How to Help an Employee With Organizational Skills

Neat workspaces reflect positively on employees.

Any employee that wants to be productive needs solid organizational skills. Without these skills, workers may potentially waste company time, money and resources. While there is an obvious benefit for employers to develop their employees' organizational skills, the employees themselves also stand to benefit from sharpening these capabilities. Indeed, employees who are organized are more effective and are better equipped to manage stress. Since organizational skills are often learned on the job, training is a worthwhile investment for both managers and employees alike.

Instructions

1. Get to know your employees. Doing this will allow you to recognize their strengths and weaknesses from an organizational perspective. It will also help you understand what they are capable of and how to motivate them. Tap your employees' collective knowledge bank to help them develop a plan to become more organized. In the process, you'll be able to address any areas of weakness that contribute to a lack of organization.

2. Model the organizational skills you expect from your employees. For example, keep your own desk and office tidy, display the organizational resources you use and demonstrate effective time management skills. When you clearly demonstrate that organizational skills are important at a higher level, subordinates will likely follow your example.

3. Explain what organizational skills are, why they are important and exactly how they can be improved. As part of this, suggest that employees make to-do lists designed to prioritize their work. Specifying the organizational tasks that employees are responsible for will further clarify roles and expectations. Provide employees useful resources and learning opportunities to improve their organizational skills. A workshop, a training manual or an instructional video on effective organization might be helpful to many employees. If employees are visibly making an effort and yet still struggle with organizational skills, you may have to find additional ways to help them; more intensive training programs may be useful in these cases.

4. Give employees equipment that can help them better organize their workspaces. Equipment could include filing cabinets and other organizational systems. Designate locations where shared equipment should always be stored. As part of this process, you may need to asess employees' work functions and workspaces and recommend equipment or tools that could boost productivity and efficiency.

5. Observe how well your employees adopt their organizational duties. Allow them some time to get the hang of things and work through the organizational process. Organization can be a somewhat tricky science, and there is not always a clear answer on which techniques will work best for everyone. Ultimately, employees need to adopt organizational methods that they feel comfortable using.

6. Provide feedback, coaching, rewards and discipline as employees fine-tune their organizational skills. While your employees may be trying to improve their organizational skills, perhaps some will be less successful than others in achieving these standards. It is important, therefore, that you help them by providing constructive feedback and pointing out areas that still need improvement. Be sure to coach employees on ways to overcome the gaps in their organizational skills.

References

• Speedupcareer.com: Organizational Skills at Work
• Streetinsurance.com: What Does a Messy Desk Mean and Bring to Your Workplace?
• The Thriving Small Business; Developing Delegation Skills-How Effective are Your Delegation Skills?; Patricia On; February 2011
• Walden University -Think Up; Tips on Organizational Skills in Business; September 2011