Exploitation of time for profits

BATANAI KAMUNYARU

To many, the term ‘exploitation’ conjures up images of unfairness and abuse, and there is nothing good about it. However, exploitation can be for good use or for unfair use. In the sense of good use, and for businesses to be more profitable, especially on the global market, time must be exploited and produce more, thereby lowering the cost of production per unit. Time should not be viewed as just the ticking of minutes and hours, but the period needed for an activity to be accomplished. Unbeknown to many is that time management is not about the hours you put in but what you put in the hours!

One of the biggest challenges of human beings is that of managing resources, and one of the resources constantly abused is time. Time is so delicate that it cannot be saved or paused but can only be spent and once misused it can never be regained. If time management is not effective and efficient enough in an organisation, the overall output is affected, hindering the business from achieving good profits and adding value to the customers.

In the third world countries you will notice that the time resource is less respected, meaning there is no commitment to change, for change starts by commitment to a better use of resources. For example, Africans like to say, “There is no hurry in Africa, for we are seven hours ahead of America!” If time is only measured in minutes and hours, then yes, they will always be ahead of America. Sadly, time is measured in output and performance, and the way time is managed in an organisation or nation determines the output and performance. Furthermore, the companies that get more business and survive competition are those that have very good time management systems.

Better time management is achieved when goals and objectives of the organisation are made clear, and such goals and objectives are tracked and reported on regularly. Where there are unclear goals and objectives, employees will just drift around not knowing what to do. No wonder why meetings can go on for the whole day, and the employees find so much comfort and value in saying, “I was in a meeting!” Whenever management spend so much time in meetings, it is a sign that they do not know what they are doing, and they are squandering the most important resource of the organisation, which they are even paid for.

For any other manager, maybe other than the ‘managing director’, in a normal working day the total minutes spend in meetings should not exceed sixty, otherwise output and performance will be suffering. Meetings are not forums to start airing problems and looking for solutions, but for a quick update and maybe an allocation of tasks and action items. Serious issues to be resolved does not need a meeting, you must go to the place where the problem is and find ways of fixing it, then in your next meeting just give an update of what was the problem and how you fixed it. In other words, to be a manager is not the greenlight for unending, unnecessary and useless meetings, but to be the director of activities towards better output and performance.

Another contributor to waste of time in organisations is people hiding their mistakes and trying to justify why they did what they did. When a mistake is made, employees should be encouraged to bring them up, so that they are looked at and fixed appropriately. It should be a dismissible offence to make a mistake and waste resource hiding it, for a mistake hidden begets another mistake that is hidden and begets another mistake, and eventually the mistakes will cost the organisation. A genuine mistake hidden is no different from a lie and lies should not be tolerated if the organisation or the nation is to achieve great success. Time is an important factor needed to enhance output and performance and any activity that causes deviation should not be entertained.

There is no getting better without good structures and systems. To be on the pathway to good output and performance, an organisation should put in place good time management systems and manage them well. As a standard, time management starts from the hour and minute that work starts, to the time that work ends. Nonetheless, what is most important is not the time one gets to work or the time they knock off, but what they do in between because that’s where value is created or lost.

Not to say employees should be overloaded with work or micro-managed as to what they have been doing, but to setup a system that ensures you get the output and performance you require. In Zimbabwe, many companies are made to pay for presence at work rather than results. Time management systems should enable the organisation to pay for results and not presence, for bodies may be present but result is not achieved.

With the advancement of technology, overtime should be coming to an end, especially in services departments. One of the service departments which find so much comfort in wasting time in the organisation is the finance/accounts department. The employees in such departments spend unjustified nights at work, of which their effort is not reflected in output and performance. Sadly, management of such departments think that for one to be a very good finance person, they should spend long hours in the office. That is a sign of inefficiency and ineffectiveness of a department, for what one lacks in skill, they compensate on time or effort. Instead of spending organisational resources on overtime, spend them on training.

Repetitive work, like accounting reports, should not consume much time unless the employees are not skilled and experienced enough. Furthermore, for the finance team to be good time managers, they must respect cut-off times – and no negotiations. As you start to implement cut-off times, maybe for the first month things will not look good, but within three months they will all fall into line. Employees who do not produce results in the stipulated times are not fit to be part of the organisation and they must be dropped as soon as possible before the organisation close doors!

Time, in terms of output and performance, must be exploited to the maximum by an organisation that has a stronger vision and purpose. Likewise, there are time management strategies that are associated with good output and performance. These strategies include setting goals and targets for each employee, and the goals can be broken down into a project, action plan or simply a to do list. The goals and targets are then constantly checked to see if they are being achieved, and no excuses must be tolerated for unachieved goals, for the achievement of goals must be the basis for a paid salary or wage.

One of the key determinants of efficiency and effectiveness in time management is the ability to choose between the important and the unimportant tasks and be determined to follow the suitably chosen sequence to deliver. Eisenhower’s time management matrix can be of great help in categorising tasks, as many people spend time on activities which are not important at all and the organisation can still be successful without the accomplishment of such. Whilst they concentrate on the unimportant activities, the important and crucial activities are ignored – costing the organisation output and profits. The matrix may also help eliminate last-minute activities by planning and avoiding procrastination.

To manage time well, management is challenged to be creative and introduce various ways of producing output within a specified time – and be answerable where targets could not be met. Rather, in organisations, ‘qualitative’ aspects should not be divorced from ‘quantitative’ aspects, and ‘quantitative’ aspects should not be divorced from ‘qualitative’ aspects! No employee should be allowed to produce one and ignore the other, unless if it is their job to concentrate on one!

The key to efficient and effective time management is planning, and being protective of the planned time, which often involves overhauling your environment and re-shaping the expectations of other people. For example, every employee must be able to manage their emails and phone calls, thus minimizing the time spent on reading emails and answering phone calls. If you answer every phone call and read every email, that is a sure way of not being productive and adding much value to the organisation. The people employed to answer calls and reading emails should be the ones doing so every minute, and not everyone.

To some people, time is money! They live by schedules, deadlines and agendas. These kinds of people like to get down to business quickly, and they hate to be kept waiting – getting more done. It is not always true that people who are in a rush are arrogant and untrustworthy, they just want to move as time waits for no man.

The sooner the third world realizes that management of resources, including time, is key, the sooner they move towards sovereignty! Paul J. Meyer once said, “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” Therefore, without good time management skills, it is difficult to be productive – making it vital to remember that time is a resource that needs to be managed well for good output and profits!

Good time management brings order!

Batanai Kamunyaru is a business writer, speaker and coach. He can be contacted on bat.kamunyaru@gmail.com or +263 718 852 489.

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