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How Time Tracking Tool Can Improve Team Management?

July 26, 2022
Time Tracking
Time Tracking Tool

Your employee or HR will always say,

“Tracking time takes a long time.”

“I’m not interested in micromanaging my team.”

These are some of the most prevalent reasons why companies and teams are hesitant to use time tracking tool. Time trackers have a reputation for being a time-consuming administrative nuisance that stifles innovation and focus, but this isn’t true for managers or executives, and it’s certainly not true for teams.

When done effectively, time tracking takes just a few minutes per week for your team to record working hours. Supervisors receive project and team management data, as well as time and attendance monitoring, in exchange for their teams being more organized and focused.

Let’s take a step back and look at what time tracking is and how bosses, supervisors, and teams may benefit from it.

What is Time Tracking?

The technique of documenting time against activities is known as time tracking. Time tracking is a term used in the business world to describe the process of recording an employee’s work hours against the activities that have been assigned to them.

In both scenarios, time is tracked via time tracking software, which includes not only time-keeping tools but also analytics and reports that provide insight into individuals and teams productivity, expenses and profits, time distribution across activities and projects, and more.

5 Work Performance Improvement Tips

Employee time tracking software isn’t only a time-saving tool for keeping track of timesheets, attendance, and reporting. They can also be utilized to boost productivity in your startup or business. Here are a few instances of how they can be of assistance:

 

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  • Time savings

If you know how to track staff time and attendance across multiple projects, you understand how critical it is to have detailed data that allows you to quickly identify issues that need to be addressed. However, manually documenting work time across projects takes time.

You can save your subordinates time on document creation by implementing a time tracker to your firm.

Employees can simply clock in using the UBS software within the online or mobile app with a few simple clicks. There’s no need to open the worksheet, wait for it to load, and sign in manually.

Allowing staff to forget about logging the actual time spent on projects allows them to concentrate more on their responsibilities.

  • Increasing efficiency

All tasks linked to timesheets are automated with the help of a time tracking tool, allowing staff to focus on their major goals. People may concentrate more on their tasks, and their intricate work time data will be saved automatically without them having to do anything.

This will assist people in staying focused and will allow them to track how much time they spend on each work. They can easily increase their work efficiency and become more productive while feeling less exhausted as a result of having a better awareness of their own work performance.

  • Attendance tracking in great detail

The use of an online time tracker reduces the chance of making mistakes such as missing or incomplete attendance lists.

In comparison to those made manually, information on clocking in and out, calling breaks, and time spent on projects is more precise.

Detailed data also aids in the detection of abnormalities such as employee tardiness and unscheduled absences, as well as the identification of projects that have been missed and overtimes that have yet to be resolved.

  • Make it easier to create reports.

For the HR department and supervisors, creating employee attendance reports using standard paperwork takes a long time. Applying time tracking software will allow you to save all of your data on the cloud, allowing you to simply access it to generate employee attendance reports on a regular basis.

  • Improve employee happiness

Another advantage of an automatic attendance system is that it saves time. Your staff will be happy as a result!

Allowing individuals to forget about time logging and other small time-consuming duties helps them boost their productivity, which is linked to employee happiness, according to a study published in the SSRN journal.

Automated time tracking across projects informs employees about which tasks consumed the most time, allowing them to better organize their work schedule ahead of time and reducing stress.

Employees have evidence of attendance in the form of a digital attendance timesheet if they work as often as they need to, and if there are any issues from the employee’s behalf (e.g. in regard to overtimes), they have specific info about hours worked.

Benefits of Time Tracking for Team Management

Time tracking is an important time management skill that every supervisor, leader, and employee should learn and apply at work.

According to the 2020 Market Research Future work, unregistered work activities cost the US economy 50 million hours of productivity or $7.4 billion per day.

For the previous three and a half years, Google Trends reveals a 25.6 percent growth in the popularity of the search term “time tracking.” It’s no surprise, given that many businesses went remote when the WHO declared the start of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, and the word “time tracking” has grown in use by 17 percent as of September 2021.

The benefits of time tracking extend beyond project managers and employees.

First and foremost, it trains your employees to be more responsible and conscientious with their time. However, it also offers managers with information and knowledge that they can use to allocate burden, detect and eliminate obstacles, optimize processes, and improve communication.

But this isn’t the end of the benefits of time tracking for team management;

Let’s explore what else it has to offer.

