Get more done: 101 performance boosters

Employees | Career | Managing | Personal development | Tech trends | Personal tech

Banish the time bandits: how to minimize office interruptions

Interruptions from e-mail, phone calls and people at the office door eat up a quarter of the average workday. Here are four ways to get on with your job:

Keep staff in the loop. "Interruptions often occur because staff don't have enough information," says Harold Taylor, of Toronto-based Harold Taylor Time Management Consultants Inc. Convene a five-minute stand-up meeting each morning to brief everyone on pertinent projects and developments.

Save 'em up. Where possible, request that your staff collect their questions and meet with you at the end of the day. That means one interruption instead of four or five.

Screen your calls. While working on important projects, send telephone calls directly to voice mail or have an assistant take messages. You can return calls at your convenience.

Curb chatty co-workers. If you see someone heading for your office, stand up and look at your watch to signal you're in a hurry. Or ask staff to walk and talk with you, which will give you a destination at which you're forced to wrap up the conversation.

The rules of delegating: simple steps to sharing the load

Guess what? The prototypical entrepreneur's do-it-all mentality doesn't do a business any favours, says Janet Wright, principal at Baxter Bean & Associates Inc., a Calgary-based consultancy. Business owners obsessed with running the whole show get overworked, fall behind and drown in details. Wright offers three tips to help you let go of the reins and delegate efficiently:

Delegate lower-value activities. Determine which activities bring the most value to the company(such as networking and client contact)and which ones are necessary but lower value(creating PowerPoint presentations and administration). Delegate the lower-value activities.

Delegate to the right person. Pick someone who has the skills to do the job. That way you won't lose time dealing with a learning curve.

Spend time to save time. Sit down with the person to whom you are delegating the task, and explain in detail what you want. Then ask the person to articulate his understanding of the project, says Wright: "You'll see if he understood your instructions."

Make the perfect hire: never waste time on bad staff again

Replacing a bad hire can cost employers more than three times the job's salary — not to mention the rehiring hassles involved. Follow these simple steps to finding the right person on the first try:

Use a checklist. Create a list of non-negotiable skills and experience required for the job, and then check the resumés against the list, suggests Sylvia Schumacher, director at Madison MacArthur Executive Search Consultants in Toronto. You'll narrow the field quickly by removing resumés missing the listed requirements.

Testing, testing. Give candidates a formal test of their technical skills. A junior employee can tally up the results and weed out those who lack the necessary proficiency.

Outsource hiring. A recruitment firm will screen thousands of resumés, interview candidates and compile a short list of three to six people with little input or effort from you.

Conduct a group interview. Cut interview time by sitting down with up to eight candidates at once. You'll see how each candidate operates in a group setting and make quick comparisons on performance and professionalism.

Find out when they'll quit. Ask questions to determine whether the candidate views the job as a temporary stop or a long-term career opportunity; avoid hiring the former.

Get help with the ho-hum: where to outsource ordinary tasks

Pick up a personal assistant. For about $65 an hour, a personal-assistant or concierge service can take care of time-consuming domestic tasks, including grocery shopping, walking the dog and picking up your dry cleaning. They will also buy gifts and book your entertainment pursuits.

Hire a virtual executive assistant. A virtual executive assistant, who works from his or her own office, will take care of administrative duties such as e-mail follow-up, invoicing and bookkeeping. You can hire for an hour or a block of time each month. "This allows executives to focus on revenue-generating tasks," says Chris Hafstein, owner of eAssistant.ca, a Vancouver-based virtual-assistant company.