Companies that fail to make use of time management end up losing over $18,000 on average in a year. The importance of managing time to excel in your chosen field is unprecedented.
As a Business, you need to be able to put your resources to good use to gain the maximum returns from them. The time your employees give your Company is one of the most important of those resources.
As time Tracking gains tracking in the digitized workspace, let's take a look at some of the common challenges that come with it and how to overcome them for a smooth workflow.
How to overcome common time tracking challenges in the workplace
Project time tracking is a process that keeps a record of all the tasks performed by an employee along with the time spent on each. It can be as detailed or as vague as needed but the end goal of the process remains to track the time employees dedicate to their jobs.
This information is further used to analyze employee performance in relation to how much time they dedicate to what task. Comparisons can be made about how much time they take to complete a task compared to the standard.
However, time tracking comes with a set of challenges that can derail from the very objective you wish to achieve with it: efficient workflow. It can feel tedious and overwhelming which can lead to missteps and errors.
Let's take a look at some of the most persistent time-tracking challenges in the workplace and how you can overcome them to achieve maximum productivity:
Employees misusing time tracking
One of the biggest concerns when it comes to tracking time is adjudging what tasks require how much time ideally for it to be matched with an employee's actual performance. They can simply say they've been working on a project for hours and you would not be able to check it.
This attitude develops from a lack of trust and a formal structure to perform tasks. For example, a task may require an employee to send 20 documents to six different departments for review and collect their input on it.
They may take the whole day to do this by citing the issue of some files being too big and some not in the standard format. So, they had to look for alternative ways to shrink files or convert them to appropriate formats.
Solution: Arm them with efficient resources
The solution to this issue is to create a standardized structure in your workplace to perform tasks and arm your employees with efficient resources. They shall not face uncertainty or delay in performing a task due to the limited resources they're being provided.
So, as a solution to the issue discussed above, you shall provide your team with the means to create, edit, and share documents with ease. To send 20 documents to six different departments, the employee can compress PDF files online and send them in no time.
It'll drastically reduce the time they have to spend on the task and speed up the workflow. You will know that the task doesn't require a day but significantly less than that. Moreover, it's quick, effortless, and efficient.
Having a standardized structure for operation brings an all-around efficiency where employees know how much time a task requires and can fill it up in their timesheets without error. It also lets you see that they're being transparent about it.
Adds to employee's workload
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Filling up time sheets is an added chore for an employee — there's no two-way about it. Every time they complete a task, they need to log about it, remember the time they started it, how much time it took to complete it along with the particulars.
Employees may struggle to fill the sheets with accuracy. Many might not even pay attention to when they start a task and end it or the finer details of it. Moreover, they may put in generic entries that don't help elaborate the task simply to be done with the task of entering details cheaply.
This adds to the employee's workload and may even lead to them developing anxiety toward time tracking. Over 9% of employees fill their timesheets weekly and over 3% do it on a monthly basis. This indicates the level of disinterest toward it.
Solution: Don't make them fill timesheets
A surefire way to solve the issue of time tracking being a chore for employees is to eliminate the task entirely. There are time trackers available today that break up the tasks of the employees on their own using a barcode time clock.
All the employees have to do is clock in and clock out. The rest is taken care of by the time tracker. It's hassle-free and efficient. More importantly, it vastly takes the load off the employees when it comes to recording their tasks.
They can focus on performing their tasks to the best of their potential and not worry about how much time it takes, knowing that the work is being tracked and logged in on its own. It also gives room for them to innovate.
Many jobs such as development and marketing require experimentation to land on the right, most optimized approach. By having a barcode time clock, they have something to show for the time they spent coming up with a single piece of output.
Employees may feel micromanaged
One of the most difficult challenges of time tracking is the effect it has on the trust between employees and employers. No one likes to be micromanaged and have a superior watching them perform every single task at all times.
Introducing a time tracker in the workplace can make them think that you don't trust the work they do and are putting a mechanism to track it yourself. It can make them feel overwhelmed by the idea of being micromanaged at every point.
It might also end up changing the way they work, abandoning a longer but more fruitful/successful process for a shorter one that may not give great results but at least not show that they took too much time to perform a task.
Solution: Be transparent
The simple solution to this issue is to be upfront about it with your team beforehand. 77% of American employees are okay with their work being tracked as long as their employees are transparent about it.
They're far more likely to accept the change and be alright with it when you've discussed it with them beforehand. Explain what the tracker will do, how it operates, and what they're expected to do for their part.
Most importantly, explain to them the need for the tracker as timing the employees correctly and paying them right. They need to understand that time tracking has nothing to do with you spying on them or not trusting their process.
They should know that time tracking is being done for administrative objectives on your end and you need their support on it. Define the privacy limits of the process and invite their input on how you can make it more comfortable for them.
Rigid structures lead to absenteeism
Many companies adhere to strict clocking in and clocking out times. This means that if an employee doesn't reach the office/start working during a specific time, say 9 am to 9.30 am, they're simply marked absent for the day or it will be counted as half day of work.
This rigid structure simply doesn't work in the remote-heavy work setup of today. It's rigid, discourages employees, and leads to absenteeism. It's especially challenging if you work with different employees across the world.
Solution: Flexible remote tracking
More and more time-tracking solutions allow you to track the time spent by employees on their work in a remote setup. This eliminates the need to log into work at specific times. Employees can log in whenever they wish to and perform their tasks.
As employees would be free of logging in at a specific time for it to count as a full day's work, it will vastly reduce absenteeism. Employees will be more enthusiastic to work as they don't have to adhere to frigid schedules and worry about not sticking with them.
Make time tracking effortless to get the most out of it and enhance productivity
Time tracking has emerged as the need of the hour in the heavily digitized workspaces of today. Employers need to track the time employees spend working for them to be able to pay them correctly and gauge their efficiency at work.
To get the most out of the process, take steps to make it effortless. Don't make the employees log in every detail of their but rather track it on your own to allow them to work freely.
Moreover, establish a transparent relationship with them regarding time tracking to make sure they understand your intent and contribute to it.
Let us know in the comments how you think workspaces can overcome time-tracking challenges to achieve optimal productivity.
Author bio
Atreyee Chowdhury is a freelance content Writer with more than 10+ years of professional experience. She's passionate about helping SMBs and enterprises achieve their content marketing goals with her carefully crafted and compelling content. She loves to read, travel, and experiment with different cuisines in her free time. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
