Keeping Things Organized

You have only so many hours a day and want some work / life balance...and so do your employees.  So what do you do to get that?  Be organized.

1 - Get rid of emails you receive regularly from your suppliers by unsubscribing.  They can call you or you can reach out to them when the time arises.  For a lot of leaders and managers this can significantly reduce your daily or weekly emails.
2 - Organize your inbox.  Create rules that move emails when they come in.  For example, have all emails you are cc'ed on moved to a CC folder for your review when you are able.
3 - When using an out of office on email or the phone, give the person on the other end someone else to contact while you are unavailable.  This can also significantly decrease workloads when you return from a vacation, business trip, etc.
4 - Going on vacation?  Tell everyone!  Again, give them another contact for that time and you will see a huge drop in your emails and phone messages...and when you are on vacation do NOT answer them.  Unless dire and urgent, there is no need to answer them.  This just allows others to think it is okay to contact you on vacation when you need rest.
5 - Cross train.  No one person should be the only one who knows how to do something.  An organized leader will ensure their team is able to work without one or two of them there (think vacation, short term illness, etc).
6 - Practise the 5S process - Sort, Set In Order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain (Google it now and I will explain in a later post).
7 - Get rid of or store documents no longer needed.  Check your governments website for how long you actually need to keep records (hire a lawyer to help if you aren't sure).  This will help get rid of the paper clutter we all have around.
8 - Talk to your employees about what reports or other tasks you actually need and don't need.  Review this annually.  Maybe one of your employees runs a sales report for you and you never review it.  Think: is this really worth the time it takes my employee away from other duties?  Are we doing it just because we always have?  Can I get rid of it and free up some of my employee's time?  if you can, then do it.  Times change fast, so the tasks your employees did last year need reviewed to ensure they are still relevant.  You may find a lot of freed up time by doing this.

Organization is one of the keys to success...there are tones of tips out there and I will continue to share throughout my posts.

Until next time you can always contact me at tara@twinlifecoaching.ca or find us on the web at www.twinlifecoaching.ca.

Tara