The solution to enhance time management skill at expeditors vietnam co , ltd case of ocean export department

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITYInternational School of Business ---Nguyen Trong Huu THE SOLUTION TO ENHANCE TIME MANAGEMENT SKILL AT EXPEDITORS VIETNAM CO., LTD CASE OF OCEA

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-Nguyen Trong Huu

THE SOLUTION TO ENHANCE TIME MANAGEMENT SKILL AT EXPEDITORS VIETNAM CO., LTD

CASE OF OCEAN EXPORT

DEPARTMENT

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-Nguyen Trong Huu

THE SOLUTION TO ENHANCE TIME MANAGEMENT SKILL AT EXPEDITORS VIETNAM CO., LTD

CASE OF OCEAN EXPORT

Tab of content

Acknowledgments

Executive Summary

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Abbreviations

Chapter 1 Problem identification 1

1.1 Company background 1

1.1.1 Company overview 1

1.1.2 Company’s structure 3

1.2 Background of problems 4

1.2.1 An overview to working time in Vietnam 4

1.2.2 An overview to working time at Expeditors Vietnam 6

1.2.3 An overview to working time symptom in Ocean Export department 8

1.3 Problem justification 15

1.3.1 Problem definition 15

1.3.2 Justify existing problem 17

1.3.3 Justify the importance of the problem 22

1.4 Potential causes 25

1.5 Causes validation 25

Chapter 2: Alternative Solution analysis 30

2.1 Alternative Solutions 30

2.1.1 Solution 1: Distinguish between Urgent and Important 30

2.1.2 Solution 2: Planning by setting goal 32

2.1.3 Solution 3: Setting expectation and To-do list to follow 34

2.2 Action Plan 36

Chapter 3 Conclusion 39

In-depth Interviews 44

References 69

Acknowledgments

First of all, I would like to sincere gratitude to all who have made this thesis possible and an unforgettable experience of mind, especially, my gracious research supervisor – Dr Le Nhat Hanh Her professionalism and patience provided me the power to overcome any challenges

to finish this thesis

Besides that, I would like to thank all my friends, family and colleagues at Expeditors Vietnam Co., Ltd – Ho Chi Minh Branch for their great support for me Also, I would take this opportunity to say thank to Mr Manh Hoang Tuan – my manager at the company Everyone was so generous that they provided endless help to make this thesis project a dream come true

Once again, thank you and wish you all the best!

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Nguyen Trong Huu

Executive Summary

Each organization has its own problems and it is very important to determine the right

problem Once the real problem is defined, the organization then is able to propose the right

solutions with the right time investment Mistakes in determining the real problem may lead

to wastes of resources

This research study was designed to accesses the real cause of high working time of the

company and ineffective time management skill was defined is one of main problem while

time management is significant problem for many organizations After finding various

symptoms such as excessive working hours, low health of employee, and turnover rate, the

author managed to identify the central problem by applying root cause analysis method Then,

based on literature reviews, surveys and face to face interview, it was recognized that high

working time is the central problem in this organization

The question is “Can people be productive after 10, 11, 12 or even 16 hours of working a

day?”

The 40 hours workweek has run off into the sunset, and overtime working has become a

reality for millions of employees It is the time to get a change of value corporate should place

on encouraging better balance between work and family with thoughtful leadership, good skill

assessment and learn tools to support people in the way of management

Therefore, this study focused on a specific of a department to have a deep looks of the problem

and propose appropriate solutions The findings revealed that the time management skill tends

to play a significant role in working time management of employees Hence, “The solution

to enhance time management skill at Expeditors Vietnam Co., Ltd – Case of Ocean

Export Department” aims to identify the root cause and improve this skill

List of Figures

Figure 1: Expeditors’ Location Worldwide

Figure 2: EIVN’s structure

Figure 3: Vietnamese Overtime Compensation

Figure 4: Maximum overtime of an employee in one month between countries in region Figure 5: Percentage of overtime working claimed per year

