Every business owner wants maximum performance output with minimal effort, and ensuring that your team is working efficiently can make all the difference in achieving successful outcomes.
That’s why employee time tracking is important.
It helps to measure results against goals and objectives and allows you to divide workloads across staff members in the fairest way possible.
But that’s not all!
Read on to explore the 8 key reasons why you should track employee time.
8 Main Benefits of Time Tracking
1. Efficiency boost
As the world becomes more competitive, businesses must continuously seek out new ways to optimize their processes and operate as efficiently as possible. When doing so, they can reduce operational costs, minimize waste, and maximize profits.
Not only that, efficiently run businesses usually better adapt to changes in the market – by streamlining your operations, you’ll be able to pivot your business model with minimal interruptions and respond to changes quickly.
Here’s how time tracking can help you boost efficiency:
- Troubleshoot workflows: By analyzing where your employees are spending their time, you may identify which parts of the workflow can be optimized, eliminate unnecessary tasks, prioritize important ones, and get rid of distractions.
- Reduce performance costs: By optimizing your workflows and removing time-wasting activities out of the way, you inevitably minimize unnecessary expenses and save money to drive further improvement and growth
- Set more realistic performance objectives: Using time tracking data, you better understand what you can accomplish within a given timeframe and then can set performance objectives that are easier to meet or exceed consistently and without investing extra resources in work.
- Save time with automation: With the ease and convenience of modern technology, manual timesheets are becoming a thing of the past. Thanks to fully automated time tracking tools, you can now focus on more important tasks while ensuring that not a single minute is wasted on manual time tracking.
- Minimize the risk of human error: Automated time tracking not only eliminates the hassle of manual data entry but also prevents errors and discrepancies that can often arise from human error. Thus, it saves time and money that would otherwise be spent correcting mistakes.
Pro tip:
Do you feel like you’re constantly playing catch-up with budgets and deadlines? Are you tired of losing track of your time and don’t understand why nothing gets done as efficiently as it should be?
Time Management Assistant might be the right answer to your problems!
This fully automated browser extension streamlines the time tracking process, helping you collect highly accurate productivity data and get that desired efficiency boost.
Whether you’re using it as a personal productivity tool or in conjunction with actiTIME, a multifunctional project tracking solution, you can trust that Time Management Assistant is the perfect partner to make you forget about manual time entries and understand how to improve your workflows for better results.
Click here to download Time Management Assistant and become more efficient today. 👈
2. Smarter project planning
It has never been enough to simply start a project and hope for the best. Proper project planning is a vital component of any successful venture, providing a clear roadmap for the entire team to follow.
With careful planning, businesses can set realistic goals, anticipate potential challenges, and allocate resources effectively. This ensures that projects are completed on time, within budget, and to the highest possible standard.
And here’s how time tracking can help with project planning:
- Estimate projects and tasks more accurately: Time tracking lets you easily measure how long it takes employees to complete specific tasks. This information can then be used to estimate the time and resources required for future projects, helping to improve accuracy and reduce underestimation or overestimation errors.
- Consider staff-related costs when making a budget: With time tracking, businesses can more accurately project staff-related costs when making a budget. This includes the cost of salaries, as well as the cost of any overtime or additional hours required to complete a project.
- Evaluate workforce capacity: Modern time trackers can help you record not only employees’ working hours but also their time off. And by analyzing your team members’ absence records for any previous projects, you can get valuable insight into your workforce capacity and make informed predictions.
- Justify the allocation of staffing resources: Time tracking data can be used to both plan out project resources in advance and manage them in real time. For example, if an employee’s time logs indicate that he or she is consistently underutilized or overutilized, you can use this information to make the case for reallocating that employee to other projects or tasks.
Pro tip:
To be able to plan and manage your projects in a smarter way, make sure to use a time tracking solution with robust reporting functionality – like actiTIME.
It includes reports on project costs, employees’ time off, and working hours by tasks. Besides, it lets you compare your initial estimates with actual results in order to make prompt adjustments to ongoing work progress or create more realistic project plans in the long run.
Check out these reports and other valuable actiTIME features during a 30-day online trial. Click here to sign up. 👈
3. Impeccable legal compliance
Ensuring legal compliance with labor laws on overtime and related regulations is not just good practice for businesses – it’s vital.
