Management Challenge #5: When Employees Have a Hard Time Managing Time
Excerpted from The 27 Challenges Managers Face
Before you engage in any tug of war over time-management with any of your employees, first make sure you really understand the true time requirements of the jobs in question. In certain jobs it is critical that employees be faithful to a very precise schedule: Those are jobs where the employee’s physical presence at a specific place and time is essential to his/her work. It might be a factory where shifts are timed to keep the production machinery working around the clock. In retail, somebody needs to be there to open the store, first thing, and close the store, last thing, not to mention in between when customers might want to shop. In a hospital, you need coverage all the time because you can’t have patients there without health care providers. Whenever “coverage” is the critical time management factor, everybody has much less flexibility, so everybody needs to work harder to make it work.
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FROM OUR RESEARCH:What about the employee who is chronically late, leaves early, wastes time and/or takes too many breaks?There’s a good chance the employee would benefit greatly from some aggressive coaching on time-management.
Are some employees insulted or annoyed by the explicit focus on the petty details of living by a schedule? Perhaps they are. But almost always they start coming in on time, staying all day, and taking fewer breaks, at least for a while. A lot of employees will be genuinely grateful for your helping them understand how they are using their time and get better at living by a schedule. |
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MY NEW BOOKFree Online Training with PreorderBruce’s newest book, The 27 Challenges Managers Face, will hit the shelves in September. Here’s your chance to be one of the first to benefit from this important book and, for each book purchased, receive Bruce’s 59 lesson video training course It’s Okay to Be the Boss for free! (A $59 value). Find out more! Coming to bookstores everywhere September 15 from Wiley/Jossey-Bass. Preorder Now!
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FROM BRUCEI guess I should warn you, I’m going to be focused on my forthcoming book for the foreseeable future. The 27 Challenges Managers Face: Step-by-Step Solutions to (Nearly) All of Your Management Problems is coming out in September! There is so much in the book, I’m just going to keep offering previews of the concrete management problems and step-by-step solutions to those problems. Click here for a digital sampler. I hope you like the previews enough to order the book for yourself and every manager you know. If you really love it, maybe you will go to Amazon and give me a great review… In any case, I’d love to get your feedback. Please let me know what you think. Until next time… Stay strong! Bruce P.S. Check out this advance review of my new book by Human Resource Executive’s Kristen Frasch. |
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RAINMAKERTHINKING IN THE NEWSHuman Resource ExecutiveThe 27 Challenges Managers Face July 28, 2014 Huffington PostThe Challenge of Coming From the Outside to Take Over an Existing Team July 20, 2014 Training MagazineJuly 18, 2014 Wealth Management.comThe Challenges of Being a Branch Office Manager Newbie July 14, 2014 FinancialTimes.comPortrait of a young City banker July 9, 2014 Progressive GrocerExpert Column: Management Challenge #5 June 26, 2014 QSR MagazineStarbucks Makes the Grade: Coffee quick serve invests in higher education for employees. June 2014 Progressive GrocerMgmt. Challenge #1: From Peer to Leader June 23, 2014 Welding & Gases Today OnlineJune 21, 2014 Convenience Store NewsJune 11, 2014 |
VIDEO TIPUse Your Time WiselyThis video is from lesson #9 in the RainmakerThinking.training course “It’s Okay to Manage Yourself”
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