Time Tracking in Your Business- Can it be Done Successfully?
Time tracking for your business might be met with some resistance at first.
Although it can reduce admin for small business timesheets, keep teams on track with project budgets, and increase individual productivity, some employees might still think you are just watching them!
With this guide, you’ll have all the tools you need to get your team on board with time tracking (and have data you can actually use to improve your business).
The Difficulty With Implementing Time Tracking
Although the benefits of time tracking are seemingly endless, you might meet resistance when you introduce time tracking for your team. Just remember you aren’t alone in these difficulties getting employees to track their time!
Logging Hours Can Be a Drag
Nobody likes having the manager on their case. For some people in the team, tracking hours might just seem like one more admin task to add to the daily pile! Even when it means they get paid accurately, writing down your hours in a log or timesheet can be a drag.
Time Tracking Can Feel Obtrusive
With so many people working from home, there have been horror stories of employers wanting to keep track of every single movement during working hours. When you say the word time tracking, your team might feel like you are micro-managing their work!
Timesheets Are Prone to Error
Anybody who has worked in payroll knows that mistakes happen when it comes to timesheets. Time tracking for teams aims to reduce these errors, but it can still take time to get everyone on board.
Benefits of Motivating Employees to Track Time
The benefits of time tracking will quickly show up in your business productivity levels and billables. However, there are many reasons why time tracking will benefit your business. Getting employees to understand the overall benefits is just as important as getting them to actually track their time.
Helps Them to Stay Focused
If you have an automatic tracker ticking away in the background, you are much more likely to stay focused on the task at hand. Staying focused on one task means you will do more work in less time because you are less distracted. In fact, research says you lose about 20% of your overall productivity for each new task you try to take on. Time tracking can help reduce this.
Helps in Measuring & Improving Your Efficiency
The more you track your tasks over time, the more you can see where you can increase efficiency. This kind of data allows you to do more work in less time by tracking the average amount of time it takes you to do an everyday task.
Identifies & Removes Bottlenecks From Your Team's Workflow
In project management, a bottleneck is when work is allocated to a worker before they have the resources to complete it efficiently. Business time tracking gives you a birds eye view of your team and whether they are working long hours because they are capable, or working long hours because they are overwhelmed (i.e. a bottleneck in your project).
Provides Context and History
Building a profitable business requires data analysis. Time tracking can give you the context you need to make more profitable business decisions! For example, one client might take up a lot of non-billable hours, whereas another might be more streamlined. This history and context lets you focus on clients bringing better business and projects to your team.
Helps With Setting Goals
One of the best benefits of encouraging teams to use time tracking is that it keeps them accountable to goals. It helps them work more effectively by focusing on one task at a time, improving time management, and keeping track of their overall tasks within the larger project budget.
Motivates Your Team to Work More Efficiently
Efficiency is all about getting the same work done in less time without minimizing quality. Tracking time helps minimize distractions and complete work more quickly. This motivates your team to complete projects together and increase profits overall.
H2 5 Tips to implement time tracking in your organization
Ready to successfully implement time tracking in your team? Here are our 5 best tips for successfully starting using best practices for employee time tracking.
Explain to Employees What’s in for Them
The best employee motivation is internal motivation. Give employees reasons why they should care about tracking their time accurately.
For example, time tracking can
- Improve your individual productivity
- Reduce procrastination and multi-tasking
- Reduce the number of hours your work because you are more efficient (i.e. less burnout)
- Ensure they get paid fairly
- Reduce admin spent on invoicing and timesheets
- Make projects easier in the future because you aren’t doing unnecessary tasks
- Show where they need more resources so that they aren’t overwhelmed
Whatever the reasons are, make sure you are transparent about why you are collecting the data from the very start.
Make Time Tracking as Easy as Possible
If you want to implement time tracking successfully, you need to make it as simple as possible for your team. Investing in simple time tracking software means that they don’t have to manually keep track of all the work they do in a spreadsheet.
Make Time Tracking a Rewarding Experience
Time tracking is great for your business growth. But how can you translate that into everyday use? By making time tracking a rewarding experience for everyone! Time tracking software can generate reports that give you all feedback in real time. For example, you could have rewards for the person who completes sales calls the fastest, or have a bonus system if you are all on target for a project budget.
Make it Obligatory
Of course when it comes down to it, time tracking will benefit everyone. Sometimes you just have to make it clear that it needs to be done! Before you start, have a straightforward conversation about your expectations and that everyone is required to track their time. People are almost always resistant to change at first, and time tracking is no different.
Be Open for Two-way Communication
Instead of simply commanding your team to track their hours “because you said so”, make it an open conversation. Make it clear that they can voice any concerns or opinions about what is working and what isn’t.
Time Tracking Made Easy With MinuteDock
The benefits of time tracking far outweigh the struggles of getting your team on board with it. However, implementing time tracking into your business doesn’t have to be difficult! With MinuteDock, you can make time tracking fun, easy and fast for your employees. For easy to use timers, quick invoicing and timesheets, and powerful reporting, MinuteDock will keep you on track as a team.