In many smaller companies, there are constantly disputes
about the amount of hours worked and naturally also about the salaries being
paid for them. Overtime, weekends, holidays, sick leave, business trips, etc., all
this requires exact tracking of your working time. If the company then suddenly
agrees to track time on clients and projects, the administrative work can become
almost unbearable and without a special time tracking and attendance software, almost
impossible.
However, merely recording the time is not enough. Inaccurate
number of working hours is a typical problem encountered by all companies (which
often leads to problems with employees and customers), poor planning, failure
to comply with the terms and consequently the loss of profit. To prevent these
problems from happening, you should track the time in real time and regularly
analyze the data. But how should you do this?
Problems originated
from inaccurate time records
Some people say that everyone knows what time tracking is
and what it is for. Nevertheless, lots of people do not and record their time
wrongly, which usually leads to:
- Less profit
- Inaccurate profitability of projects due to inaccurate time spent
- Problems with planning and approval of projects at various stages because of inaccurate or absent statistics relating to the time limitations
- Lack of objective information about the workload of employees (who is overworked and who is able to deal with additional tasks)
- It is not clear how efficiently tasks are completed and what the ratio between productive and nonproductive time is
Why can time records
end up being inaccurate?
There are fundamental reasons that can prevent a company from
accurately tracking their working time. Employees must work on several projects
simultaneously and deal with several tasks at once. Not rarely, at least 10
tasks per day. It can be a 5 minute phone call, a reply to an email or a quick
meeting with the boss. In addition, unexpected tasks can appear for the
employee to deal with. With all this going on, it can be very difficult to track
time accurately.
Time tracking is also a challenge in itself, as it requires
one extra step and demands additional attention. Not many companies have a
smooth, easy to use system that will do it automatically. Usually employees use
timesheets and just (roughly) write down the hours they worked. This helps
neither to manage time nor to know how much time has been spent on tasks,
though. It is very easy to either omit or add some hours since timesheets are often
filled only once a week. People estimate the time, make sure it all adds up to at
least 40 hours in a week and that’s it.
Productivity and efficiency are not even considered. It may
happen that you go for a coffee but at the same time are thinking about the
project and all of a sudden you have an epiphany. There you have a long sought
solution. Same thing is having a lunch meeting. In both cases, that period of
time is considered a break. Nevertheless, you are actually being efficient and
productive and that time should be accounted as such. At the other hand, sitting
in front of the computer pretending to work is, more often than not, seen as
productive. Something does not add up, right?
In the end, people must track their time themselves and try
to improve their productivity the best way they know how, not just for the
manager but for themselves. This is of course difficult for the management,
which has always seen breaks as non-working time and office time as working
time no matter what. It is a new way of thinking. Time Tracking is not supposed to be about surveillance, it is about promoting efficiency.If it is used as this, then it can be beneficial but you just need to convince
the employees to also see time tracking in this light (click here to see how).
If they do not believe it will help them change their relationship to their
work, then that person will always find hundreds of excuses why not to do it
honestly.
How to get accurate
data?
Let us look at ways how to improve the accuracy of tracking
the working time, starting by determining the degree of accuracy that you
actually need.
- Required accuracy
If
you do not have to disclose the amount of time to your clients, answer yourself
the question of how accurate the data must be so it can be used for future
planning. Also, check whether the company culture even allows you to achieve
the required accuracy of measurement.
It is necessary to know
what the expected level of accuracy is, what is realistic and then find a way
to provide this to your team. You will need this information in order to be
able to make key decisions about the company’s future.
- Use the calendar
This is the most important, yet basic, tool. You need it to
plan your tasks, track the time it takes for the tasks and have it visually
laid out. You can use the Google Calendar or, for example, with primaERP Time
Tracking, you can use this calendar to plan and primaERP to track your time.
- Integrate a time tracker with project management tools
The best thing to do is to track your time according to
projects. It is ideal if you can combine two tools for this. For example, you can
connect primaERP Time Tracking with BaseCamp so you can manage your projects
plus track your time, all in one. It requires no additional cost from either
application, yet you will achieve a fast and efficient solution. You will also
see how much time you spend on projects, check how much you set for the budget
and adjust it according to your data before any problem arise.
- Analyze reports
The detailed timesheets of your employees should be
regularly checked and analyzed. This way you can find out who you can assign
which tasks to and who already has too big of a workload to deal with. Keep in
mind that before you can analyze timesheets, it will take time to gather the
data and make the appropriate changes. Once you have them convinced to want to
track their time, it is a beginning but then you have to motivate them to use
the information they gather.
Only after you do the analysis and begin to get results you should
give your team some feedback. Talk to them about how they are spending their
time, whether it is too much or little and take a look at their individual task
list. Checkt their timesheets and see if they correspond to the reports that
you can get from a time tracking app like primaERP. If there is a distortion,
talk to them, because they might not know they are doing something wrong. Take
your time, as time wrongly tracked can have consequences, as much of planning
and future changes are based on that data. Do not be afraid, it is not as
difficult as it may sound. At the end of the day, timesheets will help you plan
in order to improve and give your employees the feeling that they are spending
their valuable time well.
11 comments:
This google aplication is good i use it when i was working alone, now in my comany we're using TimeCamp : http://timecamp.com. It's similar but some of my workers were afraid about their datas since they discovered that google is using it. For me both of aplication are similar.
The points brought up in this article are valid. Some studies have shown as many as 10 hours of wasted time in an employees 40 hour work week. That can vary by week and project. Often by allowing employees some flexibility to get up and move when energy is low can create a lot better efficiency. There are a number of tools that can help to track employee time, even when employees are working from home or from other locations. However, the implications of inaccurate timekeeping can be very costly. This article covers more of the requirements and penalties: http://bit.ly/2ctcexL
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