The Benefits of Tracking Your Employees’ Time

Whatever size or kind of business you operate tracking the hours of your employees can be a challenge and messy at times.

Why do you need to track employee time?

Let’s begin with the basic concepts. The process involves keeping track of the hours of one’s work so that they are paid at the close of their payment cycle.

If you’re a manager or boss You’ve probably heard the old adage, “Don’t forget to log your time throughout the day.” In the effort of getting everyone to keep track of their time may be like shepherding rogue sheep. In addition, using manual timesheets could raise issues of dishonesty, overwork or even theft of time. Yikes.

This is why time tracking so crucial. There are numerous benefits of time tracking as well as a wide range of fields that time tracking could be applied to. Let’s take a look.

7 great benefits to monitoring your team’s hours

In addition to the obvious benefit in knowing how long an employee has been working, keeping track of your team’s work hours with time tracking applications offers numerous advantages. Here are seven reasons why tracking time can benefit your business.

1. Profits can be increased

Track time accurately and determine the whereabouts of your cash. Review project budgets and prioritize tasks when things aren’t going as you had planned.

2. Pay and bill accurately

If members of the team are tracking their time toward specific tasks or when they are doing work on a particular project, it is helpful to establish clear goals to everyone. It also helps eliminate the confusion about what everyone should be working on.

3. Set clear goals

If your team members track their time toward specific tasks, or performing them, this is helpful to create clear goals for everyone and eliminates any confusion about what everyone is supposed to be doing.

4. Improve productivity

Utilizing time tracking software allows teams to remain on track with ongoing projects. Find out where potential issues occur in your day-to-day activities and then use that information to develop strategies that will help your team become more productive at work.

5. Improve the management of projects

Time tracking can provide a direct line of sight to the time the team takes members to get tasks completed. Managers can make better decisions about the next projects and increase team capacity.

6. Offer transparency

With the help of tracking software, team members can record their hours on their own and have an overview of their work which helps managers to keep employees accountable.

7. Better communicate progress

If an employee is tracking their time it will be possible to notify their bosses that they’re able to meet deadlines in the work week which makes the process easier to relay requirements to managers and coworkers.

The disadvantages of time tracking

While time tracking is beneficial for many companies however, there are some negatives to be taken into consideration when deciding if using time tracking in your work environment is the most beneficial decision for your company.

In weighing the advantages and disadvantages of tracking time one of the first things to consider is the way your team members feel about the fact that you’ll be monitoring their activities at work. Although this might not be an issue for some (probably people who are doing exactly what they are supposed to do at work) however, people who are used to binge watching cat videos and sharing their most cherished friend’s baby pictures may be less exuberant. This is only going to improve productivity for those who don’t have to work as hard which is a huge advantage and an investment for your company in the longer term. Learn how to encourage employees to keep track of their time here.

Another thing to consider is that employees might start to feel like they’re watched constantly. The big brother impression at work isn’t what people would like to see in a workplace. If you’re using an advanced time-tracking app which doesn’t save any personal data and just keeps track of what’s happening in the momentyou don’t have much to worry about.