few easy & productive things to do in quarantine to help lighten the mood at your home. Every cloud has a silver lining, and remember, this too shall pass!

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