Time Management Tips For HR Professionals

by

HR is an important part of any organization, they serve as the link between the employee and upper management. 

No doubt they have mountains of tasks with limited time and resources, thus time management becomes a very crucial part of HR. 

To find out how you can make your time efficient and get more work done, here are some of the best-listed ways to do time management. 

Most Consuming Responsibilities Of HR

Before you jump right into the ways to do time management, it’s important to find out which areas do take the most time as well as those areas which don’t get much attention. 

According to a survey in January 2015, HR.com did a study that asked HR to choose the five tasks which take most of their time from the list of 10. 

Responsibilities Of HR

Well, it included the top three results, which were: 

Employee Management 

 According to 71%, respondents felt that employee management consumes most of their time. It includes resolving conflicts, answering questions, disciplining, and rewarding employees. 

Company Policies And Compliance 

According to 54% of HR felt that dealing with the policies and compliance of companies is the one where they end up wasn’t most of their hours, it including unemployment insurance, 401ks, health benefit laws, worker’s comp, and policies. 

Recruiting 

The next most time-consuming responsibility listed by 42% of HR says recruiting and it’s related to all the elements such as reviewing, job fairs, checking references, resumes, and background checks. 

More than 70% of the respondents ranked employee management as the topmost frustrating task they have to do. 

However, it’s not as surprising that 82% hr felt that it was because of the management’s personality instead of them to keep the track of employees to be productive. 

Also, 65% say the job of keeping the employee happy should be the management’s job. 

Apart from this, there are different aspects that are highlighted in the study where the HR professional would prefer to spend their time more.  

It included : 

Professional Development 

Around 54% of respondents prefer that they wish to focus on personal career development, which can help in making people more helpful and knowledgeable, which is good for the company. 

Training 

Around 47% say that spending time on the new employee training and providing ongoing project training can help the employee and managers be much more effective and beneficial. 

Initiatives  To Company Culture 

37% of respondents suggested that initiatives to improve the company’s culture can be valuable. 

However, HR must handle the time much more efficiently to undertake important and needed areas. Also, they are required to handle frustrating tasks well.

time-management hacks for HR professionals

Since it’s already established that finding time for accomplishing tasks, especially for HR professionals, can be challenging. 

Whether you are a seasoned or an office administrator who is managing the responsibility of HR alongside other tasks, you need to plan your time in a much smarter way. 

If you are choosing HR, there are high chances that you are a natural multitasker. 

Even though you are natural in doing multitasking, this job is not easy as you need to make time for different tasks such as : 

  • Professional development 
  • Strategic initiatives
  • Strengthening the company culture
  • Employee training 

The moral of the story is time management is the friend of an HR professional; if you are embracing the time management ways, there are major benefits you get, including 

  • Easy to manage tasks 
  • Less stress 
  • Much more manageable workload 
  • Higher productivity
  • Better performance 
  • Easy to manage the chaos 

However, to do that, here are some of the top-listed ways for you to consider. 

time management for hr

Make Sure You Know Exactly What To Do 

Planning out your day is a major task, and it should be done before your day starts so you have a plan ready to follow. 

When you start your work hours, you have exact knowledge of what you should be doing and how. 

Make sure you are doing advanced planning, and it will set you up for success. 

Simon Reynolds, who is a Los Angeles-based productivity expert, says that instead of starting right away, you should spend at least 10 – 15 minutes determining what your important tasks of the day are. 

Stop At The End Of Your Workday 

Treat your end of the day as the deadline, and stop doing whatever you do before that. Since there are only 24 hours in a day, you should spend about eight hours on focused work. 

When you are putting the deadline, this forces you to set reasonable expectations for yourself and help in accomplishing what you need to do. 

Draw A Fine Line Between Home And Work 

Working as an HR professional requires you to focus on the work and managing the employee; however, you should not mix business with your personal life. 

No matter how important it might seem, create a fine line between what you should be doing in the office and what should be at home. 

