Employee development and training doesn’t always have to be about coaching or people development. In fact, it should also include efforts to help employees focus, prioritize and organize their work. You’d assume perfectly capable and mature adults already know how to organize themselves, but you’re wrong. According to surveys as far back as 2011, disorganized employees cost companies as much as $11,000 every year in lost hours.  What does that mean in today’s dollars?

Why Should Companies Focus on Making Organized Employees?

Many employees who are good performers but are actually scatterbrains who lack time management and prioritization skills, which make them feel overwhelmed and occasionally late for certain deadlines.

Disorganized employees, therefore, need to be trained to become organized individuals to optimize the workforce, and in turn, the organization.

Is 11,000 a year not big enough for you?

Brother International Corporation recently reported that $177 billion is wasted annually because of employees looking for misplaced items. Yes, misplaced items! This includes both electronic and physical things, perhaps even the office stapler. Hence, training employees to become better organized would help the organization to become more productive, save time, save money and save staplers.

Leading and Listening to Disorganized Debbie

John Maxwell has a number of leadership books and articles about employee development and training. One of the ‘difficult people’ that he has named is Disorganized Debbie.

She’s that someone who is always busy, or always seems to be busy, but never seems to get anything done. Sound familiar? Debbie wants to succeed, and she works hard for it but she never moves forward even if her nose is hard on the grindstone.

Disorganized people are motivated individuals, but they are unfocused and very disorganized.

So do you have a Disorganized Debbie? Perhaps a Disorganized Donald?

Helping Disorganized Debbie…and Disorganized Donald

Listening to them is the first step. Talk to them about their work, but don’t bring up their messy desk just yet. Talk about his frustrations, his difficulties and see if you can point the root cause of these issues to his messy desk or unruly schedule.

Disorganized employees aren’t necessarily bad employees; they just need a little assistance to create their own system for organizing their tasks and files. Teach them how to manage their time and even their desk by sharing examples of how you manage your own. If needed, organize an employee development and training event focused on time management and organization.

In time, Disorganized Donald and Debbie will eventually pick up the habit and hopefully become more organized.

Prioritization Techniques for the Disorganized

Prioritization enables employees, and even managers, to focus energy, attention and effort on things that matter.

Simple prioritization techniques can do wonders for employee development and training. Help disorganized employees to create a “Must-do” list based on project values or profitability. Other priorities can be based on time constraints, especially if time is of the essence.

Sometimes, even the little things count. One day, you could be splitting hairs managing a team member who always misses a deadline or loses a file, but after a few simple changes, that same employee could be the most organized person in your team.