As an employer or business owner, have you ever planned on having a day full of accomplishing assignments or activities and then reached the end of the day not knowing where all your time went? On the flip-side, have you ever had your employees go over budget or fail to complete a task for an unknown reason, sending your timelines and schedules out of whack? If these types of problems are a common occurrence—as they frequently are for any sized business—you may find that requiring accountability through the tracking of time will help keep your company and employees focused.
Administrative Accuracy
Even if your company doesn’t pay its employees by an hourly rate, keeping track of how time is spent can have many administrative benefits aside from providing accurate pay. Many timeclock softwares also give administrative information like PTO hours, budget usage, time off and more. Gone are the days of estimating how many hours have been worked this week or how that time attributes to other factors.
By making your employees responsible for tracking their own time, you take this task off of your administrative staff, freeing up their time for more useful tasks and putting the burden of proof for any discrepancies on the actual employee.
Become More Productive and Proactive
When time at work isn’t being accurately accounted for, it’s very easy to lose grasp on how much time is actually being spent on certain tasks. But by employees tracking how they are spending each minute of each work day, it’s much easier to see where time is being lost.
According to Jessica Stillman, a contributor to INC., keeping a log of your time will help you better understand where and when time is being used unwisely and how to make changes to become more productive. This act can also help employees to prioritize their time when a monetary value is attached to each section of time spent on a task, making them more productive and proactive.
Find Areas of Future Improvement
Once you’ve accurately tracked how you’re spending your time over a period of a month or so, you’ll begin to see patterns in the ways in which you spend your time. Sections of the day where you’re less productive will stand out against times where you’re able to get ample amounts of work done. When this happens, Jimmy Rodela, a contributor to GuildOfBloggers.com, states that employers should meet with their employees to discuss how to make changes that will result in positive impacts on the company based off this information. These changes could include how to get more out of your time, how to get higher quality work, or how to simply be more efficient.
Not only will having your employees keep track of their time help you keep track of the work your business is doing, but it will also help on both the administrative and the fulfillment sides of your company by resulting in a more productive and efficient workforce. If you feel that your company could benefit from having more proactive and progressive employees, consider having your employees begin tracking their time today.