Figure 6: Overtime hours per staff from 2015 – 2017

Figure 7: Revenue contribution of products in 2017

Figure 8: Local Ocean Export structure

Figure 9: Overtime per staff in Ocean Export

Figure 10: Initial cause – effect map

Figure 11: Time management questionnaires

Figure 12: Turnover rate in EIVN

Figure 13: Updated Cause – Effect map

Figure 14: Final Cause – Effect map

Figure 15: The Eisenhower Box

Figure 16: S.M.A.R.T goals

List of Tables

Table 1: Company’s information

Table 2: Possible causes

Table 3: Action Plan

List of Abbreviations

EIVN: Expeditors Vietnam

EPE: Employee Personal Evaluation

PDC: Personal Development Center

HR: Human Resource

CHQ: Corporate Headquarter

SOP: Standard Operational Procedure

Hrs/hr: Hours

Chapter 1 Problem identification 1.1 Company background

1.1.1 Company overview

Expeditors was established 38 years ago from the initial idea of integrated services with the combination of transportation services and customs brokerage It is one of the world’s largest logistics corporations at the present Starting with just the Seattle office

in 1979, the corporation now has 331 locations in 109 countries

Figure 1: Expeditors’ Location Worldwide

(Source: Internal)

Expeditors Vietnam Company Limited is a branch of Expeditors and it belongs to Expeditors community in Asia where the company spends serious efforts in expanding their business for more success In 1993, the company started their first business through co-operated with Saigon Freight Forwarding Company Limited

After 7 years of operating in the Vietnam market, Expeditors saw a big potential there and they did not waste the good chance The first branch was established in Ho Chi

Minh in the year 2000 Their first location was located at E Town Buildings, 364 Cong Hoa, Ward 13, Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City Currently, it is located on the 8th floor of Flemington Buildings, 182 Le Dai Hanh Street, which is more convenient for business transactions

Furthermore, Expeditors went on to establish their settle office in Da Nang and one office in Ha Noi in 2005 This decision helped the company complete their network

in the three most important areas in Vietnam: North, Centre and South Fifteen years after their establishment, Expeditors Vietnam is classified as one of the top logistics companies in Vietnam

For years, the development of international trade and new model of transports lead to the expansion of forwarding service Nowadays, forwarders are not only performing customs clearance, but also providing all-in transportation services Expeditors’ core services are consolidating and forwarding of air or ocean freight, custom brokerage, vendor management, cargo consolidation, cargo insurance, time-definite transportation, order management, warehousing, distribution and customized logistics solutions

Table 1: Company’s information

INFORMATION OF EXPEDITORS COMPANY LIMITED - SGN

English name Expeditors Vietnam Company Limited

Vietnamese name CÔNG TY TNHH EXPEDITORS VIỆT NAM

Address 8th Floor, The Flemington Tower, 182 Le Dai Hanh, Ward 15, District

11, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Type of Company Private Limited Company

1.1.2 Company’s structure

Figure 2: EIVN’s structure

- At Expeditors Vietnam, we can separate into two big teams: Product team and Service team

o The product team is the team who makes the profit for the company

directly by handling shipments, such as: Order Management, Ocean (Export and Import), Air (Export and Import), Transcon, Distribution, and Customs Brokerage

o The service team includes Accounting, Human Resource, Sales, Account

Management, Project Cargo and Information Systems

1.2 Background of problems

1.2.1 An overview to working time in Vietnam

It is important for all companies to follow the law and regulations of Vietnam, especially the Labor Law, which governs the regulations regarding minimum wages and working time One of the great benefits of Vietnam is that wages are low in comparison to the rest of the regions The Vietnamese’s government enumerates all

of these regulations under the Labor Law of 2012 (Law No 10/2012/QH13), Decree

No 05/2015/ND-CP, and Circular No 23/2015/TT-BLDTBXH Understanding how these laws and guidance shape costs is of utmost importance for investors seeking to maximize Vietnam’s potential as a low cost destination when doing business

Overtime triggering: this is first consideration that the employer must ensure a

thorough understanding of when overtime is applied This threshold will allow organization for the optimization of production targets to optimize cost and time constraints

Pursuant to the regulations mentioned above, regular working hours cannot exceed 8 hours a day, or 48 hours a week For employees who are working in heavy or hazardous conditions, the maximum regular working time is 6 hours a day If an employee is required to work beyond these limits, overtime compensation will be applied Overtime compensation may be triggered and influenced by the time and date that employees are engaged Key triggers of overtime beyond hours worked include: weekends, public holidays, and night hours – defined as between 22:00hr and 6:00hr

Overtime compensation: In the event that a company triggers overtime, organization

will be obligated to compensate employees beyond the wages that are outlined in their contract This is applicable to all employees regardless of the wages that are offered The following are the percentages in excess of standard that are to be applied in the event that certain work-related thresholds are crossed

Figure 3: Vietnamese Overtime Compensation

(Source: http://www.vietnam-briefing.com/news/overtime-vietnam.html/)

