MAXIMISE COLLECTIVE TIME

Managing time for greater productivity

BY Jayashantha Jayawardhana

Stress at work is something that can’t be kept under wraps that long and has a way of manifesting itself in noticeable ways. At a mid-size global pharmaceutical business, employees generally kept predictable hours at the office but they were noticeably tense and highly stressed out. Many people complained that they couldn’t get their work done at the office and would take it home at night or over the weekend.

Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School and founder of The Better Work Institute Leslie Perlow revealed this in her Harvard Business Review (HBR) article headlined ‘Manage Your Team’s Collective Time.’

When she started delving into the problem, Perlow saw that people there had to attend too many meetings. Poorly handled meetings end up squandering your team’s collective time. Simply put, 10 people attending a meeting for one hour costs your organisation 15 person hours.

Perlow writes: “When I investigated, I found that the company was inundated with meetings. An overly collaborative culture in the division I was studying meant that too many employees were involved in every decision. Meetings were crowded with unnecessary people; employees were double booked; everyone’s Outlook calendar was packed. The only time people could do their actual work was outside normal office hours.”

To solve this, the team she was probing rallied around a time off goal of one day a week that was free of meetings. And on that day, all members worked from home. On the designated date, a ban was imposed on conference calls and virtual meetings. These changes dispensed with office interruptions and impromptu discussions, and also saved on commuting time. Team members aptly dubbed it the ‘Enhanced Productivity Day’ (EPD).

This programme worked like magic – not only as team members could now use their EPDs to accomplish real work but also because it served as a forcing mechanism. To free up members’ schedules, the team had to completely rethink its need for meetings and their duration, required attendance and agendas.

As a result, all meetings became well planned, shorter, more focussed and less frequent.

One team member says: “This initiative is not only about meetings or working from home though I’m usually more productive at home than I am in the office. It’s a change of thinking – it’s thinking about how we as a team operate.”

When other teams in the organisation began to follow suit, managers reported that the schedule shifts and meeting rethinks helped employees become more focussed and do better quality work.

When it comes to managing the collective time of your team or organisation, you must realise that inefficient time management at work isn’t always due to one or a few individuals. On the contrary, the problem goes much deeper and is more pervasive than that.

So the popular fixes recommended by time management experts such as keeping better ‘to do’ lists, not checking email incessantly and avoiding procrastinating alone won’t cut it – except for helping people secure some marginal gains in individual efficiencies. As shown above, it’s most likely to be an organisation-wide problem, which calls for a holistic solution.

Perlow illustrates another telling case in point in her article.

The accounting team of a major international retail business based in the US typically worked very long hours at the end of each month to meet financial reporting deadlines. Concerned about their morale, its manager wanted to find a way to lessen the pressure. His efforts led to a programme called ‘Control of Our Lives’ (COOL), which allowed workers to schedule one afternoon away from work every fortnight.

Since the programme started, employee engagement scores have risen dramatically. Equally importantly, the team has cut back on the time spent compiling month end reports from four to two and a half days. “My team is now more productive, engaged and collaborative than ever,” he says, and reports that other managers too have noticed the change.

He explains: “A grassroots movement has created the buzz needed to get leadership buy in to expand the programme.” Other teams in the US, as well as in Brazil and India, have taken to the idea of establishing COOL afternoons.

Structured time off periods and EPDs serve to boost people’s morale, and keep them from getting fed up and burnt-out. But this process must be carefully pursued without compromising the organisation’s inte­rests and letting down its customers.

Further, since some people are in the habit of making mountains out of molehills, it’s advisable to hire an outside expert to analyse the situation in the organisation objectively and craft a suitable time management strategy that doesn’t lose sight of the big picture.