Defusing the time bomb

Hurry sickness, time famine, caffeine capitalism – however you couch your terms, there seems less time to do everything nowadays. The good news is that there is a way out. There are, broadly speaking, four simple steps to better time management. Follow them and you'll be more productive and happier in your work. First, don't procrastinate. Putting off unpleasant or routine work is perfectly natural; psychologists even have a name for it – 'displacement activity'. But it leads to mountains of wasted time. So do your best to avoid distractions. One way to overcome the inclination to procrastinate is to focus hard on the outcome – think how good you'll feel once the job is done. Then adopt the "JFDI" principle – just f****** do it. Secondly, plan your workload. Setting priorities is crucial. Knowing what you need to do and by when places you in a better position to avoid distractions and focus on the task in hand. If the task seems complicated or overwhelming, break it down into bite-sized chunks. That makes it less intimidating and enables you to plot a clear path. Some people like to make 'things to do' lists with the most important job at the top, the second most important next, and so on. Lists can be helpful, but beware – don't make them too long otherwise you'll be left quaking in your boots at the thought of all that unfinished business. Be aware also of how long jobs take. People naturally tend to overestimate the time it takes to perform a particular task and then allow the task to fill the time that's left. It's Parkinson's Law in action –'work expands to fill the time available'. Having said that, it is important to schedule work in a way that allows for foul-ups. The rate at which things start to go wrong is often in inverse proportion to the time left to do the job – the closer to the deadline, the more likely a problem is to occur. So start the task as early as possible. Thirdly, be prepared to say no if there are conflicting demands on your time. If a job needs doing, but you don't have the time to do it, then delegate if you can. Peripheral, mundane, or partly finished work might better be handled by somebody else, freeing up your time to concentrate on more important tasks. Fourthly, measure your effectiveness, efficiency and effort. Forget time and motion studies – they are a waste of time (and motion). Instead, make a log of what you do over a typical week, analyse it to see where you can save time and effort, and change the way you behave accordingly. Balance your time between the demands of the job, family and friends... and don't forget to sleep. These are useful general rules, but management techniques are not the only way to manage your time effectively. There are several technological tools under the broad heading of time and attendance (T&A) systems that can help you too. While many of today's time management challenges are, arguably, more prevalent (and certainly less visible) in larger organisations, T&A systems can help companies of all sizes with a range of activities and management tasks. T&A systems include time recorders, biometric time clocks, mechanical clocking-in machines and access control equipment. The technology extends from classic manual clock-in card machines through single PC-based systems to fully integrated, web-enabled, client-server software-based solutions. Computerised T&A offers significant advantages over manual systems. The information will rarely be inaccurate and management can make decisions based on information that has not been subject to interpretation by others. Indeed, instant access to accurate information is one of the main reasons why many manufacturers employ electronic T&A. Indeed, the need for such equipment is growing, according to Neil Pickering of Kronos (www.kronos.co.uk). For him, manufacturing's emergence from the recession offers the opportunity to introduce procedures and processes that will re-engage employees and improve the way manufacturers manage staff. He says: "As demand increases, organisations will be expecting employees to increase productivity and efficiency in tandem, so they need to ensure they are providing staff with the encouragement and support to do so. "This means creating a stronger dialogue with employees as well as putting in place workforce management systems that can automate processes such as ensuring the correct number of people are available for each shift, controlling overtime, monitoring and reducing absenteeism, and tracking direct and indirect labour hours." Properly specified T&A systems do all these things and more, including: - Rostering – Electronic T&A eliminates manual time sheet systems and ensures faster, more accurate and more efficient work assignment and payroll administration. - Job costing – Work on particular components or assemblies are tracked, timed and costed. Some use barcode scanners, others might involve logging onto a job at a terminal. - Overtime – In some companies that reduced their staffing levels in the recent hard times, the remaining people are claiming more overtime. However, the costs saved by shedding people may be lost in excessive overtime. Companies can only authorise and then control the amount of overtime worked if they measure the overtime. One way of achieving this is by clocking on and off overtime tasks. - Absence management – A T&A system will allow you to track when people have been on holiday or off sick to help, for example, if you plan to conduct an appraisal. It also enables you to place a cost on absenteeism as some systems include an analysis program. - Production – Information collected over the long term can contribute to a variety of trend analyses. For example, the productivity of different shifts, divisions or even factories within the same company can be compared and patterns analysed. Time allocated to projects can also be compared against budget. As well as standard manual and electronic T&A systems, the use of biometric technology such as fingerprint time clocks and 'handpunch' scanning is growing in popularity, according to Maxine Carey of Autoclock Systems (www.autoclocksystems.co.uk). She says: "We have found over the last 10 years that biometric solutions are the way most businesses want to go; probably 95% of systems that go out today from our business are hand-scan terminals. People clock in with their hand so they can't clock each other in and out." Many of these machines take a three-dimensional image of the hand and identify the owner from the size and shape. This is important because some people have issues with finger and palm prints infringing their privacy. Carey again: "This gets out of that completely, as does facial recognition. This technology is available now, but we believe it will be the next big thing because it is contactless [and therefore more hygienic]."