Improve Productivity With An Employee Time Tracker

Improving productivity in the work environment should always be your priority. One of the problems that business owners and managers run into is motivating employees to track their time consistently and effectively. Telling employees to use an employee time tracker can get varied responses.

Why Would People Be Reluctant To Use An Employee Time Tracker?

When a business owner or manager tries to implement ways to better track employee performance the employee might feel that using a time tracker might reduce their overall productivity. This is not necessarily an invalid concern because under many circumstances it might take added time to record and keep track of everything with great detail.

The fact is that it will take some time and effort to do it. This is especially true in the beginning when employees are just getting used to having to track and record everything. Just like anything else, however, in time to process becomes easier and less time-consuming. The benefit of using an employee time tracker is the fact that it will reveal where time is being used productively and where it is being used less efficiently.

This means that even though it will take some time in the beginning and may play a role in some loss of productivity at first, it will ultimately improve things. It may appear at first that you're taking two steps forward and one step back but in time this will improve significantly. The biggest issue to the business owner or manager will be with trying to motivate employees to use time tracking because they are afraid it will be used against them.

How To Encourage Employees To Use Time Tracker

If you were told that all of a sudden you need to track every minute of every day at work it would certainly make you apprehensive and it would be understandable if you were concerned about what impact it would have. You might be worried about what effect it will have on breaks or your use of the internet or sending emails and other activities that you are accustomed to.

The main thing that business owners and managers will need to do is to be aware that even under the best of circumstances it is not possible to get an employee to be totally productive 100% of the time. If you can convey to your employees that you understand this and that time tracking will simply be an opportunity for both the employee and the management to discover situations that can be improved upon and not as a way to turn an employee into a robot, then they are more likely to respond positively.

Project Management Time Tracking

One of the primary reasons why project management needs to involve time tracking is the fact that study after study has found that the average employee produces only about three hours of an 8 hour day in actual work. Although it is not possible to get an employee to be 100% productive, having only about 35% or 40% of the day being productive is less-than-ideal. Finding opportunities to significantly improve this ratio will have a significant impact on any project that is being worked on.

It is estimated that tens of thousands of dollars can be wasted overtime with any given project when time tracking is not used. This means that as a project manager you can significantly improve the overall productivity of a project simply by implementing time tracking. It is not only the project manager and the company that can benefit but when everyone starts using employee time tracking it means that they will be able to have a clear understanding of where they're doing well and where they can and should improve.

As a product manager who implements the use of an employee time tracker into every project, you will be able to monitor the team's performance and began to build a record of historical data that will help in future projects. It may also help you understand instances where your employees are actually putting in a great deal of work but for one reason or another, it's not manifested in measurable productivity.

Measure Employee Productivity

Every business tracks and measures expenses, profits, and other factors that can help the business understand how to move forward. This should be done equally when it comes to employee productivity. There is no way to know where the employees are doing well and where they could improve unless you track it.  Although it is likely that you will get some reluctance from employees when this is first implemented, in time many of them will find that they like it.

There are plenty of employees that want to do a good job and be productive. When they began keeping track of their time they can demonstrate to management just how effective they are in doing their job. It's a chance for them to measure themselves and determine where they can improve. As they begin to see themselves improving and being more productive it will improve their satisfaction in the work they are doing.

An Employee Tracker Is A Productivity Tracker

There simply isn't a way to know where productivity is being lost without time tracking. When an employee is given the responsibility of recording and tracking their time it helps them and management understand how their time is being used throughout the day. Most employees and management are quite shocked when everyone begins tracking their time because it really reveals the significant loss in productivity that can be greatly improved. Although this will be an adjustment for everyone involved, it will not only improve a company's productivity and help them get more value from the salaries they pay their employees but it can also improve employee satisfaction because they can see themselves doing better.

Employee time tracking should be considered a priority in most businesses. Just like tracking other things such as profit and loss, tracking employee time and productivity can be equally revealing. Once a company has fully implemented employee time tracking into their daily routine they will almost certainly find areas where they can improve.