Time tracking is a great practice for corporate companies. There are several benefits to the business owner and employees. A healthy workflow with productive employees is the primary benefit of time tracking. Be careful, however. Improper time tracking can cause undue stress on you and your employees. You must know the benefits of time tracking. After that, you have to know the best way to implement it in your company. Time tracking should provide a good employee experience, not a stressful one.
What’s Time Tracking?
Time tracking is the logging of your employees’ working hours. It’s often used for attendance and payroll. Time tracking also lets you keep track of how much productivity is being done office-wide. Let’s look at some of the benefits of time tracking now, which include:
Worker Transparency
Logging hours make your workers more transparent. You can keep track of their attendance and how much time they clock in. This makes analysis of their work process easier. In addition, it lets you see which tasks need more focus.
Worker Accountability
Time registration encourages employees to be more focused. While logged in, they know they are in “work-mode”. Both you and your workers can take a look at your workflow. Observe where you can improve. See which tasks don’t need a lot of time to accomplish.
Payroll
Time tracking lets the accounting department know how much to pay employees. It ensures that employees are paid for the hours they work. What “work” is defined as is up to the managers. This also makes things such as holidays, vacations, and sick leaves easier to track for HR.
Know Which Tasks are Time-Intensive
Time tracking of tasks lets you know which tasks need more focus. It lets you know which places need more manpower or resources. This is information that can help the company as a whole. It can also help reduce overall stress levels. You could find out one employee has too many tasks and is not compensated properly. Other times, you may find some employees have too little to do. Find a balance to strike with time tracking.
Cost-Efficient Planning
Time tracking allows you to keep your budget in check. With time tracking, it’s easier to know how much of your budget has been used. No extra steps are needed to calculate. Just count the billable hours as well as what resources were used. Time tracking, in tandem with reports, can make cost-efficient planning easier.
Introducing Time Tracking to Employees
Any organization, large or small, should apply time tracking directly to tasks. Combining resource and time management is efficient. Knowing which tasks take up time and which do not let you be more efficient in the future. Communicate your intention to time tasks.
Start on small projects first. Introducing time tracking to major projects can cause sudden stress. This not only harms the project; it also harms your team’s view of time tracking. A failure to communicate the benefits leads to resistance. This resistance lowers overall productivity, instead of enhancing it. Your job, as a team leader, is to explain these benefits in detail.
Good leaders must explain the importance of time tracking. Explain that the presence of time tracking is not there to micromanage them. Put yourself in your staff’s shoes. They are working hard and suddenly; their managers want to track their time. The gut reaction is likely “my higher-ups do not trust my work.” This is not an unreasonable assumption for some. Many bad managers do use time tracking to nitpick employee performance. Time tracking is not a tool for coin-counting. It exists only to improve the business as a whole. It should not be used to punish or stress out staff.
Time tracking is a tool to unite the organization towards one goal. It is no different from resource tracking or reports. It should not be treated as a micromanagement tool, by team leaders or by staff.
Integration of Time Tracking to Workflow
Now that your staff’s concerns are out of the way, it’s time to begin. First of all, make use of time tracking apps. The right software streamlines the time tracking process. You can assign your IT head to this task. once completed, assign a manager who handles the recording of all your company’s time logs. A common mistake is having each employee track time individually.
This is a pointless practice. If your employee is unproductive, you see it in the results. You won’t see it picking over their slightly long coffee break. Time Tracking Should be on a task basis, not on breaks. Whenever your employee finishes a task for the day, they just log it in. It should only take one click.
Only team leaders have the authority to giving a name to the project and tasks. This makes tracking consistent. Your team leads should use task manager tools as well. This makes them more efficient. You won’t get different names for the same task.
Time Tracking Software is a useful tool for leaders and employees alike. Remember, it’s not micromanagement. It is another way to measure your company’s efficiency. Prove that it’s worth the trouble to your employees. Use the data you gather for your company’s betterment.
