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Let’s be honest with ourselves; when we’re at work, it can often feel as though time is slipping through our fingers or there aren’t enough hours to complete our workload for the day. The previous statement may especially resonate with those working in an HR background since everyday HR professionals are tasked with working in a rapidly changing and fast-paced environment in which stress can quickly accumulate.
Human resources are often considered the backbone of an organisation, as the individuals in this department handle many essential business aspects. From looking after the safety and welfare of staff members and organising any company events, HR professionals have an impressive list of daily tasks and responsivities. This begs the question; how do HR professionals manage it?
The answer is time management. However, even the most successful HR professionals can struggle with balancing their heavy workload. Therefore, it’s essential for those working within human resources to constantly improve and adapt their time management skills to remain efficient. This article outlines several ways HR professionals can reclaim precious minutes by working smarter instead of harder by utilising these time management tips – keep reading to find out more.
How HR Professionals Can Improve Their Time Management Skills?
1. Allocate Jobs To Other Members Of Your Department
As the head of a department, we understand the deep-rooted urge inside of you that wants to handle all incoming tasks yourself. However, no matter how successful a manager you are, one person can’t take on a whole department’s worth of work and multi-tasking can be an incredibly slippery slope once you start.
Make your job easier by allocating tasks to other department members; the best way to do so is by assessing the skillsets of each member of your department and giving assignments to them based on their ability. For instance, you could start by assigning smaller, non-skill specific tasks to newer members of staff or apprentices so that they can begin to build their HR portfolio.
While you and the more experienced members of your team handle the more challenging tasks if that would make you feel more comfortable. Then as your new starters/apprentices get more confident, you could start assigning more significant tasks to them and sharing the workload more equally, which will give you more time for more strategic and manager centric jobs.
2. Automate As Many Tasks As Possible Â
It’s no secret that HR professionals have a massive workload to navigate daily. From time-off management, looking after the wellbeing/safety of employees, onboarding and recruiting, HR professionals are tasked with various jobs, some of which are routine, repetitive, laborious tasks that could save their department much time and effort if they were automated.
With the advantages of modern technology and the benefits it can grant businesses, it would seem nonsensical not to let technology take as much of the workload off your plate as possible. Whether HR professionals achieve this by using simple tools such as email filtration or more comprehensive HR software such as holiday management software etc.
Nowadays, even small businesses can find various types of HR software that can automate many of the jobs that HR professionals are tasked with daily, from performance management to holiday planning. If your HR department is struggling with the latter service, manage time off with this tool provided by Factorial HR. Using their holiday management software turns the days of talking to your workers to manage their absences and holidays into a thing of the past as the process is entirely automated. Browse their website for more information, or contact a team member directly to learn more about their services and how they could assist your HR department with time management today.
3. Rethink How You Attend Meetings
You’d be surprised how many precious minutes of your workday can be wasted attending meetings. Not to say that meetings are a complete waste of company time, as regular meetings are a requirement in business to ensure that everything is in order and that members of your department are working to the best of their abilities.
However, there are certain outdated notions regarding meetings, which HR professionals could do with updating to improve their time management skills. From long, tedious meetings to in-person meetings, there are many technological advances available nowadays that can revolutionise how businesses conduct meetings and eliminate these outdated notions.
Suppose that your business is built-up of a mixture of a hybrid and in-office staff? In that case, you may find that hosting meetings via virtual platforms such as Zoom or Skype. Conducting meetings virtually boasts many benefits for HR professionals, from being able to host anywhere to minimising the amount of time spent waiting for people to arrive.
Or you may decide that the usual face-to-face meeting your department holds once per week is unnecessary instead, resolving to meet face-to-face only when a critical issue arises and any other subject matters are held virtually. Ultimately, rethinking how you attend meetings is beneficial if you often find that your sessions run over the allocated time. Doing so will provide you with innovative solutions for busy periods and help you become more time effective.
4. Make An Effort To Reduce Distractions
It can be challenging not to become distracted and give your workload your undivided attention if you work remotely. Between managing children, delivery disturbances and pets begging for attention, it can be difficult for HR professionals working from home to fight for a level of concentration while completing their daily workload.
Removing any distractions can take a lot of willpower and determination, but it becomes easier the longer you go without them. If you’re someone who gets distracted quickly, you could try some of the following methods:
- Don’t work in a central room.
- Work in a private space with a door.
- Put your phone in another room or aeroplane mode.
- Don’t work with distracting media in the background.
- Avoid working from your bedroom.
- Reduce how much clutter you have on your desk.
- Turn off push notifications and many more.
You’ll find that making a conscious effort to reduce the distractions around you while working from home as a remote worker will help put you in the correct mindset for work and will help you to create a barrier between your personal life and work.
5. Keep Your Workspace Clean And Tidy
Direct correlations have been made between those with tidy desks and their productivity levels, as being surrounded by clutter or general mess can distract our brains and make it harder to focus on the task at hand. Not to mention, when you’re trying to work amidst the clutter, you will be more prone to misplacing or losing documents, which is not helpful for our time management.
Reduce the risk of wasting precious work minutes by keeping your desk orderly, by putting away documents once you’ve finished with them, storing documents that you keep to hand in a filing system and throwing rubbish into the bin once you’ve finished with it. Additionally, try to resist the temptation of allowing documents/paperwork to build up in a pile on your desk, as this will make it inherently more difficult to find anything and create more of a mess than you started with.
Instead, try to get yourself into a routine of purging, minimising, and organising to reduce the risk of your workstation becoming untidy, which will make it easier for you to concentrate on your workload and simultaneously help you become more time effective.
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