Time management

sherrie suski, time management

 

There have been copious articles written about time management and everyone no doubt has their favorite strategies. The below are a few that I have found to be helpful in the workplace and in life in general.

 

Know yourself

Part of being a good time manager is knowing what behaviors prevent you from managing your time effectively. The link below gives you a quick summary spreadsheet for determining what your behavior is to day and what your behavior should be in the future to maximize your time. It is helpful to know when your energy is at its peak- is that early morning, late night or somewhere in between. This will help you to plan critical activities for when your energy level is the highest.

 

Multi-task

I know this is contrary to many time management theories out there, but wherever possible, multi-task, especially when something does not require your full attention. When you give up the idea of doing only one thing at a time and look for ways to do two, you can get a whole lot more done. Some quick examples: If you’re on the West coast, schedule East Coast calls on your drive into work. Owe the Far East a call back, pop in your earbuds and make the call while you’re making dinner. 6:00pm pst is around 8:00am there.

 

Touch each e-mail or piece of paper once

This one is big. We all have a tendency to want to “think about” it for a bit and then answer which is likely the answer you would have given in the first place. Force yourself, unless there is truly research that is needed, to answer right away.

 

Start the night before

A big time saver is to lay out your next day the night before. This allows you to hit the ground running in the morning and not have to stop and get organized. Know what you need to accomplish that day, in terms of key deliverables and follow up items.

Get your follow up items out early so that it allows people time to work on them during the day.

 

Take a break

While this may sound counterintuitive, often times taking a quick 10 minute break will help you to re- focus and complete a task in a shorter amount of time than if you had stayed with it past your ability to really focus.

 

Determine what is urgent and what isn’t

Not every e-mail that comes in must be answered right away. Some of the best time managers only answer their e-mails 1-2 times/day. You would be amazed at how many strings of conversation there are where you are only peripherally involved and if you just let them play out, you can catch the last e-mail and be completely up to speed.

 

Everyone has strategies that work better for them than others. Don’t be afraid to try 20 or 3- and then pick the top 5 that really do save you time and increase efficiency.

HR Systems

Sherrie Suski, HR Systems

The choices in HR systems today are mind boggling.  Everyone wants to get on the band wagon and sell you something that will supposedly make your life easier, is user friendly, (read good UX), allows you to crunch large volumes of data in minutes.  HR systems can be as basic as an HRIS or as complicated as a performance management system with 360 review capability and goal planning and accomplishments.

Let’s talk first about functionality and next week about what you want to look for.

HRIS

An HRIS is a Human Resources Information System.  

This is your basic system that tracks all the pertinent information about your employees.  

HRIS solutions typically track:

  • Training of employees
  • Open enrollment and management of benefits
  • Compensation management
  • Human resources reporting
  • Self-service for applicants, employees, and managers
  • Personal information, Pay information, title, job grade etc..

Performance Management Systems

You may also have a separate Performance System.  A Performance Management System normally includes performance appraisal data and productivity information data. Documentation of employee performance and of how the performance was measured and reported is critical to your employees understanding this type of system.  Many of these systems come with the capability to offer:

  • Performance appraisals
  • 360 reviews where an employee is reviewed by the manager, their peers and their subordinates
  • goal planning, setting and accomplishments
  • Succession and development plans

Applicant Tracking Systems

Applicant Tracking Systems are systems that allow you to create a user/applicant experience.

The application process becomes paperless with an applicant tracking system, so it is simple to store, recall, or purge applications from the system with just a few clicks. This helps to ensure that no critical information is lost and all necessary information is readily available for open positions now or in the future.

Compensation systems

Ideally your compensation system should track all aspects of your employee’s compensation including:

  • Base salary
  • Bonuses
  • Incentive comp
  • Long term incentive comp
  • Equity/stock/RSU’s etc..

It is helpful if your Performance Appraisal system feeds directly into your compensation system, meaning less manual input or expensive integration for you.

Be very careful in selecting your systems.  Spend at least 3x the time you allotted to understanding and testing the system before you commit.  On a personal note, we have had a very bad experience with Cornestone.  While their systems have a lot of capability, you would literally need to be a system admin in order to build out the back end which they require you to do.  They are the farthest thing from user friendly with very poor UX design.

