How can managers help solve employee time management issues?

Time management issues may be personal (re they are lazy) or they may be external (time pressures from other things that distract or otherwise distress them).

  HR in SAP   Apr 6, 2024   97  Add to Reading List
  1. Evaluate Employee Performance. Obviously, there is something not going right when employees suffer from time management issues. But you need to be able to identify them, which of course means looking into, documenting, and observing what is going on. You cannot accuse someone of poor time management, if you have done no homework and present zero proof of your claims.
    I once had a boss that always bemoaned me of “being late all the time.” Both the time sheet and my own log book says otherwise. Don’t blame someone for “always” unless you have proof of “always”.. And for most people, always means 100%. It might even work against you in lawsuits.
  2. Highlight the Problem Areas. This comes up as you make an evaluation- you find out what’s wrong and what’s right, so you focus on the former. If the problem involves, say, commute time from work, then this is a combination of personal and external factors: the worker may be having sleep problems outside of their control, but they also know they work a 9–5 job.
    A phenomenon among humans is known in psychology as “Fundamental Attribution Error”. This is when people misinterpret people’s external problems for personal: for instance, a person is late for work because he is lazy or has poor driving skills; in reality, this persona may in fact have to recently take care of a sick relative or husband’s car crashed, so she has to drive both him and children to work, add this to awful morning commute traffic. These are not necessarily the worker’s own personal fault, and although it is his/her responsibility to manage it, it helps for management to be understanding and not stand at the door ready to fire her for being a few minutes late again.
    Highlighting what is causing or a result of time management issues allows manager and worker to focus on these things, but of course, you need to properly highlight the problem area, and not presume these are the real problems and not something else.
  3. Deal with Distractions. Distractions are things that employees should not be dealing with while on the job, but often find themselves doing. The typical example would be playing with your phone at the desk when you shouldn't be finishing your report. Less notable but actually more common distractions, are duties not meant for the employee, but said employee finds himself doing far too often.
    In my old job, I was the technician and, normally, you expect the technician to do…well the techy stuff. What my boss did, however, was not only made me was the bathroom, take care of stock, hang up Christmas trees etc, but made to take phone calls and the retail desk up front. He even forced me to engage customers in sales.
    The problem was, of course, these are distraction from my job as a technician- I cannot do my intended job when I am pressed to do all of these other things, because I cannot do any of them at the same time. In my case, this wasn’t so much time management issue on my part as an employee, but rather the job description was not respected by my boss, and he had no interest in hiring more staff to improve business.
    So sometimes, the distraction is not caused by the employee, but rather something the employee is suffering due to bad management, either your own part or the higher ups. The solution is rather obvious- you as manager need to address this by arguing for clear job duties and minimizing distractions- your employees should only be doing sales and not running around cleaning bathrooms, because doing the latter means less of the former, which affects the bottom line.
  4. Set Goals for your Employees. Start with little, trivial goals, with the result being also trivial in terms of cost and praise, but very beneficial in terms of morale. For instance, a free lunch on the company’s dime when they reach 150% of weekly quota; reaching 150% of monthly quota means a bonus. And so on. The higher performance goes the better, but make sure lower ones are also rewarded, though obviously not as much.
    This gives employees personal incentive to TRY to improve, with a clear vision of what’s to become when they reach it and beyond. A free lunch once per week is in my mind quite a good incentive to break even, with greater rewards if I go even higher. With a clear vision of what to get, the employee can organize themselves to achieve them.
    Word of warning to managers though: don’t promise what you cannot or will not deliver. No one likes a liar. If you say you’ll give a free lunch for making 500% profit for the month, and don’t pay for free lunch, then it’s not a time management issue anymore.
  5. Periodic Reports and/or Deadlines, ideally using software. If employees are required to report their work every end of the week or month, they have to give account for the time they have spent at the workplace at a predictable time.
    Where I work we need to fill out logs for what we did for the day, which is important for evaluating productivity and what work is being done and the nature of it. It had to be done on paper, and it had to be done every day. That wasn’t the problem: the problem was, what is already scheduled by management is already posted for us, so in reality, we waste a LOT of time filling out paperwork and the mental effort prevents us from doing the actual work. You see where I am going with this: the time management issue is technically on the employee’s part, but in reality, the time management problem lies with the manager who is not properly setting the schedule, and could just do the activity logs for us while we do the actual working. Reports and deadlines are entirely necessary, but making employees do them can just result in a lot of wasted redundancy. In other words, there is a time management issue with employees…but it’s not the employees causing them.
    Software and automation really helps with this area because it minimizes the amount of work done on making reports and allows more time spent on the working part of work. Simple methods could just be texting your boss what you did for the day, maybe what approximate time and what remains to be completed. The reports should be about updating information and less about “I need to tell them stuff”.
