Employers everywhere are looking for ways to increase productivity and decrease expenses, but most do not know where to start. We’ve outlined the steps required to increase productivity in your business that you can implement today to see results in both your bottom and top lines by using the Time Well Spent exercise.

Many companies fall down by making adjustments to employee’s time with the hope of increasing productivity without first having an understanding of where their time is currently spent. The Time Well Spent exercise contained in the interactive program, Master Keys To Success, is designed to give an accurate history of where time is going. Here’s how to do the exercise.

Materials Required:
The exercise requires a Time Well Spent template, printed on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. Also required are six different color highlighters and a ballpoint pen.

Exercise Instructions:
The participant begins by separating their life into six categories. They vary from person to person, but in our example the individual chose personal, friends/family, work, interests, household, and create assets. They then assign a color to each of their categories.

Each hour of the day the participant pulls out the sheet and fills in the appropriate color and then writes over the top of the box a brief description of exactly what they did during the hour. They do this for all waking hours for a period of four weeks.

At the end of the week they total up all the hours spent in each area and records them in the total boxes at the bottom of the page.

The Impact:
Many people are surprised at the results. They definitely make adjustments in two areas: their workplace and in the area of their personal lives. The following example is a real case study by a sales representative working in a small city.

On The Job Analysis:
Our participant was surprised to learn where the time was going on the job. Results eventually were shared with management who loved to see the data. On the basis of the information gathered, the following major changes were made:

A.     The first thing discovered was that the Monday morning meetings were taking one hour when it was discovered that half the time was spent in updates that could be covered off more efficiently by bulletins. The meeting was cut in half, saving half an hour per week.

B.     After discussions about the weekly planning, the general consensus was that it was very difficult to plan during the week and was quite distracting. By shifting time spent on Sunday “catching up on work” with the weekly planning, it was done in half the time with ten times the results.

C.     When discussions were opened regarding the time spent on email, it was discovered that the participant was usually looking for some critical sales information leading to a sale and sometimes got distracted with other email correspondence. Email correspondence was routed through the front desk as a result and critical information was relayed in a much more timely and effective manner. Email time was reduced by two hours per week.

D.     The realization that a promotion had been created on the current product when a new product announcement was just around the corner changed the policy on internal product announcements. All the salespeople received benefit from the new policy.

E.     Co-Worker visits were continually encouraged, but the interruption in work was asked to have an objective agreed upon and be stated up front to save time. Management implemented an after hours plan for workers to socialize.

F.     Weekly reports were streamlined to an online format in a Q&A format, reducing the report time by one hour.

G.     The discovery of only two presentations per week due to other tasks changed the priorities. Management and the participant agreed that they may possibly do two more presentations per week, but settled on one and more Time Well Spent exercises to measure the results.

H.     The amount of administration and promotional work that the participant was involved with was an eye-opener for management. They quickly hired a new person to handle promo and technical for all the representatives.

The Final Results:
The participant increased sales and commissions by an additional sale per month, adding $573 commissions to the total monthly income of the participant over the short term. The company decreased expenses and increased sales dramatically.

In time savings for the participant on the basis of the data collected, there was 4.25 hours of wasted time eliminated. The participant cost the company $18.00 per hour, so the total savings was 4.25 x $18 = $76.50. Multiplied by the 49 weeks the participant works equals a net savings of $3,748.50 in the very first year. If the participant stays at that position for ten years the savings are a whopping $37,485.00. And this is only an example of one of the 127 lessons contained in the interactive software program, Master Keys To Success. The program retails for $149, so you can recoup all your costs in less than two weeks from this one exercise alone.

For more information on Master Keys To Success and how it can help increase your productivity while decreasing expenses, go to www.masterkeystosuccess.com.