Helping your team develop time management skills takes a different mindset and approach than developing the same skills for yourself. Although the process may be challenging, the benefits are worth the effort. The more effectively your team members manage their time, the less stressed and overwhelmed they should feel and the fewer mistakes they are likely to make. As a result, your team should be better equipped to prioritize tasks, meet deadlines, and avoid working overtime.
Ask your team members to implement any of these time management skills to increase their efficiency.
Individual Time Tracking
Ask your team members to keep track of the tasks they spend their time on each day. You may want to use an app such as Clockify to set up projects and milestones for their progress. Each team member tracks the time they spend on tasks that contribute to each milestone. You may want to track your team’s time for 2 weeks or a month to determine their habits. This shows how each member manages their time and how it impacts the team. You can use the information to make changes and improvements.
Eisenhower Matrix
Teach your team members to properly prioritize their tasks in order to increase efficiency. This involves putting each task into one of four categories: important and urgent, important but not urgent, unimportant but urgent, and unimportant and not urgent. For example, an important and urgent task may need to be done by tomorrow. An unimportant but urgent task could involve writing a progress report for the following week. An unimportant but urgent task might be fulfilling a recent request to set up a meeting for next week. An unimportant and not urgent task may be cleaning out old files from your team’s Dropbox. Your team may want to create four quadrants on a piece of paper, include one of these categories in each quadrant, and have a team discussion about which tasks should be put in which quadrant. Once your team members develop this skill, they can independently complete their own matrix.
Time Blocking
Encourage your team to schedule time to complete what they need to accomplish each day. For example, “check email 8-9 am” or “return phone calls 9-10 am.” This clarifies what needs to be finished during the week and when it will be worked on. Remind your team to stay within the allotted time slots as much as possible. Include room for flexibility when last-minute tasks or time-constrained issues arise. Setting aside an adequate amount of time for each task provides a realistic idea of how the work will flow and be completed by the deadline.
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