There are limitations on the number of overtime hours an employee is allowed to work Overtime hours cannot exceed 30 hours per month and 200 hours per year In special cases regulated by the government, yearly maximum can be increased to 300 hours per year

In addition, firms have proposed to remove the monthly overtime limit (currently no more than 30 hours a month) because this regulation is rigid, not flexible, and not suitable with the actual production cycle business of the business Especially, enterprises depend on export orders, depending on the season of business such as: processing goods for export, processing seafood for exporting The proposal to ensure that the standard working hours of employees is no more than 12 hours a day and the

total overtime hours do not exceed 400 hours a year is still under consideration This

is because the maximum number of working hours per month of Viet Nam is lowest

in comparison to other countries in the region (Figure 4)

Figure 4: Maximum overtime of an employee in one month between countries in region

(Source: https://news.zing.vn/tang-so-gio-lam-them-cua-nguoi-lao-dong-len-400-gio-mot-nam-post741456.html)

1.2.2 An overview to working time at Expeditors Vietnam

Based on the overtime working report from Human Resource, we can see that product team

is the group that has the biggest overtime ratio in the company in which the biggest ratio belongs to Ocean Export team, its showing the number increases from 33% in 2015, 34% in

Figure 5: Percentage of overtime working claimed per year

(Source: HR)

From figure 6, in term of overtime hours for each staff per year, Ocean Export holds the first position with 311 hours in 2016 and increased up to 406 hours in 2017 Accounting reached out 339 hours in 2017, this is due to the change from E.I Freight Forwarding to Expeditors Vietnam Co., Ltd It was reasonable as the process took a lot of time to work on document transition

PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL HOURS OF OVERTIME PER YEAR

Figure 6: Overtime hours per staff from 2015 – 2017

(Source: HR)

Starting from 2016, EIVN also changed the way to manage working time by systems (called HRMS system), employees can log in the system and submit overtime before every 18:00 (before they did by excel file) so the total hours has a big amount changed, this will record in real number and real time while the regulation is not exceeding 300 hours per year

1.2.3 An overview to working timesymptom in Ocean Export department

In Expeditors’ network, Air product accounts for almost 50% of the company profit

contribution; EIVN is not an exception from this trend For instance, in 2017, Air product contributed 42% to the overall profit Ocean came second with 30%; the rest 28% belonged to other products’, as shown in figure 7 The process of the Air product

is fairly simple; thus, working time is not a significant issue The same scenario applies

70 -

TOTAL OVERTIME HOURS PER STAFFF YEAR OVER YEAR

for those departments other than Ocean product Therefore, these departments can temporarily be put aside

Figure 7: Revenue contribution of products in 2017

(Source: internal)

Within the scope of this thesis, the main focus will be on the Ocean Export department Different aspects will be discussed to identify the root causes which lead to high overtime

Below is the structure of the local Ocean Export department:

Figure 8: Local Ocean Export’s structure

From figure 9, it is obvious that the trend of working hours for each person grows continuously over the years In 2015, the department was operated with 14 employees During this period, the average working hours was not significantly high This was

because employees were not willing to submit the paper to their manager for approval and they were afraid of impacting their performance for a lot of overtime There was

a breakthrough of number of shipment increment at the 250% of growth until 2017 and the staff number it’s up to 15 people in this year as well If people consistently

work long hours, they would be exhausted and inevitably start falling behind in their duties Hence, the company should care about the amount of time its employees are spending at work

When making comparison between 2016 and 2017, with 311hrs of overtime we had 4,570 shipments handled over the year; and come to 2017, with appropriate 405hrs overtime, the number of shipment expected around 5,710 shipments but actually was 5,406 shipments only So it proved that the total shipment may not effect on the working hours There must be another factor which could affect the working hours

As per interview with Ms Suong Pham – Ocean Export manager, people are out of control of their time They are getting overwhelmed with job and seem to be difficult

to maintain a healthy social life when working up to 50hrs or more hours a week Free time to spend with family and close friends is not adequate with this work schedule Extended working hours can also reduce the quality of life by conflicting with quality time for family and time for responsibilities and needs outside works Repetitive work when sustained in awkward postures increases the risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders that damage the body’s muscles, joints, ligaments, tendons and nerves

Employees continue suffering extended work hours and do not give their body sufficient time to recover and repair its each day; otherwise their muscles might just buckle under work pressure Then they are unable to manage their time by daily job overlapping