Your hourly employees must be paid for each hour invested in work and their overtime should be fairly compensated in accordance with the law. Noncompliance with these legal requirements can result in costly fines, legal disputes, and reputational damage. However, accurate time tracking allows for minimizing such risks.
Here’s how:
- Calculate overtime pay with precision: Accurate work time records are key to error-free overtime pay calculation. Automated time tracking systems can make the process of data collection and analysis quick and easy, reducing the likelihood of errors and ensuring that employees are compensated in line with the law.
- Track cost of work rates to simplify wage accrual: Calculating payroll can be a complex process, especially when employees are working different types of jobs or on different projects with varying rates of pay. But by tracking the cost of work rates by hour, you can simplify this task significantly and rest assured that you are paying the appropriate amount of money to all employees.
- See when employees go on a break / lunch: Some labor laws require employers to provide certain break and lunch periods for employees. Time tracking ensures that these periods are timed accurately and fairly, giving employees enough rest and recuperation.
Pro tip:
actiTIME has several features that help to ensure better compliance with labor laws.
It includes overtime summaries and detailed reports + lets you set the unique cost of work rates for different types of work and streamline wage calculation with their help.
Besides that, actiTIME features a user-friendly Calendar View where your employees can record the exact time they started / ended work on a task or went / came back from a break – not a single minute will remain unnoticed!
4. Higher employee accountability
You’ve hired a talented team, and to ensure they are staying on track, it’s important to hold everyone accountable.
High employee accountability creates a culture of trust and transparency, where everyone is aware of what’s expected of them and takes ownership of their actions. This, in turn, helps reduce mistakes, increases overall productivity, and promotes positive workplace behaviors.
Here’s how time tracking fosters higher employee accountability:
- Prevent time theft: Time theft occurs when an employee gets paid for time not worked, such as extended breaks, long lunches, starting work late, or finishing early. Automated time trackers eliminate such issues, as the system records employee work hours accurately.
- Simplify the management of remote employees: With an advanced time tracking app, it’s super easy to keep tabs on remote employees’ working hours, locations, and task progress regardless of where they are. Some software solutions can even send alerts to managers when employees are not actively working or not adhering to the agreed-upon schedule.
- Get accurate data for performance evaluation: Time and activity tracking logs can be applied to evaluate employees’ performance and assess how effectively they use their time, allowing employers to reward those who perform well, meet all the deadlines, and complete one task after another or provide necessary support and training for those who don’t.
5. Improved employee well-being
A happy and healthy workforce is a must-have if you strive to attain high business productivity and keep customers satisfied. Besides, investing in employee well-being can help you reduce absenteeism and turnover rates, attract and retain talented workers, improve your brand image, and boost your bottom line.
There are many valid methods for promoting employee well-being, and time tracking alone won’t suffice in this regard. Nevertheless, it can be valuable in the following ways:
- Facilitate feedback and coaching: Time tracking allows you to identify employees who may be struggling with certain tasks or projects, and then provide targeted feedback and coaching to help them improve. This will prevent your team members from feeling stagnant or undervalued, leading to increased engagement and morale.
- Reduce burnout: Time tracking can help you better manage employees’ workload and prevent them from overworking themselves. By regularly tracking and analyzing their time usage, you can prioritize tasks, delegate responsibilities, and schedule breaks and vacation time more effectively. This can reduce stress and the risk of burnout, which has been found to be a leading cause of employee turnover.
Pro tip:
A fair and generous time off policy is one of the best ways to promote employee well-being and keep your team satisfied. And actiPLANS is possibly the best solution to make time off management a breeze regardless of the size of your team.
Using this smart leave management software, your employees can submit leave requests in a split second and managers can approve these requests just as fast (or even automatically!).
Besides, actiPLANS streamlines PTO accrual to free you from manual time off calculations and features a plethora of reports to inform your staffing and resource allocation decisions.
More than that, actiPLANS can be seamlessly integrated with actiTIME – together, this powerful duo is sure to bring your business management experience to a whole new level.
Sign up for a free actiPLANS trial here. 👈
6. Better project performance
Project performance directly affects your company’s bottom line.
When projects are executed efficiently, completed on time, on budget, and with minimal errors or setbacks, you have a greater chance to increase productivity, get higher profits, and enhance customer satisfaction. In contrast, poorly performed projects can cause delays, result in massive budget overruns, and repel even the most loyal of your customers.
So, how can time tracking help you enhance project performance?
