If you have any sense of corporate wellness, you’ll know the adage “Time is money”. However, knowing the phrase, and living it out in your workplace are two different things. Time is difficult to quantify and track, and as such, many small business owners mistakenly treat time as if it were a limitless resource. Yet, this is sadly not the case.
According to a recent McKinsey study, only 9% of executives are “very satisfied” with how employees’ time was currently allocated. Anyone who works in an office will complain to you how much time they spend on trivial tasks, such as responding to emails and attending non-essential meetings, so if your current time allocation doesn’t align with your company’s objectives, what’s the point? You can’t just tell your employees to use their time more effectively; you need to build a corporate culture that actively supports effective time management across the whole organisation.
Firstly, while multitasking is a real buzzword in the business world, researchers at Stanford have found that multitasking is an ineffective practice, as it leads to poor organisational skills, distraction and a lack of focus. In fact, employees are far more productive while they’re in “flow” or, as you may have heard it referred to, “in the zone”. Author and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines flow as a state of intense and effortless concentration on the task at hand, and so you need to foster a corporate environment of silence and privacy, and avoid burdening your employees with unnecessary emails and phone calls. Private offices are also preferable to noisy cubicle farms.
While removing the burden of busy work, try to also cut down the number of meetings you require your employees to attend. A Microsoft survey found that employees spend almost six hours each week in meetings, and 69% of employees feel like these meetings are unproductive. Only schedule meetings that are absolutely necessary and make sure each meeting has a specific purpose. This means you need to make a decision or solve a problem in each one. You should also have a clear plan as to what you will discuss, in what order, and the amount of time allotted to each.