Figure 9: Overtime per staff in Ocean Export

On the other hand, Lott Y (1) mentioned in his findings that working time also regimes shape time arrangements The author has spent the time in ocean department for observation and realized that employees are still using a lot of time for keying data manually to system For instance, when measuring the time of customer service team, its took nearly 1hr to finish the process of receiving booking from shipper then verify the bookings; check appropriate vessel schedule to match with the cargo ready date; check the rate to ensure they move the shipment with profitability and later send email

to customer to obtain approval to ship from consignee If the customer in different time zone, they have to wait one more day to process the booking to next step After these steps, they input data that received from shipper to system During this process, they have to receive and answer the calls from customers or just response the emails, caused of distraction

Mr Cuong Tran – a customer service suggested an important aspect of a concept called effective hours, which is the amount of time operates spend working on product

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000OVERTIME HOURS OF OCEAN EXPORT TEAM

Many supervisors and managers gauge the daily activities around an 8-hour workday, but operation team does not work 8 hours a day

Let’s break it down into minutes:

 Time at work site: 480 minutes

 Breakfast: 30 minutes

 Coffee talks: 10 minutes

 Lunch: 60 minutes

 Afternoon break: 30 minutes

 Clean up: 15 minutes

Effective hours: 335 minutes (~5.6 hours)

In this example, the amount of time the team spends is 335 minutes – 5.6 hours So in total 8-hour of workday, employee actually works in 5.6hrs only and they need extra hours to complete the job a day, then overtime is needed

In additional, Ms Thuy Do – Pricing Supervisor in Ocean Export stated that “The working behavior of employees is quite weak, they tend to complete the job as quickly

as possible, and treat the job as an “assignment” They try to finish without understanding what they are doing or wondering why they have to do this step, just work like a “robot” Because of this, it makes them become more passive than ever,

lazy thinking and need to complete their job that was entrusted by their managers They are even comparing with higher level staffs when they think that: staffs at higher level have to do more jobs and more responsively than lower ones In fact, they just want less job and more benefit from company I believe in hiring people who have passions outside of work”

Marianne et el (2) admitted that critical reflective working behavior will be operationalized and this seems to be important influenced factors to be self-efficacy and participation Van et al (3) and Maneenet T (4) added “effective communication plays an important role in managing working behavior and managing change”, the aspect of behavior in working will be determining for the aspired results of the workplace concept and the aim is to emphasis how employees to productivity The author later addressed the issue of high overtime to Mrs Linh Dau – Administration Assistant manager She has been working for this company more than

10 years She said: “In order to control overtime, the role of leader and manager are significant Leader will most fully understand their team and propose to manager to allocate the workload how to efficiency; encourage people trying to improve their skills in order to get higher pay, which is the major way to motivate people” The difference between leaders and managers is that leaders recognize the importance of people, drive people how to do while managers are business-driven and generally perceive people to be machines Leaders are followed According to Ortiz C (5), “Poor leaders create a variety of problems in a company A lot of the time their actions result

in overtime in an already unpleasant work environment If leaders do not identify skill sets in their people, those employees will be assigned work that does not relate to their job abilities Too often, employees are given workloads that are unbearable or do not match their skill sets”

Variously, Mr Manh Hoang Tuan – Operation Manager indicated that in order to finish one shipment, employee must go through 35 steps in the whole process It is so complicated and even they do not have enough recourses or effective tools to support them for data entry so staffs seem not interest much in their job, they usually distracted

when working and have less involved in their job which lead to low performance Moreover, many employees said that more tasks were added than they did, they feel

no enthusiasm for working and low absorbed in the performance of work

It is not come from only one level; these are based on the information getting from various positions in the company and connect to the literature, the author explored that the possible problems of high overtime symptom can be come from four of main causes such as: un-qualified employees, ineffective time management skill, poor working condition and poor leader An initial cause - effective map can be firstly built

as following:

Figure 10: Initial cause – effect map

To remedy the symptom, it is crucial to find out a key problem that is the reason of those bad states Hence, organizations must be more proficient at problem solving, which means – being able to distinguish between a problem and a symptom of a problem, applying the rigor of a root cause analysis, and articulate the solution clearly, concisely