- Measure progress against pre-set targets: By comparing the actual time taken to complete tasks against the initial timeline, you can identify delays or areas where progress is slower. This insight helps to adjust the plan and allocate resources more effectively, ensuring that deadlines are met. Moreover, by having accurate progress monitoring, you gain better visibility into a project’s status and can effectively communicate with stakeholders regarding project timelines and milestones.
- Collaborate on projects in a centralized workspace: With time tracking software, team members can easily share progress updates and task completion statuses, which facilitates collaboration and encourages communication, ultimately leading to better project outcomes. When all team members can access the same platform to track time and manage tasks, you can increase transparency and streamline workflow across the organization.
- Track project costs and profitability: By tracking hourly staff-related expenses, businesses can better understand which areas of the project are costing more than planned. This information allows you to make informed decisions regarding project budgets and avoid overruns by changing the course of action and re-prioritizing tasks.
Pro tip:
actiTIME offers a wide range of features designed to streamline project performance management.
Simply create tasks, allocate them to employees, and then track their progress statuses in real time via the Kanban board or by using a variety of charts.
Additionally, automated reminders will help you keep projects on schedule and on budget, while comprehensive reports on project cost and profitability will provide you with a thorough understanding of ongoing expenses and earnings.
For more information on how to manage project costs and budgets with actiTIME, feel free to check out this post. 👈
7. Informed decision-making
In the face of constantly evolving technologies, shifting consumer demands, and economic uncertainties, there is simply no room for guesswork or reliance on outdated assumptions. By making well-informed decisions, businesses can stay ahead of the curve, anticipate market trends, and position themselves to take advantage of new opportunities as they emerge.
This requires not only a thorough understanding of the market – including customer preferences, competitor behavior, and broader economic and societal trends – but also an in-depth insight into your business performance. And time tracking can provide you with the insight you need:
- Prioritize profitable customers and projects: By tracking the time spent on different projects, businesses gain insights into which clients and products are more profitable and which ones are costly. This knowledge allows them to make informed decisions about resource allocation and focus their efforts on productive client relationships while reducing non-profitable ones.
- Improve productivity and drive growth: Time tracking is a powerful tool that can help you optimize workflows, improve team effectiveness, and increase productivity in the long run. By using this tool to gain valuable insights into employee performance and resource allocation, you can stay competitive, reduce costs, and ultimately achieve greater success.
8. Strong rapport with clients
Building a strong rapport with clients is crucial for any business that wants to achieve long-term success. This not only helps maintain existing clients but also attracts new ones – it’s a proven fact that clients who enjoy a positive experience with a business are more likely to return and recommend it to others.
Here’s how time tracking can help to improve your relationships with clients:
- Make informed client promises: With solid data, you can avoid overpromising results to clients and take on projects accordingly.
- Demonstrate transparency and accountability: Using time tracking software, you can provide detailed reports to clients regarding how many hours were spent on their project, what tasks were completed, and when. This level of transparency and accountability gives clients peace of mind that they are paying for what they were promised, and that their project is being given the attention it deserves.
- Bill clients accurately: With reliable time tracking, businesses can accurately invoice clients for the exact time spent on each project, ensuring that clients are only charged for the work completed and not for work that was not done.
Pro tip:
When it comes to managing client billing and invoicing, there’s no need to worry about the time-consuming and tedious task anymore. With actiTIME, you can automate the entire process without any hassle.
actiTIME makes it easy to create accurate invoices quickly and bill clients based on project hours, tasks, or fixed costs, all while ensuring reliable financial tracking.
Plus, actiTIME offers the flexibility to customize your invoices according to your needs and branding, which helps to maintain a professional image while streamlining the invoicing process.
Check out this post to learn more about how to simplify invoicing using actiTIME. 👈
Conclusion
In sum, by accurately and regularly tracking your time, you can:
- Boost work efficiency
- Improve project planning and performance
- Better comply with labor laws
- Promote employee accountability and well-being
- Get data for smarter decision-making
- Enhance your relationships with clients
Now that you’ve learned the 8 top reasons why it’s important to track employee time, why not act on them?
Leverage the power of tech and try out actiTIME, an intuitive yet powerful web-based solution that will keep track of your employees’ hours, from billing to budgeting.
And if you feel like you need advice on how to implement such a system into your workflow, our support team is available via chats, email, or phone to provide their assistance.
So what are you waiting for? Get started today!