TAH Human Resources 101: Establishing Your Core Competencies

sherrie suski business meeting

In our last article we discussed determining what the real purpose of your organization is, often referred to as your Mission Statement.  We emphasized how important it is for you and your employees to understand why your organization exists, what it does, who it does it for and how it does it.  This is the first stepping stone to building employee engagement and a productive workforce!

Once you have clearly defined and communicated your mission, your next stepping stone is figuring out a way to drive employee behavior in support of your mission.  One of the ways you can successfully do this is to create core competencies as a part of your overall Performance Management system.  Core competencies are particular behaviors that you want to encourage and measure in each individual in your organization.  You will want to think about 4-5 core competencies that are shared by all your employees.  These should be directly driven from your mission statement and the work you will do to support your mission statement.  

It is important to have shared core competencies to ensure that each of the employees are moving in the same direction and the same behavioral attributes are being rewarded across the organization.  Examples of these core competencies might be “Results Management” or “Critical Thinking”.  Competencies that are important for everyone in your organization to excel in.   You might also think about whether core competencies by function are important.  An example of a core competency by function might include “Attention to Detail” for your Accounting team, while an example of a core competency for your marketing team might be “Creativity and Innovation”.  If you are going to create these by function, try to limit it to another 4-5 so that you end up with no more than 10 total.

Another decision point is whether you want to level these core competencies to account for the differences in expectations between, for instance, an AP Clerk and a Dir., of Accounting.  In general, I feel it is important to use leveling as our expectations of one position are different than of the other.

There are many excellent Performance Management systems that exist on the market today.  Many will give you a list of core competencies to choose from, as well as letting you create more custom varieties for your own individual organizational needs.

Think about engaging your workforce to help choose the core competencies, especially those by function.  This will encourage both buy-in to your Performance Management process, as well as drive employee engagement.

Next time we’ll talk about developing goals which you will incorporate into your Performance Management system.

TAH Human Resources 101: Consciously Created Culture

 

sherrie suski brainstorming image

What is culture?  Culture is casually defined as the beliefs, customs, behaviors, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time.  So, just like each society has its own culture, each Company has its own culture as well.  In each company a culture exists – whether or not it is consciously created.  It is created by the way management treats the employees, by the way employees treat each other, and by the way the organization treats its customers.  It is created by the behaviors and attitudes that are rewarded and those that are penalized.  So, if you want to instill a particular culture within your organization, you need to consciously create it, and the sooner you do so, the better.  If you are so fortunate to have come into a blank slate, it is much easier to create a culture from scratch rather than to try and change what already exists.

 

To a large degree, this is the fortunate position we have found ourselves in.  We are hiring a large group of people over a short period of time and have the opportunity to instill our culture from the ground up, at least in the corporate office.  To quote a popular and excellent author, Simon Sinek, we started with WHY.  Why does our company exist?  There are many versions of this; some call it a vision or mission statement, which some use interchangeably although they are different.  Others call it Go-To statement, but it is, basically, all driving toward the same outcome.  How do we all align toward a common goal at the highest level.  Once the common purpose is hammered out and disseminated throughout the organization, which is an article in and of itself, it becomes time to figure out how you will put that purpose in place.  This is a good time to involve the rest of the organization, especially if you are working toward a more collaborative culture.  Create cross functional focus groups, brainstorm ideas on whiteboards or through interactive AV technology.  Work with them until they feel right, like they echo the essence of what you are trying to achieve.  There may be as few as five or as many as a dozen.  From there the real work starts because now each organization has to grapple with what they need to do in order to bring this cultural initiative to light.  These will become the performance metrics used to drive not only your culture, but the performance of your organization.

As a side note, culture can and should be drive by initiatives, performance metrics, goals and other measures, but culture also needs to be driven by the less tangible, kindness, compassion and empathy.  Cultures are driven by the words used and the deeds carried out every day.  They are driven by doing what is right for your employees as human beings.  By bringing in flowers on Mother’s Day, by handing out Good Gotcha’s, by taking the time to listen and to genuinely care.

Next time we’ll talk more about tying Performance Management in an organization to the cultural initiatives and then about metrics and measurements tied to the performance management core competencies and goals.