Every year, companies spend millions of pesos on time management training. We have this wrong belief that low productivity has something to do with our sense of time.
Aside from stress management, time management training is an obvious solution for unproductive employees. Unfortunately, this obvious solution fails again and again. Please let me suggest three ways to make your time management training successful.
What is time management?
Time management is the process of allocating your available time to the most productive activities. It also refers to a person’s ability to use the minimum amount of time to produce the maximum results.
Time management includes the ability to find the best strategy, plan for high-value activities, and take focused action.
Purpose of Time Management
The purpose of time management is not to work faster or to produce more, though both of these can be a result of efficient use of time.
Doing unnecessary things faster or more is not time management.
The aim is to stop doing trivial activities to focus on high-impact activities. As a result, you work less and do better work.
Benefits of Time Management
The immediate benefit of time management is improved quality of life. You can pay more attention to things that matter to you at work. People see you as an achiever. Someone who does things with ease yet produces excellent results.
You also have more time for things that are important to your personal development and happiness. You have time for your family, friends, and hobbies.
You also work with clear intentions.
Invest in Time Management Training
Training is an investment. Successful companies allocate five percent of their budget to equipping employees.
One training program that has an immediate impact on employees’ productivity and performance is the level of time management skills.
Most people have problems with procrastination. That includes me too.
That’s because procrastination comes naturally like gravity. People try to avoid that which is difficult. They work on something less important to justify procrastination. When procrastination is a habit, it is not easy to break.
You need to help your people, not only to break the habit that causes millions for the company but to help employees develop the discipline of time management.
Training Tips
Since 2006, I have been conducting training programs in time management. I like to offer you some tips you can use if you want to train your people.
1. Involve everyone.
I do not mean sending everyone to a classroom for time management training. That will be a waste of time and money.
Time management in the workplace is everyone’s concern.
Do you have 2000 employees? That must be a great problem. but the greater problem is to have at least one-tenth of them wasting an hour every day simply because they lack the know-how of time management.
The training must go beyond identifying the tools for prioritization and saving time. Many problems in productivity can be solved by improving the process.
You can also look into how leaders communicate what’s important in the organization. Or employees’ lack of sense of urgency. Often, I find that the problem in time management is a leadership problem.
Some supervisors, for example, are not effective delegators.
Make everyone understand that your organization takes time management seriously. That everyone is accountable.
2. Invest a day in time management training.
Unfortunately, very few wage earners would want to work overtime for a time management workshop.
True, we can argue that attending one is for their benefit.
However, most time wasters don’t understand this. Some managers don’t want to sacrifice productivity for a one-day training. Let’s use a little common sense here.
A time-waster who wastes an hour every day is wasting 20 hours in a month (given five-day work) and 140 hours in a year. That must be more than 17 days of wasted productivity.
If you are a manager, you know that most time-wasters work only for 3 out of 8 hours of work. Go figure out the numbers!
3. Make training practical and relevant.
There are a lot of training materials that are published for businesses that are just simply boring.
I easily get bored when a training program is not practical and relevant. I am a busy person. I don’t want to waste time on things that do not improve my work.
Many time management training pays more attention to theories and tools that require more time to accomplish than the work to be done.
Another cause is those trainers who deliver lectures all day as if knowing time management will make the participants effective time managers.
If you are to handle the training yourself, personalize your material. Sell the benefits to them by using concrete examples. Get to the point. Your participants must appreciate how your company is investing in their personal and professional growth.
Use your creativity to make lessons fun and more interesting. The training may revolutionize your business, but it is useless if no one pays attention.
Putting some creative effort into the material will also let your employees know that you are serious about time management training, and it will make them want to take it seriously as well.
The Best Time Management Training
The best time management training solves a problem. The intention to develop the skills of your people is encouraged. However, you don’t offer time management training for the sake of having professional development training.
I say this because I often encounter training managers who cannot give me specific challenges in time management. It is simply something that they have to do because there is a budget for it.
This is an intervention. If you have no idea what problem you are trying to solve, then it is likely that you don’t need one now.
If you need the help of my company, we can help you assess your needs. We will design for you a time management training that builds skills and solves specific performance problems.
Let us bring out the best in people. Equip them to do their best each day.