During the interview and observation in the company, the author recognized that the ineffective time management skill can be main problem and need to solve immediately

so that the ration of overtime can be reduced accordingly Poor working condition can

be a part of this issue due to lack to effective tool to help employees to manage time consuming Meanwhile employee is in good skill can arrange their time to improve productivity significantly With leader skill, company is enhancing the program to develop the people that call “Leadership flat form”, this program tends to commit with the company’s vision “Employee is the best assessment” so this problem will be

solved very soon by the company

1.3 Problem justification

1.3.1 Problem definition

Time per Lucy et al (6) equals to productivity, and productivity equals money When

it comes to the corporate world, time is regarded as money, and therefore, we see that the organizations which inculcate the habit of time management in their employees are high in productivity This makes time management become one of the most important aspects of a successful business

The fact that the concept of time management is outstanding in all areas of life is well known, but recently, a complement to this concept, known as time management of staff which emphasis on time management skill enhance at work, are making the rounds of the business circuit This is lead to distractions and loss of productivity The company also spent a lot of idle talk Also put the same elements on a period of time,

it has been proven that parastatals performing poorly compared with their counterparts

in the private sector

Ziapour et al (7) indicated that time management is an extensive concept on promoting the performance of employees Also, the right of investigation on the time management is along with its related factors among managers’ success and consequently to enhance organization efficiency According to Christopher (8), organizations are concerning more about time management as this is a part of impacting to performance and effectiveness of the organization through dependent upon the effective usage of time; fundamental to job performance is the issue of not using time effectively or un-managing it

According to Häfner et al (9), time management skill can be described as a combination of time assessment, goal setting, planning, and monitoring activities Time management is the ability to plan and control how you spend the hours in your day to effectively accomplish your goals where the planning is the key of time management, Marriner (10) Poor time management can be related to procrastination

as well as problems with self-control Skills involved in managing the time includes planning for the future, setting goals, prioritizing tasks, and monitoring where time actually goes While Brigitte et al (11) have proved via their research that the time management training to employees was able to enhance the use of time management effect to the outcome

Per Macan (12), employees can control their overtime, job satisfaction, stress reaction and job performance by control time effectively Working under pressure can be a good chance to adapt with the target of manager and through that, employees can prove their ability However, when the pressure is exceeding ability, the productivity will go down and more suffers; excessive stress can cause health problems

Wendelien (13), time management need to be followed by two steps: first is setting personally goal and looking for the way to use time to attain those goals; second is prioritizing the goals and have a plan to self-monitor time using how to hit the goal Job performance refers to a task completion in a specific time line; job performance

is evaluated bases on the available time for the job, starting and when they finishing

of job, Ahmed et al (14) Before that, Fitsimmons (15) gave a suggestion of using simple work plans or checklists to help employees to control their performance by using an effective time management tool

1.3.2 Justify existing problem

In-depth interview with selected respondents

In order to make the study more effective, clearer and convinced, together with the above supporting theories, 6 in-depth interviews were conducted with three main groups as below:

- The first group includes the people who is currently taking a roles of customer service (booking) – 2 people

- The second group will be documentation – 3 people (one has left, one is currently working, one intended to leave but decide to stay)

- The third group is pricing team – 1 people

Below is summary conversation from In-depth interviews:

Respondent 1: Ms Nguyen Thi Sang Sang (Sophie) – She used to be in

documentation team; she has left the company and now is working for CH Robinson Company:

“When I decided to leave this company, I used to think that there were a lot of jobs/tasks must finish everyday but the company also does not want to hire more headcount to share our workload It makes me stress and lose my control in life However, it happens the same situation

in new company; I still have a lot of things to do every day I realized that the trend of market is same for almost the companies in this industry I gradually discovered that my main problem is that I have wasted my time working in vainly I then was trained by the company (new one) the way to control my time I had more some desk side training about this topic From that, I feel more confident when receive more tasks, leave the office on time and I save my time to learn English skills and I had some classes out of working time with my new students.”

According to her sharing, the situation at CH Robinson is not as severe as it is at Expeditors in terms of overtime Employees at CH Robinson have to work after hours

to get their job done; however, the amount of overtime is insignificant in comparison with Expeditors (it is normally 150hrs/year/staff) This is mainly because their employees are trained to have better time management skills than ours

Respondent 2: Ms Mai Tran – Leader of documentation team She has been working

for the company around 11 years:

“Being a team leader, I have to put efforts into find the way to manage the job timely and take responsibility in managing the team (documentation) to ensure no trouble occurred That is a huge pressure while I still need to balance the time between job and family I have two babies;

I cannot let them go alone without my supervision I don’t even have enough time to complete

my job so I am unable to control team’s performance especially in peak season That is why I always be caught after by my manager during EPE (smile) I see the main root cause is that I cannot arrange the time effectively for my daily job, and I think others are the same to me Our company does not work on Saturday but you see most of document team is presented here, even very late I do hope the company can develop some tools that promote productivity.”

