Participants’ managers who agreed or tended to agree with 95% of the scores confirmed findings. Only 5% tended to disagree equally split between concerns of over- and under-scoring. Furthermore, these managers were able to describe qualitative evidence of improvement. The research was conducted through Oxford Brookes University’s Business School.
For the statistically minded, all 19 courses showed an average percentage performance gain of 11% to 48%. The mean was 26% and the median 20%.
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An example of the ‘added value’ from one of the training courses of a police force IT team, approved by them for publication, is shown below. It measured improvements in planning and prioritising, working on the important rather than the urgent, managing interruptions, linking medium term and daily plans, managing delegation, meetings and stress, setting objectives, forgetting and procrastinating less, saying ‘no’ acceptably, and improving work/life balance, life planning and the organisation’s time culture.
Abstract of the article
Does time management training work? An evaluation.
Peter Green, The Chartered Institute of Marketing
Denise Skinner, Business School, Oxford Brookes University.
Published in the International Journal of Training and Development, June 2005, pages 124-139.
In an increasingly competitive business environment, organisations have sought to increase productivity and reduce costs. The consequences of this for many employees include increased workloads, longer working hours and greater time pressures which, the evidence suggests, are linked to stress, high rates of absence and turnover. At the same time there has been an increasing emphasis on the desirability of achieving work/life balance for individuals.
In pursuit of these apparently conflicting demands it has been argued that individuals must work ‘smarter’ rather than harder and that individuals need to develop the ability to effectively manage their time to achieve this. Yet previous research on time management training has been limited in scope, open to criticism in terms of research approach and inconclusive in assessing the effectiveness of such training.
This paper reports the results of a longitudinal and triangulated evaluation of time management training undertaken in a variety of organisational settings which sought to establish whether the training was effective, not only in the view of participants, but also from the perspective of their managers. The evidence, collected using quantitative and qualitative approaches, suggests that although such training is affected by context and motivation, it does have a positive impact for the majority of participants.
You can buy an electronic copy of the full article from Blackwell Publishing at the following address:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2419.2005.00226.x
