Strategic planning is all about developing strategies from which your human capital can take the necessary tactics or actions to achieve the desired results such as to increase sales and profits. From these strategies, organizations can increase their human capital ROI while making their shareholders "happy campers."

However, the continuing obstacle to improving the performance of a company's human capital is the constant of time. A recent survey by the Wall St. Journal indicated that time was a 3 to 1 greatest need for today's busy individuals. With information doubling every year and those today experiencing more change in one year than their grandparents experienced during their entire lifetimes, validates the need for effective time management.

When we look at time through the eyes of the strategic plan and human capital, we can discover the following:

* Employees work 260 days.
* Employees have at least 30 minutes per work day for breaks or lunch.
* Employees usually have at least 2 weeks vacation.
* Employees usually have at least 4 paid holidays.
* Employees usually have at least 5 paid sick days.
* Employees waste at least 1 hour per day.
* Many employees receive professional development time.
* Majority of employees (over 70%) are not totally engaged on the job.

When analyzing the above facts, most employees are actually being paid for 100% of their time while only delivering a 27% output. Therefore, employers must leverage every single second to reap a positive return on their human capital investment to increase the bottom line.

Since time is a constant, time management is really a symptom about ineffective self-management and should be about individual leadership development. When time management is approached from a development perspective and is part of the overall human capital critical goal category within the strategic plan, then human capital ROI is quickly achieved because you begin to address the real problems and realize greater profits.

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Life is filled with essentials, and if we do not have the ingredients to make it work, then we are out of luck. Time management is one of the most important essentials in our life. If you think about it, we have 24- hours in each day, and seven or eight of those hours dedicated to sleep. One of the golden rules is “Sufficient for each day, for no one knows tomorrow.”

This is very true, because we do not know if a hurricane will wipe out our neighborhood, or if an act of disaster will hit our area and change all the plans, we made. So the steps to finding essentials in time management should be evaluated carefully. Planning is one of the elements to managing time, yet plans can change. This is why it is important to make a list of the tasks you are assigned and complete them as soon as possible. Once you finish your task, it becomes easier and you can move on to other tasks. You can start by reviewing emails and notes, since the two are essential ingredients that make time management work.

Email Essentials at Work

If you work at a company that offers an email account and most of your business is handled via Internet, then you know that excessive emails are annoying. Customer accounts, contracts, and other important documents we do not want to loose, so to keep your mailbox from piling up, it is smart to only give your email address to clients. We can avoid emails piling up by not providing information to advertisements that ask for our information.

If you want to place, an order for a product be sure to use an email account that does not send out information over the Internet. Many companies have a managing program that works to save time. Databases often store valuable information, and should be maintained. If you store information on the database, be sure to delete or store old files in a different area, so you can save time. If your email accounts only stores documents that are important to your business, you can save not only time, but also you can spare yourself from liabilities that may creep up. It depends on the company and what type of email account they require the employee to use, but Microsoft Outlook includes features such as address books, business and other features that help the user stay organized.

Essential Notes

Notes are essential since they too play a role in time management. Learning the techniques to taking good notes is a start in the right direction. When we take good notes, we are able to stay organized and run our life smoothly. If you attend a lot of meetings, it might be wiser to meet with the parties attending the meeting before it starts. This can help manage time by informing the co-workers ahead of the game what the meeting entails, as well as enabling you to take notes before the meeting starts.

Essentials in time management also include taking time out for yourself, preparing, keeping your priorities in order, and working toward the goals you set.