Four Top Tips for Time Management in a Flexible Working Environment

Aug 17th 2011

Time management is always an issue for flexible working. As this work takes place out of the office, or outside of ordinary office hours, managing the time taken on particular tasks and projects can be difficult. With more businesses supporting flexible working, it is important to start thinking about the best ways that businesses and employees can manage time.

In this post, we take a brief look at a couple of the potential benefits of flexible working, which have been brought to light in recent studies. Read on for our four top tips for time management in a flexible working environment.

The Benefits of Flexible Working

So what kind of benefits can you expect from a flexible working policy? Current research has suggested that flexible working methods provide a wide range of benefits to both employees and employers. In general, these methods are at their most effective when the employee has a large degree of control and input.

One summary of a number of studies, by The Cochrane Collaboration, suggests that flexible working policies are at their most effective in promoting health and well-being when workers have more autonomy over the process – when there are a great number of options and the employees have more direct influence on the process. More research is needed, but these studies provide some strong indications about the benefits of flexible working and employee input.

Another study by the European Working Conditions Observatory (EWCO) has shown that ‘a flexible working environment results in a reduction of the incidence of sick leave’. The alternative, where workers fear taking time off work because they may risk their job and will create extra work for others, leads to higher rates of absenteeism and for longer periods of time.

So it seems a reasonable company policy on flexible working, which involves individuals in the process, can improve general health and productivity, as well as reducing levels of absenteeism. Flexible working can also be great way to spread your business into new locations. Along with other remote working services, such as buying a London virtual office, remote workers can be a great way to establish a business presence in sought-after locations.

This is all very good news for businesses, but still leaves to problem of how to maintain and manage time and tasks in unusual working conditions – often work is done remotely and/or outside of ordinary working hours.

Four Top Tips for Time Management

1) Track time: The top way for both employers and employees to keep and eye on the time being used for various tasks is to use software which records time.Tick is a fantastic bit of software for this purpose. Businesses are given the power to set budgets for a particular task and employees are able to see how the time they are entering is contributing to the overall budget for a project.

2) Project management: You can now get project management software which utilises cloud storage. This means that tasks can be set remotely and files can be stored and shared in one central, accessible location. They also allow for communication between multiple people. Basecamp and Manymoon are two programmes which provide all the functionality that you’ll need project manage remotely.

3) Plan Ahead: It may seem obvious, but not every business does it. Managers and workers should set aside time to plan workload before a planned period of flexible working, to ensure that everything is going to work smoothly. This includes making sure there are proper channels for communication: ensuring that phones are on, emails are available, instant messaging is accessible – anything that’s going to be needed to coordinate effectively. It’s also a great chance to make sure that a worker will have the right equipment and resources available if they are working from home or outside of office hours.

4) Discussion: In a similar vein, there needs to be clear channels and opportunities for discussion. These should be fair and open – if an employee feels intimidated about speaking up in a discussion, then a flexible working policy will suffer. This is particularly important for a flexible illness policy. Good communication means that realistic workloads can be set if someone is well enough to work but too ill to perform at their best.

This article mentions just two lots of research on flexible working, but there are more out there for you to look at. What’s more, this popular topic is gaining more and more interest, so if you want to know more about this area, keep an eye out for new research.

Does your company have a good flexible working policy? What are your best methods for time management in this environment? Let us know in the comments section below.