Just In: Effective time and team management in business ®

In the world of business

There is a popular saying that time is money. Time is your most valuable and scarce asset as an entrepreneur and you must spend it wisely. Time is the currency of productivity in every business.

Personal and business time management as a small business owner will directly affect the input and output of your business.

The relation between the outputs and the input is the measurement of a business’s productivity. This is directly related to how you can achieve your business goals.

As a business owner, you have to manage your personal time properly and allow that proper time management be reflected into your business. You have to have the ability to get things done regardless of the time constraint or unconstraint.

One time management tip for personal time management as a business owner is to delegate the less trivial tasks to your employees. This would ensure your personal time is used for tasks that only you can perform.

Also remember to take breaks in between your working hours to enable you refresh your mind and body. Productivity will reduce over prolonged continuous work time.

Concerning effective time management in a small business, you and every team member must understand the value of every business hour. Downtimes should be taken with utmost seriousness and abrasiveness.

Understand what activities generate revenue for your business directly and indirectly and prioritize execution accordingly. Understanding this will help you manage your company’s time and resources proficiently.

Some tips for effective time management in business are -

Create a schedule of activities and have employees and yourself as a business owner stick to it. In a simple manufacturing business, you can create these schedules for when things should be done. Please note not all forms of business will require a schedule.

Set the mood for working hours that every team member must identify with. For example, productions team members should know not to abandon their posts during production hours.

Create a work time without distractions rule, for example mobile phones - in some organizations, you are not allowed to operate your phones during working hours to ensure maximum concentration at all times. Although, this will vary from organization to organization.

Idling should be seriously frowned upon. At smoothie express, we have a zero tolerance policy on idling.

One way to effectively manage idling is to give employees projects to do outside their routine work. That way, when they are done with the routine work, they can work on the project.

Team management is just as important as time management. An effective symphony of a team will bring about productivity. Some of the ways to manage your team effectively are -

Ensure each team member knows the values of the company and exactly how the job should be delivered, such as setting the company’s standard. If the standard is communicated, there would be no need for repeats and furthermore wasted time.

Everyone needs to know clearly how their job roles functions in the organization and how it will lead to the company’s growth or decay. This should be communicated even to the least important employee in the organization.

For example, the janitor needs to know that if he doesn’t clean that spilled water on the floor immediately, someone can fall, get hurt and invariably will affect productivity for the day.

Create tasks and apportion them to team members accordingly. You have to know the strengths and weakness of each team member and apportion tasks to them accordingly.

Make sure you are not overstaffed or understaffed. Being overstaffed will create more idle time and lack of responsibility. Being understaffed will create down times in the business especially in the case where one team member is absent from work for any reason.

Team management is not necessarily screaming at your team members. It is better to equip your team with the right knowledge and manage them properly than to wait for their mistakes and scream at them. This only reduces of work moral and builds contempt.

How you relate with your team on a personal level or professional level depends on your personality and that of your team members. For me, it is important I connect with my team members on a personal level just as much as on a professional level.

I have observed that with this, whenever they have failed in their duties assigned to them, they quickly realize that they have disappointed me both on a personal level and professional level. There is so much motivation and correction in this.

Foster an environment for team work. Share tasks and projects between team members to help with team bonding. Team work they say makes the dream work.

Always show appreciation to your team when they achieve a new goal or set a new record. This will motivate them even more. Also make sure there’s at least one employee’s retreat/team bonding day every year.