You arrive at the office one morning and switch on your computer, only to find hundreds of new emails awaiting your reply. You sit down to start tackling your inbox, but your phone soon lights up with a calendar reminder about your upcoming meeting. After your client leaves, it’s time for a debrief with the rest of the team and, before you know it, it’s already lunchtime.
Sounds familiar?
Time – one of the most valuable resources both in our professional and personal lives – can be a tricky thing to manage. But failing to keep track of time can result in many more precious hours being lost. Time drains are difficult to avoid, but not impossible to manage. By identifying your most common time drains, you can save a significant amount of time and resources for your business.
While it may not be possible to eliminate these time drains completely, understanding how time is being used up by your team can help you improve performance. A time logging system could be your business’ missing piece to help your team thrive.
It’s time to think about whether these time drains are costing your company money!
1. Meetings
If there’s one lesson we all learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic it’s this: some meetings could have just been emails! Meetings, whether face-to-face or online, can be a significant time drain for any organisation, especially if they’re held without a clear agenda or purpose as this often leads to unproductive discussions. Meetings can also be scheduled too frequently, resulting in lost work time for employees. By logging time spent in meetings, organisations can identify which meetings can be shortened, eliminated or combined to free up more of their team’s calendar.
2. Email
Email is another common time drain that is likely costing your company more money than it’s worth. Constantly checking and responding to emails can be a major distraction that consumes valuable work time. Employees can spend hours each day sorting through their inboxes, leading to a decrease in productivity. Logging time spent on email can help your team understand their emailing habits, and come up with a routine that saves time. Using this data, employees can confidently establish clear boundaries for when they will check and respond to emails, allowing them to focus on other tasks during work hours.
3. Multitasking
Multitasking may seem like a time-saving strategy, but in reality, it can be a major time drain. Switching between tasks comes at a cost, as it takes time to pick back up from where you left off on each task. By logging time spent on different tasks, employees can be encouraged to focus on one task at a time, establishing a clear workflow and prioritising tasks effectively.
Reducing time drains is one of the most important factors to consider when looking to boost productivity. But first, you need to understand where time is being lost.
Start logging time and generate reports easily with hidma. Book a call at the link below to see how hidma can help your team manage their time better!
https://calendly.com/hidma/60min
