How to help employees focus on priorities and better manage their times?

Time management is a very strong skill, which every efficient person is able to do easily.  Therefore, in order to increase your efficiency, you must first analyse the routine and the non-routine tasks.

As the routine tasks is generally under your control, you can do them immediately as and when you get the opportunity to do so, since adhoc duties will be given by your Manager as and when he has the time to assign the task to you. 

Therefore, tasks which take a lot of time and not urgent may be done last and the other matters (urgent / non - urgent) for which you have the data readily available may be done first.  If the job (routine / non -routine) is urgent, you will have to keep aside the routine tasks for later and handle the current assignment in hand, before looking at other tasks.

The key is to analyse the situation accurately, before beginning a task.

Many a times employees spend their working time doing things that are less important due to the simple fact that they never prioritize what comes first and next when carrying their day to day tasks ending up wondering about therefore wasting company time that they are paid for.  In order to change them, it would be prudent to train them along these lines. One way is to do a job analysis which involves close supervision of the staff recording the time they take to accomplish any assigned task. Research has established that staff once closely monitored take less time to accomplish a task they would have taken longer while alone on their own.  Planning is another way that can help staff to prioritize as it involves taking time to paln your day work and make good use for the alocated time.  Organising of working place making sure all working tools are available and within reach helps save time.