How to create time management training

Strong time management skills enhance productivity, reduce stress, and contribute to a more harmonious workplace. Given these significant benefits, many companies invest in time management training for their employees. 

But how do you know where to start with creating time management training? In this article, we’ll help you identify what specific training your employees may need, explain how you can let them practice their new skills, and share ways to measure the impact of your time management training on their performance.

No time to waste, so let’s jump into it!

Understand your audience

Problems with time management can show up in many ways, including dips in employee productivity, a decrease in employee satisfaction, and late work deliverables.

But before you dive into creating time management training, it’s a good idea to understand the specific skills needed to drive employee performance. Understanding that information can help you tailor your training to address specific gaps in their skills. 

A good first step is to talk to a cross-section of your team and ask for their take on why productivity is slumping, or why the team is missing deadlines or feeling stressed. If time management is part of the problem, you may hear them say things like:

• I feel overwhelmed by the amount of work I have.
• I feel like I’m constantly being pulled in different directions.
• I never have enough time to finish my work.
• I constantly forget things because there’s too much to remember.
• I’m always in crisis mode!

If you’re comfortable that you’ve set reasonable expectations with your team members, the next step is to use your team’s input to create some time management training that addresses their needs. For instance, if your team says that they feel like they’re constantly pulled in different directions, this could indicate that your training should focus on ways employees can better prioritize tasks.

Or, maybe you’ve got team members in roles where they’re bombarded with large amounts of work all at once—like end-of-quarter accounting or seasonal spikes in customer orders. Sudden changes in a workflow are real obstacles to productivity that require additional time management skills, such as setting boundaries, delegating, and managing expectations across teams. 

Give learners a chance to practice

Once you’ve got the focus and content of your time management training nailed down, you’ll want to think about ways to get folks engaged with the material. That’s where hands-on practice comes into play. 

With an all-in-one online training platform like Rise, you can easily create engaging and interactive time management training your employees will love. Try combining text, images, and video instruction with interactions like drag-and-drop sorting activities that let your employees practice prioritizing tasks. Or, use interactive scenarios and knowledge checks to immerse employees in a realistic situation that challenges them to practice more complex skills like decision-making, setting boundaries, and managing workloads.

You can even start building your training from an extensive library of ready-made, beautifully interactive lessons on time management and communication topics that you can easily customize with your own material.  

Make sure time management training is paying off 

Once you’ve built your time management training, you may think, “Go me! My work here is done!”

Not so fast!

When you were assessing your employees’ needs, you probably also had some performance metrics in mind, didn’t you? That’s because metrics, like productivity or missed deadlines, are where most training journeys begin and end. Once your employees have taken your time management training, you’ll want to refer back to those key performance metrics to make sure your training actually improved your employees’ productivity, satisfaction, or stress levels.

Again, with an all-in-one system like Rise, you’ve got easy access to completion reports that show you exactly who completed training and when, and how they scored. Then, look back at key performance metrics to connect the dots. Did productivity spike after employees completed the training? Did employees who scored higher on training subsequently perform better on the job? Is your team missing fewer deadlines now?

Armed with data, you can tweak your training for the next group of learners so that they can experience even greater improvements in time management.

Let’s face it: Time is the most precious resource we all have. Respect your time—and your team’s time—by creating training that’s designed to engage and enlighten learners, as well as improve their performance.

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