Resurgence of the Time Sheet: Why You Should Write Down Your Workday Activities
One day I walked into my boss's office and said, " I think
all staff should do a time sheet, including you, from
now on." I definitely surprised her but the results of this
request certainly got the attention of all of our staff. I work for an email marketing software and services firm.
I am currently wearing my third hat within this firm. We
have been under a 'massive spring cleaning' for about six
months. We have new staff, new websites and new tasks. I
work in the Marketing/Send Service departments where I have
specific tasks and responsibilities but often I take on
various new tasks. I began to wonder if my productivity
was affected by the quantity and variety of tasks I was
working on within a single workday. This uncertainty, lead
to my request of implementing the use of time sheets to my
boss. In past careers, I had experienced the use of time
sheets as well as time clocks and I was quick to remember
how a sense of efficiency as well as commitment went with
this practice. I printed off a weekly calendar with time slots. Each time
I switched between my tasks I documented it. Often I was
multitasking ? deleting spam and updating paper work at
same time. I was amazed how my little squares for each
hour block could not hold my description of tasks being
completed. Often lunches were consumed while updating a
mailing list or proofreading new copy for our new website.
In my job, I am expected to stay on top of market trends
and ideas ? but in my Inbox I have a lonely folder of 180
unread newsletters and articles. Why? Our company found
the answers in our timesheet and you will too. After tracking our actions for three weeks within our
company, we were beginning to see how unacknowledged work
time, with simple documentation of the five minutes here
and ten minutes there (in an eight-hour work day you only
have 48 instances to have 10 mins) can add up and was
affecting productivity as well as our bottom line. Below
are the results we found from keeping time sheets. 1) We work too much overtime. 2) Committed staff took on various tasks to get the job
done but an individuals' main job was not always the largest
percentage of their daily activity. The sub-tasks assigned
consumed more than 40% of workday time on average. 3) Customer oriented activities are heavy time consumers in
a workday. Good companies survive on their personal contact
and relationships with customers but we were not accounting
for the time it took to conduct basic courtesy emails and
phone calls. 4) Sometimes when an issue occurs within the workplace it
requires the abilities of other staff, which then was taking
away from their current assigned tasks. 5) Holidays and days off for a staff member lead to responsibilities
being spread amongst other staff. A common occurrence though
is to put in overtime before time off and then once returned
in order to make up for time away from the office to return
to your regular pace. This activity has allowed us to recommend as well as implement
some changes within our company, some included:
Undertaking a systemized process of reviewing individual tasks
and actually reassigned some responsibilities to different
staff members.
We also recognized that we needed to review the fee structure in
certain scenarios to warrant the specialized attention we can
provide to our customers. All employees and boss/owner would benefit from doing a time
sheet of tasks, not only to learn more about how you spend
your time at work but learn to be accountable to yourself for
the variety of tasks and activities that you do in a day. Julie MacLean is a marketing manager with MailWorkZ. MailWorkZ
is an innovative company focused on developing effective
emarketing tools. With products like Broadc@st's Email Marketing
Software and services like ezTrackZ online ad tracking, and
the newest addition, Black List Monitor, thousands of MailWorkZ
customers have a suite of products to help increase market share,
revenue and profits, as well as improve their customer relationships. For more information on products or services offered at MailWorkZ,
please visit http://www.mailworkz.com
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