Time Management Practices Among Staff of District Education Offices in the Central Region

ABSTRACT Time may be the most valuable thing one deals with, and it can neither be bought nor recaptured. However, significant amount of this valuable resource is wasted by staff of institutions due to the activities of time wasters. The purpose of the study was to find out the existence or otherwise of time wasters and determine their perceived impact on the time management practices among staff of the district education offices in the Central Region. The time management control measures were also assessed. The descriptive survey design was employed for the study. The simple random and purposive sampling techniques were adopted to select the respondents from six (6) district education offices in the Central Region. In all, 285 respondents were sampled to participate in the study. Structured questionnaire, interview guide and observational chart were the instruments used for the study. Percentages were calculated for the summary of the responses. The major findings of the study were that staff of the education offices waste a lot of official time due to the activities of time wasters, thus about 15% of tasks were left unfinished at the end of a given period. Also, there were some time control measures available at the education offices. However, the lack of proper monitoring and supervision had rendered them ineffective. From the findings, it has been recommended that there should be an effective supervision of official time utilisation by staff of the district education offices. Also, time management training should be incorporated into in-service training programmes for staff.