7 Steps to Get Employees to Meet Deadlines
How to Get Employees to Meet Deadlines
1. Give a reasonable amount of work
As a business owner, you have a lot of projects to oversee. You want to scale your business and increase profits. Naturally, there is pressure. The standards are high.
As a result, you might end up dumping a lot of work on your employees at once. Now, everyone should aim to be the best workers that they can be. Still, you must be reasonable as a delegator.
One reason why your employees might have trouble meeting deadlines is that there is just too much work. Realistically, they can’t do it all. If they try to finish everything on time, then they will produce mediocre work filled with errors. That’s not good.
As a manager, you have two options. You can either assign less work or hire more workers.
If the business is booming, then the current workload is necessary. So, you probably don’t want to assign less work.
This means that you need to hire more workers. Take some of the load off your current employees so that everyone can have a more manageable calendar.
Yes, hiring more workers means more payroll. But at least you will be able to increase production to keep up with demand. In the end, deadlines are met, and workers remain happy.
2. Avoid unnecessary meetings
Don’t waste precious time on pointless meetings that feel good but aren’t efficient. Your employees could be working instead of attending these meetings.
How do you know if a meeting is counter-productive?
For one thing, see if you can deliver the same information via email. If so, then a meeting isn’t needed.
In addition, many meetings are simply status updates. Keeping everyone updated is not necessary if transparency is a part of the company’s processes.
For example, tell everyone to save their computer files onto a shared virtual drive. You can then find out what everyone is up to by just checking the files. Only schedule a meeting if you have additional questions.
Overall, by eliminating unnecessary meetings, you will help employees free up time that they can use to meet deadlines.
3. Keep everything moving
The perfectionists at your company might have trouble meeting deadlines because they want to make everything look as nice as possible. They lose track of time in the process.
These are dedicated workers. Keep them around. Just think of solutions to help them with their time management skills.
For example, come up with suggested completion times for every task. Employees can then try their best to finish each task before the allocated time runs out. The overall assignment should be on time if they can do this.
You can also let other employees double-check an assignment before it gets submitted. This is how perfectionists can work faster without sacrificing quality. They can enlist the help of their colleagues.
4. Let slow workers learn from fast workers
Most likely, only some of your employees are falling behind. The others are doing just fine. Therefore, you should introduce a mentorship program where the slow workers can learn from the fast workers.
As a manager, you have a high-level understanding of business operations. You might not know the fine tune details of what goes on in a specific department, especially if the company has a steep hierarchy. This is why introducing a department-specific mentorship program is a good idea.
Through observation and analysis, the mentors might find out that the poor performers are spending 30 minutes on something that should only take 10 minutes to complete. Over time, inefficiencies will be identified and resolved.
5. Consider remote work
Some of your employees might be spending one or two hours every day commuting to and from work. On some days, traveling might take longer depending on traffic jams and other incidents.
This is unproductive time. It’s wasted time that could be used for work or play instead.
The solution is obvious:
If possible, let your employees work remotely so that they can make the most of the hours in their day.
Employees will be more mentally alert even if they work the same number of hours. That’s because they can get more sleep instead of having to wake up early to beat the morning traffic.
As a result, they will be ready to produce high-quality work when the workday begins.
Don’t be surprised if they also work faster because of the increase in energy. That’s what a good night’s sleep can do for you.
Therefore, allowing employees to work remotely will also help them meet deadlines.
6. Speak with repeat offenders
If an employee misses a deadline for the first time, then that’s (mostly) okay. Mistakes happen. Everyone can move forward as long as this employee learns from the experience.
However, you might have repeat offenders at the company. These employees miss deadlines time and time again.
If so, then immediately figure out what is going on. Schedule a meeting with the troublemakers and confront the issue directly.
We’ve already discussed a few reasons why employees might struggle to hand in assignments on time. However, there is a plethora of other reasons.
If you understand your employees’ specific shortcomings, then you can come up with solutions to resolve those issues.
7. Tell employees about the consequences
Some people will continue to do wrong things without a second thought if there are no consequences.
Make sure employees understand what happens to the broader company when a deadline is missed.
For instance, customers get annoyed when their orders do not arrive as expected. Unhappy customers post about their experiences on social media. They also take their business elsewhere.
Therefore, missed deadlines can lead to declines in revenue and reputation.
In addition, for employees, termination is a legitimate consequence for missing a deadline. They were hired to do a job, and they are not currently doing that job well. Poor performance is a valid reason to fire an employee.
Overall, make sure workers are aware of these consequences. There should be no surprises.