How To Make Time For Your Employees?
I want you to put yourself in the shoes of the employee. All they really want from a job is to grow. They want to learn new things, meet new people, and develop habits that will help their career thrive. All this shows us that what they want are purpose and direction. But what they need is guidance.
As I preach giving time to the employees, I can’t help but reminisce about a certain mentor who taught me these values first hand.
It was this one job where I had joined as a trainee. I’d been around enough to know that if I actually wanted to learn anything, I would have to take the initiative to feed my curiosity. Before this, all I had were bosses who thought giving guidance was equivalent to spoon-feeding. But this new mentor didn’t think so.
She was willing to spill answers and devote time to talk to me about my shortcomings and the ways I could improve on the same. And soon after, I started to notice that she gave the same attention to employees who weren’t “just” trainees.
The amount of time she devoted to the team showed how much she was invested in its growth.
There are so many lessons I took away from that 6 months short training period. And, I learned a lot from her simply because she gave me her time.
Coming back to today, I am managing ProofHub and trying my best at implementing everything I learned from her.
It was her greatness to devote time to me so I could learn and grow. But since this is a tactic that works so well for everyone, it should be a staple in every manager’s leadership style.
What I learned, and what I want you to take away from this excerpt is that your employee looks up to you.
They expect validation from you which is measured in the amount of time that you devote to them.
Why Do Employees Need Your Time In The First Place?
In our time as leaders, we try to come up with innovative solutions for team management. We falter by burying our heads thinking of ways to improve engagement, morale, and above all, productivity. After all, nurturing employees for the growth of the brand plays a major role in our jobs. But we tend to overlook that fact.
So much so, that we forget all our employees really need is our time. While managing time we make grave time management mistakes by not making room for the one real aspect of work that has brought us actual success- the employees.
Giving time to our employees helps us with an improvement in:
- Office morale: You will see a steep rise in office morale as you show more involvement around the office and the work of your teams.
- Team engagement: When you try to increase your engagement in the workplace, be it with work talk or fun activities, you will also be inspiring your team to participate.
- Motivation to work: As you take more interest in your employees’ work and performance, they take it as an opportunity to give even better results.
- Collaboration: When you tend to mesh up with these employees, you bring into the picture, qualities of acceptance and as the team culture thrives, so does collaboration.
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Time To Make Some Time For The Team
Rome was not built in a day, and similarly, you cannot hope to make a drastic change in your schedule to accommodate your employees all at once. So consider these steps and try to follow them one at a time.
#1 Time For Some One-on-one
Group meetings are a good way to gather up people and run ideas, but one-on-one communication with the employees has its own perks.
- It helps you develop a rapport with the employees which helps in the development of trust.
- It also helps the employees open up and gain this new comfort zone with management.
- Issues and concerns can also be brought to light, discussed, and solved with one-on-one communication.
- And, it helps the whole team feel seen and valued.
One-on-ones when scheduled, can give you great results in morale, engagement, and productivity. But remember, when you schedule these, you have to keep up with your commitment and refrain from rescheduling.
#2 Say No To Extra Work
If you want to dedicate your time to your team but you just can’t find some, you’re working to preserve the wrong assets. Time spent with the team is time invested. So you must say no to extra work.
You cannot say yes to everything- reviewing work, doing your own thing, taking calls, and talking to clients. All of this cannot and should not fit into one day. As it has been so rightly said by Oprah Winfrey — “You can have it all. Just not all at once.”
- As leaders, we need to keep account of where exactly our time is being spent. Therefore, analyze what you are spending time on.
- If your schedule is already packed, don’t try to jam another task in there.
- Set a schedule or a timetable for every task so it is easy for you to know which meeting or task you can add to it.
#3 Prioritize Ruthlessly
When you say no to extra work you start to tread on a path of prioritization. The core of time management is that we focus on what matters most. Paying attention to your schedule you would find that you often tend to procrastinate certain tasks this creates a backlog in your whole timetable. Avoid this by prioritizing ruthlessly.
- You could start by going through your schedule and categorizing the tasks.
- Try to put the recurring tasks as your first priority in the schedule.
- According to deadlines, make way for the most important tasks in the second position and so on.
- Minimize meetings that do not particularly yield great results.
Ultimately, when you find room in your schedule, you will be able to spend more time nurturing your employees.
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#4 Save Time For Brainstorming
Another way to spend time with your employees is by conducting brainstorming sessions. Call in brainstorming meetings with a set agenda and watch the ideas floating around. This is a very powerful tool in making time for employees because it helps you in more than one way. For example:
- It gives the employees a chance to shine by putting their best foot forward.
- It helps the team learn more about the goals they share and are working towards.
- It gives them the sense that they are valued team members whose inputs are being taken seriously.
And remember, the only agenda to follow for a successful brainstorming session is to listen to everyone’s ideas and acknowledge them.
#5 Follow Through With Punctuality
To spend time, you need to save time.
It is possible that you might see a shift in your schedule every day. It could be minutes or it could be an hour. This is the time that you couldn’t use for any productive activity.
Sometimes we tend to stretch meetings for a little longer or try to explore a task into new depths. This takes up a lot of our time. The best thing to do in this scenario is to schedule absolutely everything.
A time management tool like ProofHub could help you a lot with scheduling since it allows you to:
- Make timesheets.
- Track time corresponding to performance.
- Set timers.
- Schedule timely alerts.
This way you will never lose track of time and hence, spend it more judiciously. At our workplace, this tool helps me take care of all my meetings and keeps me ahead of schedule.
#6 Use Time Management Tools
There are many other benefits of using time tracking and management tools. These software keep you notified about the status of time adding up to the performance.
The only way I have been able to make time for my employees all these years is because I was able to see clearly where it was going.
ProofHub, for example, helps us view our tasks, meetings, scheduled phone calls corresponding to the day, date, and time. This keeps not only me but my staff informed and more concerned with how we can use time more productively.
It helps us view our tasks and the timeline of the whole project easily with Gantt charts and calendar views. These help us be punctual and be warier of how we use our time. Now as a team, we never miss a deadline and can work together in harmony.
To Conclude
Validation is important. A parent looks for it in the laughter of their children and a teacher looks for it in the results of the student. And similarly, you look for it in the growth of your business. But the business doesn’t grow unless the people responsible for its existence do.
Allow your team to grow and prosper by giving them your time and subsequently your guidance. Remember that your time is valuable because it determines the growth of the entire team of talented employees who have the potential to become mighty assets.
With conscious efforts to prioritize work and communicate with your team and stepping it up with a reliable time management tool, you can easily get there!
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