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Too busy and not enough time

Hints and tips: Too busy and not enough time?

Finding the time to complete day to day tasks, as well as meeting the expectations set by your superiors – and all to deadline – can often leave you wishing that there were more hours in the day. From spending hours fixing payroll errors, to keeping up to date with Employment legislation, it’s no wonder why many HR and payroll teams are struggling to find the time to squeeze everything into their daily schedules. Aside from locking yourself into a room, away from interruption, or creating a cloning machine – what can be done to overcome this?

Well, there are two solutions to this problem – you can either do less or get someone else to do some of your work.

If we look at the first option, doing less, this will mean taking a look at any tasks that you can afford to stop doing or postpone to another time – giving you more room to complete those which are more urgent.

Performance at work can be enhanced by making a ‘to do’ list as soon as you enter the office in the morning.  This helps a working day be effectively utilised, provides an understanding of the tasks that are priority and can help eliminate stress

Automating your processes is also a reliable way to help you cut down your workload on administrative tasks. For example, for payroll departments -  time spent monitoring and agreeing expenses can be minimised by implementing a an automated managed expenses facility – which both enforces your expenses policy and prevents fraud.

You can also get someone else to do the work for you. This may not necessarily mean delegating to other team members – as those lines may already be overloaded with work – but it could mean outsourcing to professionals. There are now opportunities to outsource your payroll, compliance and even your recruitment.

Choosing to outsource to Ceridian will not only improve time management within your department -  leaving you with more time to focus on your core business, but it also allows protection against costly errors and ensures that you stay compliant.

Also, the introduction of Self-Service technology has given employees the power to manage and access their own HR information. The ability to update personal information, view payslips, sign up for training courses, submit requests for annual leave, review absence records are all available. By doing so, this frees HR from basic administrative tasks to act on more value-added work. In essence, you’re passing the onus back onto the employee to manage/update their own personal records – thus further cutting down on admin work.

Time is precious to us all, but in order to make sure that we are making best use of it, whilst adding value to our businesses, it’s important that we recognise the need to accept a little help from both our colleagues and external sources. If you learn to do this then you’ll be on your way to a more productive and fulfilling work life.