What are tips for effective time management?
- Prioritize your work
- Set measurable goals
- Create forced deadlines
- Utilize powerful tools
- Remove non-essential tasks
- Keep employees in the loop
- Learn when to delegate
Business owners should work on cultivating a working environment that follows time management. It’s crucial in boosting your business’ profitability and has the bonus of having a positive influence on company culture. But, this is easier said than done, especially when you’re a smaller business looking to scale up.
That said, there are a few changes you can make to how you run your business to improve your time management skills. Here are our top tips for effective time management:
Prioritize your work
Prioritizing each item in your to-do list — and encouraging your people to do the same — is one powerful way of helping your business stay focused on hitting goals.
Ask what absolutely needs to be done by today, and what can wait till later. Try to rank each job by importance, following these four simple quadrants:
- Urgent and important tasks.
- Not urgent but important tasks.
- Urgent but not important tasks.
- Not urgent and not important tasks.
Once that’s done, start working down the list. If anything unexpected comes up during the day, you’ll at least have already gotten the most important jobs out of the way.
Set measurable goals
That said, it’s also important that you plan each day. Doing so will help save you time in the morning trying to figure out what you need to do.
And, when you’ve established a game plan for the day, you can also work on a feasible timeline to reach them (more on that later). This is an essential skill for both you and your employees.
Be sure to establish clear-cut and tangible goals, as this helps you measure the success of your work. This enables you to track your progress throughout the month. Once you track it, you can look into where you can be more productive with your time.
Create forced deadlines
Aside from setting goals and making plans, you should also take the time to outline forced deadlines.
Without deadlines, there is the tendency for people to think that they have all the time in the world to finish certain tasks. This may lead to your people’s times being used unwisely.
So, even with things that do not necessarily have a set deadline, force one by announcing when you expect that task to be done. This pushes them to take control of their time, and focus on hitting that deadline.
Utilize powerful tools
Time management, like many things about your business, becomes so much easier when you equip your people with the right tools.
There are plenty of systems and software out there that provide a straightforward way of managing and completing your tasks. One such example is our SAP Business One, which provides modules for every critical operation for your business — including sales and marketing, procurement, finance, and more.
This cloud-based system empowers your people to get tasks more efficiently. It also provides a consolidated record of data, which improves the transparency and teamwork between departments. With this tool, you can rest assured that your employees can get more done, which pushes forward your company's success.
Remove non-essential tasks
Once you’ve integrated new tools to improve your team’s time management, the next thing to do is remove repetitive and lengthy tasks. Determine what tasks are important, and need your people to oversee them personally.
Any task that doesn’t fall under this category should be looked into. Consider what needs to be removed, and what tasks are essential though time-consuming. The latter tasks should be automated — which can easily be done with SAP Business One.
Removing non-essential tasks, and automating certain workflows frees up your employees’ time significantly. They will now have more time to spend on crucial, high-value tasks for your business.
Keep employees in the loop
Whatever implementations you make, be sure to keep your employees in the loop. They should be on top of the new business processes you decide on. And, they should be thoroughly trained to use the tools you bring on to help with their time management.
Aside from that, make daily updates a regular practice. Clear communication between teammates and other departments will help them plan their time efficiently. Doing this will also limit the need for big, lengthy meetings — which equate to many billable hours saved.
Learn when to delegate
When you run a business, your time is often split up between numerous day-to-day operations. This leaves you with precious little time for big-picture responsibilities. Keeping on this way prevents you from managing your time wisely and effectively.
So, learn when to delegate your usual tasks — and learn which people are right for the job. Ask yourself what jobs you must absolutely do, and which ones can be completed by anyone else on your team.
Doing this can save you quite a bit of time. And, doling out new responsibilities and challenges can be rewarding and motivating for your people. They may even do the job better than you can!
Key Takeaway
If you feel your business is bogged down by countless, time-consuming tasks, it’s time to take action. Use our tips for effective time management to turn things around for you and your team, and drive the productivity and profitability of your business!
If you’re interested in becoming more efficient with every hour that your business has, message DynamIQ today. We have the best ERP solutions in the Philippines, and the right modules to customize and scale our services to your business needs.