Respondent 3: Ms Loan Le – Documentation

She has been working for the company more than 5 years She expresses her expectation is a stable job with good pays and rewards Currently she is accepted with her position; however, she hopes to find some better places which will help to improve

her skills and enjoy the time with her family She does not have enough time to take care her four babies

Respondent 4: Ms Uyen Nguyen – Customer service supervisor

“As a customer service, my responsibility is to communication with carriers, shippers very frequently I spent most of my time to talk to them via phone, sending the email to get the confirmation for space from carriers and booking from shippers for details of shipment I was always distracted by customers even I managed my time very well I had a to-do list I will list details of job need to solve in priority from urgent to not urgent and clear all but sometimes the disturbtion get me down and I cannot focus on the job well”

As her sharing, she knows employees are good and doing well, could understand specific needs of company and try their best However, employees seem to have so much workload and pressure, they usually have to work overtime to complete daily work and don’t want to change their habit to handle the job when enhancing a new tool because they got familiar with that and it’s take time for them to use new one In

addition, when an employee leaves the company, the time for transition is too short to transfer whole process as lots of company’s policies; consequently With the new

employee, she thinks need more time for training them carefully to catch up

Respondent 5: Mrs Hai Pham – Pricing Mrs Hai has been working for the company

more than 10 years Before taking this role in Ocean Export, she used to be an Account management coordinator She worked with a lot of people in her role She said:

“Talks about the term time management, I see almost our employees are not trained well this skill We understand that if we are good in managing the time, we can do better job, getting more productivity and support to others, so peak season is not the main issue with us However, from the day one, when I started my job in this company, I have not been trained about this I see some people cannot adapt with heavy pressure of the job and they left, some try to “run” with the deadline to finish the job Once they come to office, they turn on the computer and first thing

they check email And you know, if you don’t have a specific plan in advance for your day you will stick with the computer to check and reply email, solving the problem (if any) and you don’t have enough time for extra job to getting more even time to drink water”

Respondent 6: Mrs Tuyet Ha – Booking Agent

She refers a stable job but not a boring one, so far, current job is suitable for her However, if there’s any change, she would like to have a voice in other decision which

impact her task According to her, it takes too much time for transition process There

is a lot of change in process and customer’s want but employee cannot catch up with

it, they even don’t have time to read SOP and just doing the transition naturally as

their experience Therefore, time for finish a transaction is long Employees are too tired for their work, sometime, she thinks that there are so many steps to do that they

do not know how to arrange their work, everything is like a mess

From these interviews, we can easily see that the main issue is happening with team

is time management skill Beside that, some elements are mentioned during the interviews such as workload (Ms Sophie), time pressure (Mrs Mai Tran), out of control between work and life (Mrs Loan Le), lack of people to support (Ms Uyen Nguyen), lack of training in managing the time (Mrs Hai Pham) and time consuming (Mrs Tuyet Ha) can be the root-causes of problem

Justify existing problem

Having an appropriate skill in managing the time allows employees to take the control

of the life rather than following the flow of others When the time is managed well, they can focus on doing the job, increase effectively

The natural of an employee’s job is to control their amount of overtime fundamentally

This is an important issue for job controller to identify what are the priorities of the job, which jobs need to be put in urgency to make it done first, based on Lucy et al (5)

For measuring the reliability of the problem, interview and survey through questionnaire method are used The questions are the sharing of employees and managers for their opinions and emotions about their work All the answers are kept secretly and only used for research purpose

As the result, 16 questionnaires were distributed to 15 employees in ocean export team including manager, supervisor, lead and general staff The questionnaire related to time management or management skill; difference in person’s ability will have different way to manage their time It is essentially to aware that how people use the time with consistency, from Joanne (16)

All of us were exposed to different time management habits while growing up Learning to manage the time better is as personal affair and making assumption from what we see and what we experience

Here is the result of survey based on the team responded on these assumptions From time to time, employees are working under heavy pressure and overloaded Workload

is often the main root cause of failing to delegate, being unable to say “no”, failing to establish proper priorities of job, spending too much time on having sloppy work habits The job seldom overworks the person, but people often overwork themselves, according to Joanne (16) For instance, how many calls that employees have to answer

a day and how many problem or questions are resolved on the initial calls? Unnecessary delay seldom improves the quality of job It is simply procrastination Managing time better will involve spending the appropriate amount of time on every activity

