Task Management = Time Management

Last week, we discussed how to integrate cleaning up your calendar as part of your annual workplace spring cleaning to help ensure more efficient time management. An important component of time management is efficient task management.

Prioritizing tasks and consolidating information is part of this process, utilizing such techniques as transferring information from various locations and mediums into one, consolidating and prioritizing your task list and calendar by focusing on only those highly important duties and meetings, and creating a more streamlined approach to planning future projects, resulting in higher levels of productivity and more efficient task (and time) management.

Once all of those items are prioritized and organized, scheduling important duties and projects so you don’t get bombarded all at once with a slew of tasks you put off or forgot about is vital to productive project management.

Let’s take a look at HR-related duties and tasks as an example. Many human resource projects jump at us at the start of the year. With January comes employment and labor law updates, and new or modified federal and state regulations. These annual changes typically affect Employee Handbooks and Personnel Policy and Procedure Manuals, and any related or applicable forms.

While the start of the year certainly seems to be a logical time to make these changes (in addition to annual updates such as dates, a fresh look with formatting, or an overall language update to reflect changes to the culture of your organization), scheduling staggered edits to portions of a handbook/manual update throughout the year helps cut down on the time you spend at the start of the year making legal updates.

The review and update of Job Descriptions are another HR-related project that should be conducted on an annual basis, and can easily be scheduled during typical “down time” during the year with regards to client projects and other known duties. Much like staggering edits to your Handbook and Manual, scheduling Job Description edits throughout the year saves you time and stress in the long run.

Efficient task management means effective time management. Contact HRCentral today to discuss how we can work with you to appropriately schedule and make these necessary changes to your HR documentation.