Tips for saving time at work

Meetings, phone calls and emails – you can’t seem to get a moment’s rest at work. It’s go, go, go in the workplace and you’re just trying to keep up with the items adding themselves to your checklist.

Well, with a few simple tricks and tips you can better economize your time.

1) Avoid unnecessary meetings. Sometimes meetings are a great way to communicate an idea or brainstorm on a project. However, the corporate culture of scheduling back-to-back meetings has created huge inefficiencies in the workplace. People get sidetracked, other issues crop up and sometimes all a meeting will lead to is another meeting. Keep necessary meetings short and sweet and leave out those that aren’t allowing you to accomplish your tasks in a timely manner.

2) Get organized. A recent survey found that an estimated 76 working hours per person per year are wasted as a result of disorganization and looking for lost items or documents, reports Start Up Nation. By calculating the average hourly wage of a part-time and full-time office employee, the source found that approximately $177 billion is lost annually as a result of searching for documents or items in the workplace. You can prevent this waste as a staffing professional by using staffing and recruiting software to track, organize and manage all of your resumes and contract documents. Instead of trying to search for a file, you know exactly where to go to find the information you need.

3) Batch your tasks. Sometimes it’s best to keep a few items grouped together. Tasks like answering emails and voicemail messages use the same part of your brain and the same skills, which means that you can keep on checking items off your to-do list. Set aside time to manage these tasks at designated intervals to make sure that everything is getting done, but also that messages and emails don’t overrun your entire day. Remember that leaving a few messages for tomorrow is not the end of the world and could improve your work/life balance.

4) Create a physical to-do list. It’s not unheard of to forget to do things every once in a while. Therefore, creating a physical to-do list is the best way to keep track of what needs to be done. There are a number of mobile applications, calendar desktops and organizational tools that can be accessed using the cloud and synced between multiple devices.

Looking for more tips to save time and effort at work? Check out www.gazelles.com, where Verne Harnish, author of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” offers up a host of tips and techniques to improve your business time management.