Figure 11: Time Management questionnaires

In these assumptions, the author was quite impressed with the term of working harder Yes, more than 90% responses were agreed that “working harder” is not the right way

to improve our productivity Instead of working hard, we need to find the way to do our job smarter Doing the wrong thing harder does not help The people who believe that the way to get more done is simply to work harder are the ones who work extra-long hours, take work home every night, suffer from stress and tension, punish their bodies needlessly, and still do not obtain the results

1.3.3 Justify the importance of the problem

Time management has an important influence on the performance of employees as well as the productivity of the organization Good in time management will lead to a clearer understanding of the situational variables that enable good time management practices It also hopes that this research may contribute the awareness of the importance of time management in the achievement of business and personal goals

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1 1

Most people are overworked because of the…

Your job is unique and not subject to repetitive…

Higher level people with more authority usually…

Further delay will probably enable you to…

Managing time better is essentially a matter of…

Your job deals with people, and since all people…

Delegating will probably free a great deal of your…

Finding “quiet time” is usually impossible, …

Most people can solve their time problems by…

Most of the ordinary day-to-day activities do not…

It is not always possible to work on the basis of…

Finding the problem is easy; it is finding the…

A good way to reduce wasted time is to look for…

Most people know how they spend their time…

It is not necessary to write out your objectives.

Most of the results you achieve are produced by…

Christopher et al (17) believed that poor time management has been associated with high stress and strain Time management can help employees reduce wasted time and energy, become more creative and productive, and enable to do the right thing at the right time

Shazia (18) mentioned time management is very important and it may actually affect individual's overall performance and achievements The high performance required

by competitive conditions forces organizations and directors to use time effectively and stipulates the search to control time, Alay et al (19) states

Throughout the process of interviewing employees and literature review, if the negative time management is continuing existing in employees, the organization will face with two consequences as the high of overtime and turnover rate which impact directly to the organization profitability and employee productivity

Grissom et al (20) stated the connection between time use and performance motivates including reduced job stress and increased job performances have largely been ignored Turnover intention refers to an individual’s subjective consideration of the probability that they will quit their organization in the near future

Figure 12: Turnover rate in EIVN

Based on the statistic figures of number of employees working at EIVN shows in figure 12, there was an uptrend in turnover ratio from 11% in 2015 There were some reasons leading to their decision of leaving and one of the main causes was the lack

of managing of time In 2016, ratio is reducing remain 4% and 2017 shows an upstream of hiring more people, also the turn over time is reduce strongly Trejo SJ (21) pointed out turnover is extremely expensive compared to investing time and money into enhancing employees as assets That is why it is important not only to identify the positive attributes of all employees but also their shortcomings

High overtime per Ortiz C (5) is a balance between work and family It is quite tough, and working overtime has become a reality for millions employees They are overwhelmed with large workloads, high expectations, and the pressure to work as much as possible Employees who have good time management skills and can juggle multiple projects at one time are more valuable than someone who works in the building for 12 hours a day

1.4 Potential causes

Based on the review of literature, and the discussion with the employees in this company includes management team, general staffs level, there are numerous factors that would cause the problem At the first observation, there are many factors can be generally categorized:

Figure 13: Updated cause – effect map

1.5 Causes validation

In order to find out the main cause, the author continues to conduct a survey by sending time management questionnaire over 15 employees According to that, the questions relate to the scale items to test whether the skill of time management exists as well as the causes of this problem

The result of site survey can be summarized in this table:

Table 2: Possible causes

Item Findings

Planning 47% Sometime agreed that planning is the most of important but

they did not enhance this task more frequently They realized that this step can save their time and eliminate back and forth consequence

So this item needs to be listed as first of cause impact to negative time management

Interruption 48% Frequently distracted during working time It would be

normal as we usually be interrupted by the phone or from manager However, this can be avoided by defining where is important issue

we need to prioritize

Distraction is confirmed as the second cause

Time Pressure 62% Always feel time in day is not enough for them to work Every

job need to be done by the deadline in rush and they are overwhelmed with a list of shipment in controlled file

This is third cause defined

Tools supporting 50% Always used the existing tool developed by IS team (from

CHQ, Regional, and local team) to help to reduce manual work in keying data Currently, operation team is receiving a lot support from management team to improve productivity In additional, Expeditors is launching a Management Trainee Program globally, this program tends to develop the staff to be a leader in future and

in the period time of studying, they can help the team to improve their productivity So, this cause can be hidden as it will be taken care at company level

