How to Write a Time Management Action Plan for a Remote Team
Keeping your remote team on a schedule and increasing their productivity will be easier if you have an efficient time management action plan. Planning out your work can eliminate planning fallacy, help you prioritize resources and time per project, and aid you in respecting the deadline.
Organization and planning skills are at the top of the list of essential skills for successful time management. Now it’s time to put those skills to use and ensure that your team is on the right track during the project. Write a time management action plan, and you’ll be able to help your remote team be at the top of their game.
Here are the tips that will help you write an efficient and achievable time management action plan. Let’s start!
Write Down Your Goals
Goals are the cornerstone of time management. You need to know what you have to achieve in order to make that happen.
That’s why your first step should be to define your project goals. Consider both short-term and long-term goals. Both of them will affect how you plan your team responsibilities.
Consult with your remote team so that you set realistic goals and deadlines. Reportedly, Elon Musk tends to set unrealistic deadlines, which then have to be changed. To avoid such inconvenience, discuss with your team your plans and define attainable goals.
Break Down Your Milestones
Once you have your goals all planned out, it is time to break it down. The plan will be more realizable if you write down milestones, not just the ultimate goal.
The activities your team has to face should be broken down at the monthly, weekly, and daily level.
You don’t have to do this all at once. Plan your monthly goals and, as the end of the month approaches, focus on weekly milestones. At the end of the week, you can set daily tasks.
Do this step by step, but make sure that you have your tasks written down in advance. Having an overview of what awaits you the next day/week/month will keep your team motivated to respect every deadline.
Providing a remote team with only the final goal can easily get out of control. That’s why milestones are a lifesaver.
Develop a Checklist
A handy checklist will help your team stick to the plan.
Checklists are great for keeping track of your finished tasks. But that’s not their only power. By having an overview of what they have done so far, your team’s morale will be raised.
While writing your time management action plan, make sure that you make it in the form of a checklist. At least for your daily schedules.
If you want to create a template that you can reuse over and over, writing services like BestEssayEducation and TopEssayWriting can help you out with that. A well-written and comprehensive time management plan that incorporates a checklist can save you time in the future. You won’t have to create the plan from scratch every time. Simply whip out the template and start planning.
Help Your Team Prioritize
Prioritizing is a very helpful time management technique. Why? Because it helps with organizing your tasks to make the best of each workday.
According to research, when we deal with harder tasks first, we tend to be more productive. Keep that in mind, when planning your team’s daily tasks.
Write the tasks according to the priority. Or use colors to signal the importance of each task. The least important task and the task that demands less time can be shifted to tomorrow if there is no time for it today.
The value of prioritizing is that it can eliminate overtime since the most demanding tasks will be tackled first.
Group Similar Tasks Together
Grouping tasks that could be done simultaneously can be a notable factor in improving your team’s productivity. If you want to increase the efficiency of your time management efforts, you have to try this method.
For example, if there are several emailing tasks that your team member can do at the same time, group those tasks together. Therefore, they can use an email automation tool to finish those tasks all at once.
You can save the team a lot of valuable time if they instantly get direction to handle grouped tasks.
Besides organizing your team’s work, grouping tasks can also have a positive psychological effect. Since the tasks will be grouped and not singled out, it will seem as there is less to do.
Schedule Time for Planning and Revision
Make a slot in your schedule for weekly review. There is no certainty in work. Plans get changed, people get sick, or more tasks come your way. A lot can change. That’s why you need to check for any updates regularly.
It’s best to do your weekly revisions at the end of the week so that you can look back at what you have done and talk about your further plans.
Diana Adjadj, the head of the content department at TrustMyPaper writing services, shared why meetings are an important part of time management for remote teams. “As we don’t get a chance to keep up with each other’s work daily, my remote team and I get together every Friday. We reflect on those week’s achievements and discuss how we’ll plan out the next week for maximum efficiency,” says Emily.
Make the Plan Easily Accessible
Every member of your team should be able to access the plan whenever they want. Share the time management action plan on a cloud-based platform. This will enable your team to keep track of any changes.
There is another reason why you should use an online platform for displaying your time management action plan. If your team members’ work is intertwined, they will be able to stay posted on what others are doing and inform them of any relevant additions.
For example, if a website designer still isn’t sure which approach to take with the About Us page, they can check when the content writer will work on that content and ensure to give them timely notice.
Final Thoughts
Help your team to reach their full potential in terms of productivity by writing a time management action plan. Having it all written down will make sure that none of them lose their way. Moreover, it will ensure that you work as a team and use your time wisely. Remember what they say – time is money.
About the Author: Nicole D.Garrison is a freelance writer, contributor at writer at Supreme Dissertations, and a content strategist. Sometimes she works as a project manager for content writing companies. She is a dedicated and experienced author who pays particular attention to quality research. Nicole consistently attends different courses, seminars, and conferences that keep her knowledge up to date. In her free time, Nicole is a passionate runner and traveler. Moreover, she runs her own blog.