Don’t take your office work to your home, and don’t do any course-related work at the office. 

Once you create a habit of working late from home, it can disrupt the work-life balance. Due to this, the chances of procrastination increase. 

Create All Done List For Review 

Once your day is done,  you need to check what things are checked off the to-do list. 

For that to create a list, it should be an all-done list that works opposite of to do it. 

People create something different every day, but others might have the physical object to prove, but office work like HR might be different. 

And you need to have something to know you accomplish. 

So the best way is to pause the day for reflecting as well as acknowledging the effort for providing the valuable boost. It includes finding motivation, insight, and focus which might be lost amidst a busy day. 

With this list, you can also learn from mistakes and examine if the day was productive or not. 

Schedule Your Time For Better Focus 

For a job like an HR professional, you need to have better control over your time. 

Since you have a mountain of tasks on a daily basis, make sure you are listing all things and blocking time for them. 

The technique of time block singing helps you in dedicating hours to the tasks which are important and need concertation. 

This concept contrasts the idea of multitasking but in a good way and is much more productive. 

Consider Doing The Standup Meetings 

Doing the meeting can be the throne inside of HR; it might be difficult to miss the meetings but if you don’t need to be briefed afterward, make sure you politely ask to skip. 

When you get away from the meeting room, getting out of your chair and doing a stand-up meeting can reduce the daily meeting time. 

So consider doing the stand-up meeting, also known as scrums or huddle, which is basically for cutting off the fluff and literally keeping everyone on toes. 

According to Forbes, doing the stand-up meeting helps his companies to reduce the meeting time by 25%.

Also, it’s much more productive, and people tend to get less tired or sleepy. 

Not just that, it’s beneficial for the health and wellness of the people. 

Create An Do Not DO List 

It is equally important that you focus on creating the to-do list; you should focus on things to not do in a day.  

Jim Collins recommends it in his Good To Great book, and productivity guru  Tim Ferrier, author of 4 Hour Work Week, mentions this in his blog too. 

It says when you are determining what not to do, so it’s not like a daily routine but having a collection of things that end up hurting productivity. 

To create the list, you need to identify the tasks that suck out time and distraction. 

It includes : 

  • Don’t check or read personal emails.
  • Avoid answering the personal emails
  • Don’t attend meetings if your presence is not needed or essential.
  • Don’t be afraid when you can delegate
  • Avoid getting into the office drama
  • Avoid becoming obsessed with the perfection
  • Don’t complain to co-workers or in front of them. 
  • Use a list for reminding the personal shortcoming. 

Set The Time For Emails And Notification 

Sending and responding to emails is an important part, but it’s also one of the most time-consuming tasks that you would find in the modern workday. 

Your email can be a major distraction. Also, you don’t have to get down to zero messages unread. Choose the time when you will give your complete attention to emails and emails. 

There are different companies that are using different tools to improve digital communication. If you believe using such tools can help, then take it into consideration. 

Schedule The Office Hours And Breaks

Although it might not seem that stressful, the focus is to resist letting things flow organically. 

In addition to that, you need to plan your tasks on a daily basis, and schedule different time slots for getting different tasks done. 

Also, you can schedule microbreaks to improve focus. Get some time to go out for a walk and get some fresh, and eat lunch at some different place instead of your desk. 

 Make sure you encourage your employees to do the same, so they are utilizing the break time. 

As for avoiding constant interruption, get a particular time slot for office hours. , with this you can : 

  • This will help you in structuring the day and improving the quality of time you are spending with the employees. 
  • This makes you feel less rushed and better focused on every point. 
  • You get more completed tasks and set aside time for uninterrupted blocks such as 30, 60, or 90  minutes to do the focus work. 
  • At such times, make sure you are not to reach me even via email or phone. 
  • Plan your team and meetings, and schedule the time, so you don’t have to worry. 

Find What Works Best For You 

Working for longer hours doesn’t make it more productive or make it best for you. 

