• Since time is limited, time management activities are essential to productivity.CLOCK image by SKYDIVECOP from Fotolia.com
  
  Effectively managing time can increase productivity and help employees accomplish more tasks during their day. Therefore, activities that help employees to practice and develop time management skills are helpful to companies and employees. There are a variety of activities that can be performed independently or in groups to promote better employee efficiency.
  
  

Prioritizing Activities

• Explain that people generally compartmentalize tasks and give them different priorities. Some tasks are items that must be done immediately, others can be delegated, some can be planned for later, and others can be delayed or may not be essential at all. Divide employees into groups. Give each group a particular dossier that will tell them their basic job and interests. Then give them a list of items to do and ask them to agree on how to prioritize them. Groups should identify tasks as immediate attention, plan for later, delegate to others or ignore.
  
  

Role Playing

• Sometimes items can take on a more important priority than they should because of the way they are presented. Present skits to employees and let employees individually determine the urgency of the tasks. Then, break them into groups to discuss their answers. Is an unimportant task more likely to be perceived as important if someone frantically yells that it needs to be done immediately? Is a larger project worth more money likely to get done quicker than a smaller project with a shorter deadline? Pose different scenarios and discuss how different people prioritize them and plan tasks.
  
  

Efficiency

• Break employees into groups and provide each group a list of tasks to do. Everyone must help out in each task and tasks must be completed before the next task can be started. Groups can plan how to complete tasks before starting them. However,each group has a different agenda. Tell one group they have three days to complete the tasks, inform another group they will be going on vacation the following day, and tell a third group that they have a meeting they must attend in two hours. Let the groups work on their tasks. End at the time when the third group has the meeting. How many tasks did each group accomplish? Discuss which group was the most efficient and why.