In-efficient process 55% Always claimed that company’s system is quite complicated

and its take a lot of time to complete one job file Every company has their own process and policy need to follow and Expeditors is

no exception In order to provide consistency process in global, employees need to read SOP carefully and follow step by step to avoid mistaking further This step is to provide the best customer service to customer Understand this issue; company is developing

a new process called Ocean Lateral This tends to simplified current process and reduce step in practice, all will be controlled by report and no more data input manually So, we can take it out of

consequence of root cause

Planning

According to Macan (12), to help employees enhance time management skill in their jobs, they need to be trained about the way to manage their time From his research, he proved that the evaluation of time management training is popular and widely available In relation to planning behavior, employees are expected more frequently in setting goals, knowing and able to setting priorities, making “to do list”, planning and organizing for

the job It is also possible that training just made people feel better and received greater amount of self-efficacy for time management skill Besides that, staffs who are lacking of management skill also work “unconsciously”, do not know how to arrange their job with

the effective way to succeed Marriner (10) has indicated planning is the key of time management Goal must be set and priorities will be consistent with them

Another important reason was summed up after the results of the interview are not scheduled to work It means that employees are lacking of plans in work To achieve the target, the goal must be set and priorities determined, we need to know where we are going

to or how we are going to get there with as schedule in advance – Ms Diem Chau, Air Manager advised

In hospitality, setting time can be saved through the use of care plans and more specifically, standardized care plans for patients with certain condition Much time saving techniques can then be used to get more done in less time by working smarter not harder

Time pressure

According to Winkens et al (22), working under pressure sometimes makes people become more powerful, it also makes us wary of all chemicals on the job issue One of cause that increasing the pressure in working is the avoidance behavior As this, it will lead to increase time pressure and we are easily to miss the deadline, which we call procrastination habit and many would like to break this behavior because it is perceived

as undesirable in a society that stresses achievement within strict deadlines

Based on the knowledge after review literature of time management as well as the results from interview in company, the following final causes and affects has been updated with three main causes, which are working under time pressure, impact by distraction and no

as showing in figure 14:

Figure 14: Final Cause – Effect map

Chapter 2: Alternative Solution analysis 2.1 Alternative Solutions

After studying carefully, and based on the real problems that were listed above, all of them identified that the most important issue is how to help all the employees to acknowledge the importance of time and the way they can control their time is to manage the job with the best results and performance When the employees know how to plan their time properly, they will have the best solution to control their life Once this pressure

is released completely, the author does believe that the problems with planning, working pressure and distraction can be addressed properly

Kearns et al (24) indicated that time management can be part of a company’s profitability

if it is enhanced effectively especially in planning skills, one of the way to bring positive results to group performance On the other hand, poor time management can exert negative influence on employees’ health and emotion

The employees had better estimate how long a given task will take them to complete It

is possible that the training will make the employees feel better about themselves and their jobs with greater self-efficiency for time/stress management skills, Macan (12) 2.1.1 Solution 1: Distinguish between Urgent and Important

This solution is mainly focused on resolving the issue of time pressure The author concentrates on raising the awareness among employees regarding the urgent and important nature of what they are dealing with It helps them decide on which tasks to

be prioritized, sorting out less minor and unimportant tasks which they should either delegate or not do at all

In Ocean Export department, it is a norm that the word “urgent” is always used This poses a question: how do they know which job needs to be done first? Looking at time

pressure from a different perspective, it can be good if we know how to take advantage

of it Melinte (25) discussed the definition of “urgent” and “important” in his research

in his research through the use of the Eisenhower Matrix According to him, urgency

is the activity we must focus on because they require serious attention to the consequences of not taking any actions to deal with the matter immediately On the other hand, important activities are those that lead us to achieve the goals, whether it

is individual or organizational objectives

The Eisenhower Box shows us all tasks which are evaluated using the criteria important/unimportant and urgent/not urgent and put in according quadrants

- Quadrant 1: Urgent and important tasks Tasks in this box require immediate action With planning and organizing, these tasks can be done efficiently

- Quadrant 2: Not urgent but important We can set a schedule to complete these tasks as they do not have deadline pressure

- Quadrant 3: Urgent and not important You can delegate these tasks to other people

in your team as they are less important to you but still quite urgent

- Quadrant 4: Not important and not urgent This is primarily distraction so you should not waste your time doing these tasks