How Do I Choose the Best Time Management Training Activities?

One of the challenges for a manager at a workplace is improving employee performance. Time management training activities can help a manager improve productivity by teaching employees how to manage work time better and prevent time loss due to distractions, nonessential activities, and other common problems in the workplace. The other side of the coin, however, is that time management training activities should teach employees how to take breaks to avoid burnout or overload. A training session may include several activities aimed at recognizing problem areas and changing behaviors to prevent the problems from occurring again.

The first and perhaps most important of all time management training activities a manager should present to his or her employees is the time summary activity. During this activity, each employee will fill out a grid laid out to the eight to ten hours of a workday. The employee will make a list of all activities he or she undertook during each hour block on the previous workday. All work-related activities as well as unrelated activities should be listed, and employees should have impunity so they will fill out the sheet honestly. This will give each employee an idea of when his or her most productive times were during the day, when the least productive times were, and in what areas time was wasted.

Other time management training activities include experimental scheduling. This means each employee will analyze when he or she is most and least productive and schedule his or her day around those times. Difficult tasks that require concentration should be done during times of high productivity, and menial tasks should be done during low productivity times. If an employee does not show any trends, he or she should experiment with doing the most difficult tasks or the least desirable ones first thing in the morning, as this will ensure the task gets completed and the employee is less stressed and more focused for the rest of the day.

Goal setting is one of the more overlooked time management training activities because goals do not often seem to be directly related to time management. Employees who set goals for themselves, however, will have clear benchmarks for success or failure, and they will be more likely to use their time wisely to achieve those goals. Part of the goal setting is eliminating activities that are not important or delegating activities that do not necessarily need to be done by that employee. This ensures the employee has plenty of time to devote to achieving goals rather than to doing busy work.