A study by Phorest in 2019 indicates that roughly 54% of bookings and appointments scheduled during work hours were made on the go. Ironically, scheduling and planning the day play vital roles in running a successful business, especially in remote or hybrid working cultures.
Remote/hybrid work demands more precise scheduling
Physical separation is not new in the business codex. Business transactions had happened online across the globe even before the pandemic hit. But what makes remote or hybrid work different today is the interaction between the players. This includes virtual communication between team members and between you and your customers/clients.
For example, when in-office work was still the norm, you could pop up at your colleague’s desk and have a short meeting or call your clients for impromptu discussions. In the remote, hybrid, and work-from-home business culture, everyone has more flexibility in deciding not only the ‘where’ to work but also the ‘when’ to work.
To avoid having unsuccessful meetings due to the absence of the other party, always schedule virtual meetings. Not only will you be sure that your partner has the time and capacity to talk, but will also get a few other benefits along the way.
Benefits of scheduling business meetings
Refining time and task management skills
Scheduling improves time and task management for individual employees and the company. For instance, you know when is the deadline to update your manager or clients about a particular task and can prioritize your work accordingly.
Blocking specific days and times for regular company meetings also helps manage your tasks. This is especially helpful for people who have a dynamic schedule such as inside sales reps, or workers who don’t spend most of their working time in front of a computer, for instance, the on-field workforce.
Good for your well-being
Knowing how your day will go can give you a better understanding of your tasks at hand. As a result, you don’t wing your day but plan things appropriately. By having certainty about what is going to happen next, you can give yourself peace of mind and avoid being caught up in some unexpected events.
Allocate time to tackle sudden tasks
That said, some urgent tasks or sudden meetings may still come up, but since you’ve scheduled all your appointments, you can ask for some meetings to be postponed or ask your colleagues to take over. This allows you to have some “crunch” time to work intensively to handle urgent cases on the go.
Scheduling Best Practices for Various Roles
Talent acquisition managers
Analyzing CVs and setting up interviews are parts of a talent acquisition manager’s day. Depending on the type of organization, some companies can recruit people who live in different time zones, which adds more difficulties to the meeting management process.
To stay on top of your recruitment efforts, use a booking management system in which the candidates can book a time slot individually. It can help talent acquisition leaders to manage all the appointments despite the time and geographical differences.
HR leaders
Organizing a ‘welcome’ meeting for new employees can be challenging, especially if you onboard several new talents in a short period. Not to mention the ‘end-of-the-first-day’ meetings, the ‘feedback’ meetings, and other ‘internal team’ meetings to help them up to speed with their new roles. Imagine setting up the event one by one.
Consider getting an automated employee onboarding tool to ease your pain of manually setting up meetings and onboarding tasks for each new joiner. This auto-pilot feature takes away the repetitive and tedious jobs of organizing appointments and onboarding steps and lets HR managers allocate their time for other tasks.
Take the automated approach one step further for managing development courses for your team. Block the participants’ calendar for the duration of the training sessions to avoid absences from the employee development events.
Salespeople
A different day is a different story. Sales are perhaps the job that relies most heavily on a proper scheduling method. Without scheduled meetings, salespeople will have difficulty managing their productivity.
If your sales forces consist of several players, automatic scheduling ensures that your sales team is available at the booked time so that no one will miss out on prospects. In addition, this will prevent double bookings or leaving meeting requests unassigned.
Freelance trainers or coaches
One of the factors for freelance trainers or coaches to maintain their stellar reputation is giving a top-notch booking experience. Ideally, clients can book, cancel, or re-schedule the meetings easily. This also reduces the chances of no-show meetings and saves your manual effort on managing individual appointments and communicating possible compensation.
Conclusion
Regardless of the job, scheduling boosts efficiency in the workplace by automating tasks such as booking and canceling appointments. It also enables you to prioritize or delegate specific tasks to your colleagues.
For recruiting managers, allowing candidates to book their interview time shows that your company has a flexible working culture. For HR managers who deal with organizing onboarding and training, automatic team scheduling grants more time to focus on more personal tasks. As for the sales teams and freelancers, letting customers pick the dates based on their preferences will positively impact your business.
