Techniques To Help Even Busy Business Leaders Silence Their Phones After Hours
Recent studies suggest that as many as one in five of us works the equivalent of an extra day every single week in overtime alone. Of course, in some instances, this means we quite literally stay at the office after hours, but the prevalence of this problem is especially growing as many of us begin to answer work emails and calls, and even continue to focus on projects once we get home. This is a problem for countless reasons, not least because we often don’t even consider these additional hours as specifically dedicated to working at all. And yet, by the end of the week, it’s not unusual for everything from our energy levels to our home lives to suffer as a result.
This is an issue that can be felt across every level of most enterprises right now and is a leading reason why burnout is becoming such a significant problem among working populations. That said, with generally more work on your shoulders, and with the sole ability to change this harmful evening work habit, it’s past time that business leaders like yourself stepped up to address this modern challenge.
After all, as the head of a company, you’re more likely than most to neglect time for yourself in place of answering yet another business call, which is a mistake your family will ultimately pay the price for. Furthermore, there’s plenty you can do to change this negative cycle, and we’re going to consider the most viable techniques to help you that throughout this article.
# 1 – Implement daily schedules
Often, evening work can feel inevitable amidst workloads that continually grow, and which see more people than ever failing to complete their daily tasks within dedicated timeframes. In reality, though, no manager should expect evening work as standard from either themselves or their colleagues, meaning that proactive steps should be taken to ensure the improved management of time in the office, and realistic work schedules in a more general sense.
In particular, the implementation of clear daily schedule templates that you can use and share with colleagues can help to improve daily time management, and should especially focus on the handling of large tasks first to free afternoons for niggles like email responses that too often end up falling after work hours. Oversight of these schedules can also become crucial from a management perspective as it will allow you to see where workloads are stretching teams too far, and how you can alter your delegations to overcome that. This can then lead to far more realistic and effective management methods that never expect too much, either from your employees or from your efforts.
# 2 – Prioritise projects
Linked in with that previous point, it’s also crucial for business leaders to prioritise projects instead of simply saying yes to everything. After all, the more work you accept without consideration, the more pressure you’ll face to pick up the slack and expect your employees to do the same. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day, meaning that overwhelming amounts of client work make evening expectations inevitable.
By comparison, taking the time to consider everything from outstanding projects to their timeframes can help you to more realistically understand which projects you can accept in the moment, and which you may have to put off. While this can seem like a dodgy business move, the increased quality of work and general team satisfaction that this ensures can mean that clients are way more willing to wait a few months before they get to work with you. It’s certainly better than compromising on the quality of everyone’s outputs by piling on so much work at once that you’re all working until midnight or gone to deliver even substandard results. Even better, this prioritisation couldn’t be easier to achieve by both overseeing those schedules as mentioned, and implementing software that simplifies things like delegation, active project management, and future priorities in turn.
# 3 – Establish clear timelines
Most often, evening work is as much the fault of poor outstanding project management as it is of the projects you’re taking on in the first place. Namely, last-minute rushes to complete presentations, prototypes, and products can mean excessive hours spent in the leadup to any deadline, and no time for the personal lives of anyone within your enterprise during that period.
As well as risking rushed last-minute outcomes that simply don’t live up to the work you’ve put into client projects so far, this will inevitably stretch teams beyond breaking point, and is something you can overcome by simply establishing and sharing clear timelines from day one. Project management software that allows you to clearly outline every single element of a project in advance of a deadline can especially help to ensure a more organised approach that better allows for the gradual development of results within managed hours. Admittedly, this might be difficult to achieve initially due to the potential of unrealistic time frames that have already been set, but the longer you spend understanding the periods necessary to complete this work without overtime or panic, the better able you’ll be to set viable, clear timeframes in the future.
# 4 – Limit workplace interruptions
Even with clear timelines in place, it can be difficult to factor in realistic work periods when you consider the number of interruptions that take place within the standard workplace. For managers, especially, employee interruptions can eat up hours that haven’t been factored for. Equally, unexpected phone calls, new client acquisitions, and even simple office coffee runs can set any employee back by a couple of hours each day. Hence why steps should also be taken to limit workplace interruptions wherever possible.
This is a priority that’s perhaps best achieved through remote work that’s already proven to boost individual productivity by as much as 13%, thus making it far easier to stick to set working hours. Equally, cross-company collaborative software that removes the need to travel to speak to individuals in other departments can significantly reduce the time taken out for even basic tasks each day. The hire or outsourcing or HR departments that can handle employment management in place of business leaders can also help to significantly reduce interruptions at the top, contributing to a generally smoother working day that’s way less likely to run over.
# 5 – Trust in automation
While it can still seem like a daunting business move in some instances, the automation of everything from manual data handling and entry to certain marketing focuses can also make a huge difference to standard daily tasks and timeframes. The elimination of repetitive tasks and the human errors inherent within those can particularly enable more efficient processes and improved time management as a result.
Even when they can’t entirely replace processes that will always rely on human input to some extent, increasingly intelligent automated solutions like the live chat you’ll find when you visit this website can filter, and ultimately streamline time-consuming repetitive tasks. Thus, team members are way less likely to be left with work that they have no choice but to take home with them.
# 6 – Let night teams take over
It’s also worth noting that, as expectations for things like 24/7 customer service and support increase, helping yourself and your main team to switch off could be as simple as bringing night teams onboard who will hold down the fort while you all get some needed rest. Admittedly, the potential expense of night hours can put many managers off here, but this goal can increasingly be achieved for less through the use of outsourced providers who ensure this 24/7 outlook for a fixed cost.
Admittedly, this isn’t going to reduce things like your need to implement project timelines in the first place, as outsourced agents will be unable to directly address projects in progress for you. This consideration does, however, better free you and your teams to focus on the outcomes and working priorities that matter most while still being able to turn your phones off in the evenings without worry. Outsourced services including IT management, call handling, and customer service solutions are particularly valuable in this sense, and it’s amazing how much removing these tasks both out of hours and during the working day helps you to finally get on top of those workloads that just keep on slipping into your evenings!
A final word
We’re living in an always-on world which means you may consider evening work as a standard requirement from both yourself and the members of your team. Effective workplace management means finding ways around this potentially detrimental out-of-hours pressure. Getting your own work/life balance and that of everybody else right especially requires a dedicated focus on why you’re working after hours right now, and which of these techniques can help you to finally leave your phone in the office without once having to worry that you’ll lose countless customers or profits as a result of doing so!
