Managing your employees time

Managing your employees may be far more important than any other part of the business system. Good employees provide positive situations in your business. Let's explore some of the ways you can help to manage your employees time a little better:

The first thing you want to do is to make sure that you have a very clear cut job description for each and every employee. An employee who doesn't know what they are supposed to do can be troublesome to a manager and other coworkers. Your job description should outline specific hours to be worked and the tasks that should be accomplished. In addition, you need to make sure that your business has clear policies in place to address work breaks. These would include 15 minute breaks and lunch breaks.

Next you need to make sure that you know who you have working for you. By this I mean you need to clearly understand the types of personalities and skill sets you have employed. Do you have a healthy balance of "Star" performers and "Worker Bees"? You need both. Orchestrated well they complement one another and provide success in the work place. It is important to find out as much as possible about your employee's knowledge, skills and abilities. In addition you should know what they want to move towards in their careers.

Know more than what they currently do; find out what they have done in the past.
Capture all the training and education that they have completed. Find out what special projects they have done in the past. Even if the subject matter isn't appropriate for your business, they may have strong project management skills that you can try out and build on. Have they trained others.can you maximize this skill in order to enhance your business? Do they have strong interpersonal abilities? Are they your problem solvers or organizers?

When managing employees, you will gain more by focusing on their strengths. That doesn't mean that you don't address areas where performance needs to increase, yet managing employees by their strengths will increase the performance of your team. This means you also need to evaluate your relationship with your employees. A positive relationship will open up the lines of communication allowing you to gather this information more easily. A word of caution: Don't take employees actions personally. It brings an emotional element to the relationship that may be unwarranted and irreparable.

The best way to help manage your employees' time is to set goals with them. These goals should be SMART. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Below is a more specific description of this.

• Specific - This part of the goal is the What, Why, and How. Increasing sales is too vague. Ask how you will increase sales.


• Measurable - It has to be something that is quantifiable. Sales are measurable. Improving one's attitude is far too ambiguous.


• Attainable - Don't get carried away and set goals that are not humanly possible to reach. Don't set the bar too low, however. There needs to be some challenge to motivate action.


• Realistic - The goal needs to be something that the employee is willing and able to do.


• Timely - There needs to be a time frame for your goal. A goal with no end in sight never gets accomplished. Deadlines help clarify what needs to be done and by when.

As a manager your role in this process is to make sure that the goals provide clarity. The employee needs to clearly understand what they need to do and why it is important. Commitment is the next key step. Both you and the employee have to be committed to the plan. And finally, you need to provide support. If you aren't willing to support the employee in their goals, then why would they work to attain them?

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