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Time
Management Tips for Work
(ARA)
- Flying by the seat of your pants is rarely successful in helping you
achieve your career goals. But careful planning and effective time management
can help you meet, and even exceed, your career expectations.
"Effective
time management is an art form; it's something we all do with varying degrees
of success," says Dana Warren, senior vice president of staffing provider
Kelly Services. "With a little planning, even the most disorganized person
can be more productive."
Developing
techniques to help you manage your time effectively will reduce the pressures
on you, and in turn, give you more time to yourself, Warren says. She shares
these tips for keeping your days on track:
* Take inventory
Everyone has
the same amount of time each day to use or lose. The clock continues to
tick regardless of whether we spend our time wisely or waste it on unimportant
activities.
One of the
most useful exercises to improve your time management is to evaluate how
you are currently spending your time. Try tracking what you do in 30-minute
increments for one week. You may be surprised how much time you waste watching
TV or on other things that do not contribute to your goals.
* Identify
efficiencies
Organize your
day so that similar activities can be done at the same time. For example,
you might cluster all the activities you perform with the same person so
you can get more done in your time together.
"By listing
your daily activities and grouping them by category, you'll see opportunities
to save time and work more efficiently," Warren says.
* Pretend you're
going on vacation
Have you ever
noticed how much more productive you are on the days just prior to going
on vacation? You're busy tying up loose ends and making last minute preparations.
"To make the most of each day," Warren says, "I pretend I'm about to leave
on a vacation. This forces me to limit time wasters and get more crossed
off my 'to do' list."
* Use organizing
aids
Using tools
like a simple "to do" list or a personal digital assistant (PDA) can be
very useful for tracking your current tasks and ensuring you meet your
daily goals. "After creating my daily 'to do' list," Warren adds, "I highlight
the 'must do' items for the day. I don't want to waste time on non-urgent
items or fail to meet an important deadline."
* Prepare for
the unexpected
About those
interruptions, changes and occasional chaos: If you're mentally prepared
for these situations, you're more likely to keep your cool, and their impact
on your schedule and stress level can be reduced.
"The most effective
employees we recruit at Kelly are those who can remain composed in hectic,
pressure situations," says Warren. "They project a feeling of confidence
and comfort that things are under control."
* Schedule
leisure time
Finally, taking
time for non-work activities can improve your productivity on the job.
Commit time on your calendar to be with family and friends or to relax
with a good book or magazine. A balanced life is a healthy life.
The Kelly Career
Network matches candidates with open jobs. Visit www.kellyservices.com/kcn
Courtesy of
ARA Content
Employees
Are an Untapped Source of Competitive Advantage
(ARA) – Employees are the most important part of any successful business,
but in many organizations they are underutilized. Seventy-five percent
of American employees have indicated they are not working at their full
potential according to a Harris survey.
“Although there are a multitude of
reasons for this situation, there are three major contributing factors
that employers should be aware of,” says Howard Hyden, president of the
Center for Customer Focus and an expert on improving competitive advantage.
Hyden suggests that employers who are interested in becoming more competitive
should take a look at the following three areas:
1. Communication
All too often employees do not know
the strategy of the company or understand the goals of their organization.
Recently, while conducting a workshop on customer focus, Hyden found that
the company’s employees were ill informed about a recent customer satisfaction
survey.
“I turned to two employees and asked
them, ‘What are the three items on the survey that the customer rated the
organization highest on?’ I then turned to another pair of employees and
asked them, ‘What are the three items that the customer rated your organization
the weakest on?’ The answer in both cases was silence,” says Hyden. “It
was obvious that management had failed to communicate the results of the
survey to the employees. Yet it is the employees that will probably need
to change some things in order for these items to improve.”
2. Training
Lack of training is another big factor
that keeps employees from working at their full potential. “Companies hire
new employees, slam-dunk them into their job, and provide little or no
training,” comments Hyden. The cost of human capital, which is the sum
of the employees’ wages, health care benefits, retirement, payroll taxes,
etc., is usually the single biggest expense in most organizations. It is
also not a one-time cost, but an investment that must be made every month.
Yet most organizations fail to invest in adequate training. “My experience
has taught me that a small investment in training employees is what leverages
the big investment already made in terms of their salary, benefits, etc.,”
adds Hyden.
While conducting workshops on customer
focus, Hyden hears numerous suggestions from employees about adding value
to the customer. “These suggestions were absolutely awesome, but would
have gone untapped had the employees not been trained,” says Hyden. “The
issue is the employees don’t know what they don’t know which is precipitated
by management not knowing what they don’t know either.”
3. Reward Structures
Often when employees are not working
at their full potential it is because the company’s reward structures are
not in alignment with creating value for the customer. Most of the reward
structures for management, and often employees, are based around the financial
performance of the company.
“Rarely have I witnessed reward structures
that are based on the value that the organization and its employees create
for the customer. The old adage ‘what gets rewarded gets done’ would indicate
that perhaps we’re rewarding the wrong things -- or at least there isn’t
balance in the reward structures,” explains Hyden. He suggests that the
plaques on the wall, the marketing brochures, or the words of the CEO may
espouse that the customer is king, or that customers are the number one
priority, but management’s behavior and reward system is based on the financial
statements, not adding value to their customers.
“What gets rewarded says volumes
about what the organization is serious about,” adds Hyden. “Management
behavior will tell the employees what is important more than their words.
I tell managers that their videos are louder than their audios. Behavior
is everything!”
Hyden encourages his clients to have
a management meeting to discuss the following three financial numbers:
1. The total cost of turnover for
one year. The cost of turnover is seven times an employee’s annual salary.
Calculate the annual salaries of those employees who voluntarily left the
company and multiply by seven.
2. The lifetime value of a customer
(how much a typical customer is worth over 25 years).
3. The amount invested in training
new employees for one year.
These three numbers are very much
associated. The issue is not whether or not a business will pay, only when
they will pay. The familiar phrase, “you can pay me now or you can pay
me later” is very appropriate to the situation.
Too many organizations have a short-term
mentality, meaning they are focused on this month’s bottom-line or this
next quarter’s earnings per share. Although those are important numbers,
being totally obsessed with those numbers comes at the expense of longer-term
thinking. An investment in training can have measurable results in many
ways. Hyden warns, “This short-term thinking can clearly lead to cutting
the investments that can ensure long-term competitive advantage. It usually
results in little ‘p’ and big ‘L.’”
Howard Hyden is a businessman and
nationally recognized expert who speaks to organizations about how they
can improve their competitive advantage and employee satisfaction -- resulting
in an improved bottom line. For more information, visit www.customerfocus.org.
Courtesy of ARA Content
