Help your employee become more productive

The 80/20 concept in time management is that 80% of someone’s output comes from only 20% of their efforts. This comes from an economist, Pareto, who noticed that in his garden 20% of his pea pods produced 80% of the total peas. Applying this concept to time management, you may find that in just 20% of your time you tend to produce 80% of your output.

Have you noticed if an employee is not focusing or is unable to get the work allocated to them done? Here are some strategies you can try to help your employee to use their time more effectively and become more productive.

Complete a time audit

Encourage your employee to identify how they spend their time by making a note of the tasks they do during a set period of time and how much time they spend on each task. This may help them figure out how they’re spending their time in one day or even in a week.

It is important when suggesting this task to emphasise that this is about working out what practices work best for them as an individual. They might find there are some tasks that are taking up a large amount of their time and that don’t amount to much. It might be that they are trying to do the task at the wrong time of day and just can’t focus, or perhaps they might not have the skills to complete the task and they need to ask someone for help.

The time audit might help them identify the times during their day when they’re the most productive and get the most work done. Think about the following in relation to your employee:

• Are they more productive at certain times of the day? They might find can work better on certain tasks at different times of the day.
• Do they have access to the right resources to complete the tasks? This could be what is slowing them down.
• Are they in an environment that helps, not hinders, their work? Is there anything around that could be distracting them? For example, is an employee playing loud music that is helpful for them but that distracts and reduces the productivity of others in the workplace?
• Are they are trying to get too much done at once? This could be working against them, so it may help to have some short breaks so they can refocus between tasks.
• Are they trying to multi-task too much? It takes time to refocus after switching between tasks, so if this is being done too much it could hinder someone’s productivity.

Use time blocking and time batching

Once your employee has completed a time audit, they can start considering how they might use time batching and time blocking to help them use their time more efficiently.

Time blocking involves scheduling blocks of time in their calendar for specific tasks. To do this, they need to consider what time of the day they have the highest energy levels, and this could be their most productive time for doing work that requires the most of their focus. For example, you could block out time to write reports in the morning and have a block of time in the afternoon for meetings and appointments. Encourage them to also block out time for their lunch and breaks.

They could also batch similar smaller tasks together in a time block, so they don’t need to constantly switch between tasks. For example, responding to emails, making phone calls, or data entry tasks. They could also batch tasks together that aren’t similar but can be done at the same time or in the same trip. For example, if they need to go to an office supplies store but also need to go to the post office, it makes sense to do these in one trip rather than two separate trips.

Now that you know how these strategies work, consider discussing them with your employee and giving them a go to help them get the most out of their workday.