For HR, it’s really crucial that you have an understanding of what is working in your favor or what is not. So find the methods, tenacious and improving tips for time management. 

Get The Insights Of What To You Do 

As the term says, human resources allude to the professional deals with everything that is related to human and resources in an organization. 

He has to deal with tons of work and a bridge between employees and management. 

From recruiting the new staff to managing the existing employees, you need to control where you spend the time. 

When you have insight into the responsibilities that you need to handle, it allows you to improve your time management in a better way. 

Make A Suitable To-Do List 

For anyone who deals switch people, you should consider using the to-do list, and calendars are actually important for booking meetings and deadlines, 

You can create a personal to-do list to make it much more effective. When you list tasks simply, it gives you the opportunity to foresee the future, and the memo can give you an endless look. 

So slot the tasks into the calendar a day before the final deadline. This will work as a render and help you in completing your task without crossing the deadline. 

Apart from this, you can shorten the level of urgency of each work. And give a buffer time in case there is something urgent you need to handle. 

When your day ends, see the calendar and shorten the top five works that you have to get done the next day. 

Decide which order you will follow and scram all things that can cause a hurdle.  Also, help you in balancing the right way between your work and other work.

Keep Yourself Organized 

When you are creating the to-do list, regardless if it’s a paper or digital tool, marking the deadlines or meeting on a calendar and scheduling the events to the day, week as well as month. 

This helps you in staying organized, and also helps you in keeping aware of what you do and when. 

Also, you can better control what tasks are getting done and what needs to be scheduled. 

The point is to keep yourself organized; it’s very easy to get lost and mess up things when you are holding the responsibilities of HR. 

So keep everything easy to organize and simple to access. 

Find Different Ways To Organize And Prioritize Tasks 

There are different ways you can add for organizing and prioritizing the tasks in managing the time. 

So focus on finding those ways; since not everything is going to work out for you, try to find techniques and tools. 

For example, you can give different numbers or alphabets depending on urgency. 

  • You can label the immediate deadliest ‘A.’
  • For those tasks you need to get done by next week, a tag that ‘ B.’
  • For those tasks which are small such as checking the emails, tag it ‘ C.’

This way, you don’t have to spend time finding out which work is important and urgent and which you can do later. 

You can manage with other ways like different colors, notes, and numbers to make it easy to differentiate between if it’s related to work or not. 

Create And Establish The Boundaries 

When you are dealing directly with employees and upper management, it’s very easy for people round  start taking the time for granted and contacting you even the time is up,

However, it’s not always intentional as they don’t know about your schedule and are aware of boundaries, so make sure you are creating and establishing those boundaries very clearly. 

When you are on vacation, don’t check your emails, and let your weekend be dedicated to you. If there is something urgent, you can come up with some solution that doesn’t bother your personal life and professional life. 

Do The Right Estimation Of Time Commitment 

When you are an HR, you need to compete with the initiative to complete, and the details include the steps that you need to get done in order to complete it. So estimate separately how long it is going to take. 

Estimating the time can help you in completing all the initiatives, which allows you to leave the buffer time to support other things. 

When you know how much it will take, you better understand what else you can get done in a day. 

Invest In Right Tools 

There are tons of apps and tools ready to use and help you stay on task and hone your time management skills. 

However, don’t just invest in everything; make sure you are choosing what actually helps. If you are choosing the wrong tools, you can also waste a lot of your time. 

Recheck Requirement Of Meetings

Everyone believes that meetings are the real-time killer. YOu don’t even realize how much time you spent on something that could be done with a simple email or one-to-one meeting. 

It can drag on and hijack productivity. So if you are having meetings constantly, make sure you consolidate recurring ones into a couple of mornings, afternoons, or a single day. 

Avoid doing meetings that have no value; also, see if you actually need to hold or attend the meetings and if yes, then what is for?

 

More To Explore:

Was this article helpful?