The Importance Of Monitoring And Benchmarking For Managers

Managers need to stay on top of the projects on their desk, especially as it has to do with keeping to time. Delegating duties to staff can help in cutting the time it takes to have projects and tasks accomplished. However, this does not stop at delegating such duties alone because they have to be monitored, and proper monitoring and benchmarking will make sure that the tasks are on schedule.

Monitoring And Benchmarking Makes You Keep To Time And Schedule

Time management is both about keeping to time and using time in the most productive way possible. Keeping to schedule could be the single most important task for a manager. There could be a lot of things on their desk that is competing for attention and all of them may have a deadline.

We must point out that delegating has its boundaries hence monitoring and benchmarking might never come into play. There are tasks that are the sole preserve of managers, but in the final analysis, especially as it relates with projects, the manager is in charge of deploying and overseeing the human resources under him or her. It is therefore important that they establish a systematized way of monitoring and benchmarking.

Everybody in the team has to be made to be time conscious, if you are looking to build a team that will always meet deadlines.   Some of the ways a manager can make his team to be time conscious is by :
Making them to submit progress report on the task which will make them conscious of time

Holding daily schedule meetings that will look at what needs to be done by each for the given period

Verifying The Progress Reports

This will put the manager in a position where he or she will get to know where to concentrate on to bring about desired results.

Monitoring And Benchmarking

This may still have something to do with time, as knowing their capabilities will give you greater insight into how you can deploy their skills in other projects, to save time and increase productivity. Increased productivity also means that scheduling issues are not exactly issues, as the members would have been able to overcome them.

SEE ALSO: How Successful Managers Use Their Time

Knowing the capabilities of your team members will help you save time when it comes to deploying the right people to the right task.

Great Opportunity To Standardize Time Saving Procedures

This is one great impact of monitoring and benchmarking. There are times when processes to accomplish tasks may need one form of fine-tuning or the other. Monitoring gives you a great opportunity not just to look at the people involved, but to see how the process and procedures are holding up.

It could give you the chance of refining such procedures in such a way that they will be more cost saving with respect to the resources deployed and the time applied in getting them accomplished. This is one area where monitoring and benchmarking can provide invaluable information.

It Is An Opportunity To Find Areas Where The Team Would Need More Training

Monitoring and benchmarking brings the players under scrutiny by revealing areas where they might need training. This is more so when it is a group project that is being handled. It can also apply when you as a manager gives a task to one or two people and use the monitoring process and general execution of the project to note areas where they need to be trained. In some cases, they can be trained as they are on the task.

SEE ALSO: How To Distinguish Urgent And Critical Tasks For Effective Time Management

However, group training is a key area managers would do well to look into although this might go under the purview of the senior managers in the organization. In joint projects that will have these senior managers in supervisory and reporting roles, the argument for training is stronger.

They can be taught how to prioritize, identify obstacles, create solutions and tackle issues. These would of course be done under the close supervision of the manager. These are not just to make them better workers, but it will add to the overall time management effort of the manager.

The manager should not be the only one that is conscious of time when it comes to accomplishing tasks. This should be something that he or she tries to imbibe on team members. Doing so will create a team awareness of the importance of keeping to schedule as well as the consequence of failure.