all Daylight Saving Time is the one weekend a year we can “get back” time. You may use that hour to catch a little extra shut eye, get a little more done around the house or spend extra time with loved ones. We’re using the awareness of that hour, though, to think about the value of time.
Where do you spend your time at work?
There are probably tasks you complete on a regular basis that are overly time consuming. Sometimes, putting in the time and energy is important to a specific outcome and completely unavoidable. Other times, though, there are many ways to increase efficiency and reduce time waste.
A great place to start is understanding how you’re spending your time already. There are plenty of free apps to track your time, or simply commit to writing down your activity on paper and pen. Do this for only a few days and your mind will be blown!
How much time are you wasting looking for customers?
The old adage is it takes 7 touchpoints to turn a potential customer into a sale. Creating and managing all these touchpoints takes time and effort.
Finding leads is time consuming, there’s not much more to it than agreeing this is fact. Then, when you’re bidding on a project, you may have 1 or more meetings with a potential customer, to understand the project and build your relationship, plus team meetings to come up with a proposal and submit your bid.
All of this time adds up, and there has to be ways you can cut back and make more effective use of your precious hours.
6 Ways to Get Back Time and Boost Workplace Effectiveness
Many people fall into the trap of a never ending To Do list, constantly behind on projects and never having enough time for all of it. When your current responsibilities outweigh the time you have available, it’s important to start looking for ways to create efficiencies that give you back more time.
Here’s 6 ideas to create efficiencies in the workplace:
- Create a routine: Creating a flow to your day, or even to your week (ie: Mondays are for this and Tuesdays are for that), saves time because it means you’re not recreating your To Do list each week.
- Block off a specific time for email: If you work with your inbox open all day, you’re likely interrupting your focus too often and therefore working inefficiently. Plus, you may pause what you’re doing and respond to a task that really isn’t urgent. Set aside specific time to go through email, and then schedule out tasks from there.
- Save questions for co-workers for meeting times, when possible: Similarly, not everything that needs asking needs an answer right away. If a question can be discussed during a scheduled meeting time, or if you’re likely to end up with a list of non urgent questions - that maintain your focus and ask your questions during a single conversation.
- Delegate tasks to others when it makes sense: We all have strengths and weaknesses, and its important to recognize that when it comes to saving time that impacts the bottom line. If someone on your team is great at a task while you struggle, then passing it along may make more sense. Also, consider the cost of your time and that task when deciding what to delegate - you may come up with more options.
- Which leads us to … outsource certain jobs that may be wasting staff time: Freelance and contracted work are more common these days, and it may be useful to research outsourcing certain parts of your operations so your team can focus on what it does best.
- Hire a marketing firm! Who on your team is currently in charge of sales and marketing? Usually, the person doing this at many manufacturing companies has a skillset better spent somewhere else, and outsourcing this task would actually have a high impact on your bottom line. With a marketing firm leading the effort, leads come in more easily and people at your company regain loads of time to do something more beneficial.
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