Top 3 Tips To Be More Effective At Work

Generally speaking, the different personalities at the workplace can be grouped into two major categories: Busy workers and Effective workers. And believe it or not, employers care only about the ‘Effective Workers’ – those who work hard and smart enough to accomplish multiple tasks with limited resources and time (minimal man-hour per task).

Below are top three tips (that have helped me and will certainly help you) to evolve into an effective worker.

Learn to be Organized – Plan & Manage Your Time & Work Schedule

Be sure to have a system that works for you and helps you to plan and manage your time and daily job schedule. Whether it is an electronic gadget (a computer system or office software, a phone planner app etc.) or just plain old paper and pencil, a diary, or whatsoever you feel comfortable with, you need to find a way to plan and organize your tasks. You don’t wanna be the guy that always delay the ‘priority’ report. Use the following guiding points to plan your time and work:

1. Keep a list of all business matters that should be accomplished for each day and rank them in order of priority (be sure to give higher priorities to those urgent report needed by Management).
2. Review your list and, wherever possible, delegate tasks others can do.
3. At the end of each day, list all uncompleted tasks that must be picked up next morning. These tasks become the top priority the next day.
4. If you are responsible for staff, take few minutes in the morning to check they are planning to achieve what you see as priority for the day, and be sure to encourage them to.

Prove You Can Take On More Roles

While many workers shy away from taking on additional responsibilities, the high-flyers actually see opportunities for personal growth, learning and development with every added task. Be very open to more jobs, and if you’re not given, ask for it. Yeah, ask for more jobs.

Every responsibility you handle is a learning curve to broaden your knowledge of your career niche. Besides, organizations look favorably on ‘multi-taskers ‘. To be raised to manage a department, most employers want to be sure you actually do have good ideas of the general workings of all facets of that department. Yes, you may have your specialist sphere, but general knowledge of other areas is a big plus.

Few things though, be sure you are sincere about your desire and request for additional roles, humbly learn at the onset of taking on the role, and ask for roles that are only within (or at least, closer) to your knowledge area. Also, know your limit - you can't be so busy with multiple roles at work until you become useless outside the workplace, it will break your effectiveness.

Always Strive For System Improvement

When handling a task, spend some real ‘headspace’ to think about how to improve the existing system or process where possible. Whether it is just to simply automate part of the process (say, in Excel or other office softwares), or minimize the bureaucracies involved, try not to leave a process the way you find it without your input and signature.

‘System improvers ‘ are the people easily identified within the organization for promotion to higher responsibilities.

Wishing you a more effective career. Thank you