    For some workplaces this can be very informal such as my own- if I have nothing to report because no major projects were addressed today, I just say so: I can’t exactly progress if costumers did not get back to me or another department did not act in time. Or I had to call in sick, or I had to fill in on the project of a coworker who is on vacation or otherwise not available. Time management is largely about accountability, so reports should be about that as well. Just make it very easy for employees to do it, reporting is a necessary but also ultimately a trivial component to work progression.
  6. Set an example for your employees. It’s no good to say your workers have poor time management while you also have poor time management. The boss is not infallible, and any who think otherwise are inherently bad bosses.
    Leaders with good time management shows employees how it is done. Employees are teachable and will learn, and it is much easier to learn when the leader is the teacher. Being the ones that do less of the grunt work, management is also easier to set this example. Unfortunately this also means that management can get a bit lazy and believe they can be exceptions to the rule of, say, doing diligent work or being on time. In reality, this will set you up as a hypocrite to the workforce and you lose trust and respect.
    Regarding my earlier example of my boss bemoaning my occasional lateness, he was himself far more often tardy and not available at the company; in fact he would constantly miss appointments he or my coworker would set up. How can I respect someone that not only makes a point about time management, but neither would be respect is own and customers’ time, and his coping mechanism was merely to blame others’ own trivial shortcomings. Employees gladly follow leaders, it takes an exceptionally poor manager to have them see someone else as a boss.
  7. Adapt to your employees’ skills. Not everyone does things your way, and as long as they do it on time (or a little bit slower) and the results are great, why stop them over issue of time? Best results tend to take a little longer. As long as distractions are minimized, the goals are reached, the reports are made and results are great, maybe the problem of time management is simply not enough leeway is granted for employees to thrive.
    I have a coworker that hates dealing with customers, so the best way to apply his greater physical and technical skills is to have him away from the desk and his hands more often touching tools than the phone. Myself I am the counterpart, I am a small fry with lesser technical knowledge, but I am much better at answering phone calls and defusing irate customers. Management took noticed and delegated me as the “phone guy” while my coworker is spending more of his time doing the fixing. This is a positive result of improving time management by our employer, because I apply my skills more towards one duty while my coworker applies his skills towards another. We can swap at any time when necessary, but in the end, there is a system that works…and you make sure no one disrupts that!
  8. Be flexible with employees’ time. There are morning people and there are people people. Some enjoy working earlier and some prefer working later. If possible, try to have it where employees can come later but clock out later: if it suits their life schedule, it would be a huge boost to morale and confidence because they can focus on their work better, knowing the boss and the company is behind them.
    I have another coworker that comes later during the work day but also leaves later: whenever it’s quitting time, he’s always the one that volunteers to close up while we just clock out and go home. This wasn’t even a system that management came up with, we just all figured it was easier and fairer if the “late guy” just sits back at the end of the day and takes his sweet time closing shop while we’re all stuck in rush hour. It works and we’re happy for it. More importantly, we were given the freedom to do that by the boss.
  9. Carefully Delegate Tasks and Duties…or let them do it themselves. You may not always us know which employee is best for which duty or circumstance, so sometimes it is best to let them sort things out together themselves. This gives them both pride in doing “their own work” without micromanagement, and also gives them accountability. Reward that accountability by setting expectations that are fair: the big guy ought to be the one doing more of the physical stuff, whereas the small brainiacs ought to be doing the computer. Leave the when to the workers because they will do it themselves.
  10. Supervise, guide, lead. This is really just all the nine points put together. The main job of management is to be leaders and give employees the means to do a good job, and sometimes this requires letting them do their own thing without undue interference.
    Guidance and leadership inevitably gives you the opportunity to gauge performance and personality conflicts, because your regular interaction with employees give a window into their personal and social circumstances. Some workers may not get along with others, so it may be best to keep their working relationship distance until things smooth over…which can be helped by your own interactions.
    This allow you to identify problems among the workforce and put your leadership energies towards resolving them- the employees focus on doing the work and not muddying the waters. Bad managers fail to do this or even avoid it altogether, leaving the workforce a chaotic environment to point fingers at for self-aggrandizement.
    Knowing problems and figuring out how to resolve them, lets you deal with minimizing distractions to your team.
    You will then have the information to set reliable and workable goals that serve to benefit team building, and rewards good performance.
    Streamlined, simplified reports allow your employees to put in only absolutely necessary time and effort into telling you what they are working on, allowing more time to actually continue working.
    You do all of these things yourself, so you set a good example for the followers to follow your lead. The boss has to lead, it’s his job.
    Knowing the skills and deficiencies of your individual team members means you know where to best apply them and what they will enjoy doing. This makes them happy and do more work at the same time.
    Delegate when necessary as a leader, and let them loose on their own when you’re not around. The end result is you do less work because you invested into the team, and the teammates want to do the work themselves and be happy for it. Everyone wins.