Benefits of Time Tracking for Teams

  • Get Personal & Professional Advice

Managers can use employee time tracking software against tasks to obtain insight into how employee time is split between clients, projects, and individual activities, allowing them to better train their employees and manage time in the future.

Companies and teams that utilize a combination of time tracking, project, and resource management software get the most out of this information since it helps them to precisely evaluate and allocate workload, detect and resolve bottlenecks as soon as possible, and optimize revenue.

  • Control Scope Creep

Scope creep occurs when needs change after the project scope has been set, causing delivery delays and expense overruns in any project, particularly Agile initiatives.

You can use time trackers to set deadlines, time and cost budgets, and discover and manage scope creep before it occurs.

  • Resources should be distributed

Keeping track of staff hours gives you a clear picture of your team’s capabilities.

You can tell who is nearing the end of a project and requires additional work, see performance dips and avoid burnout, discover bottlenecks, and mobilize your resources quickly.

Team time tracking allows you to allocate resources more effectively and provide proactive support to ensure project success.

  • Stress Reduction

When we are faced with large duties, feel overwhelmed, or lack control over a situation, we are likely to become stressed.

When your staff members track their time against tasks, they can see how much work they’ve completed and how much work remains until the project’s completion, which minimizes the buzz in their minds and allows them to concentrate and relax.

  • Boost Employee Efficiency

Managers can acquire information into employee performance and identify areas where they require mentoring using time tracking data.

For instance, if other employees finish the similar task in a fraction of the time, you may wish to provide training to that failing individual.

Managers should analyze team performance and productivity using time tracking data, which allows them to manage resources and distribute work fairly.

  • Ā Boost Collaboration

Managers require data about employee workload, capability, and abilities in order to optimize workflow and collaboration.

You can’t manually “examine” every team member in a remote or distributed team, but time monitoring data can offer you a rapid snapshot of your resources.

You may recognise overworked staff, assign part of their responsibilities, and encourage collaboration between them if you refer to this data on a regular basis.

Best Practices of Time Tracking for Team Management

Hundreds of time trackers are available on the software market for various sectors and needs.

From basic time tracking programmes to comprehensive accounting and absence management capabilities, their interface and usefulness can vary greatly.

Let’s look at how you and your team can get the most out of your time management software.

  • Explain the Importance of Time Tracking

“My boss doesn’t believe in me.”

“They want to be in charge of me.”

“They’re trying to find an excuse to fire me.”

Employees tend to overthink, feel micromanaged, and become agitated when there is a lack of openness and trust in their relationship with you.

To avoid this situation, make sure managers understand why they require time monitoring data and how it benefits employees. For example, you might utilize time monitoring data to deliver correct bills and reports to your customers, divide tasks equitably among your team, avoid overloads, and keep an eye on burnout situations.

A fair workload, correct overtime payment, flexible timetables, and the ability to work from home are all possible employee advantages.

  • Implement Time Tracking Tools and Practices that are Beneficial

Employees can usually record their hours in a variety of ways with business time trackers.

Timesheets and timers are commonly available as office software, web services, browser extensions, and mobile apps that do not permit activity tracking and other workplace surveillance methods.

Make sure your team time tracker respects employee privacy, offers a variety of capabilities, and fosters trust.

  • Create a policy for time tracking

Task naming, comments, billable and non-billable time tracking must all be structured to make time tracking data attractive and easy to process.

Document the essential criteria, explain why they must be followed, communicate this policy to your entire team, and implement the system as soon as feasible.

  • Capture time right away

Employees who have never used a time tracker previously may be resistive, forget to enter their time after completing a task, or even fail to fill out their timesheets at the end of the week.

Incorrect time tracking costs businesses thousands of dollars per year, with poor email tracking alone costing $50,000 each year.

Motivate your employees to keep a daily time log and develop the habit, much like checking their emails.

Tell your team to start their timers in the time tracking software, chrome extension, or mobile app, every-time they start a new task and press “stop” when they finish to store their data for more precise timing logs.

  • Use comments in your time log.

Keeping track of time against tasks isn’t always enough, especially in outsourcing and consulting firms. Legal practitioners, for instance, frequently bill their clients in half-hour increments, thus their clients need to know the specifics of duties like “Communication” or “Research.”

Search for time trackers that allow time entry comments and urge your team to use them if you really need this level of detail. Your staff members’ time records with comments are shown in time tracking and billing reports, allowing you as a manager and your clients to gain a full understanding of completed tasks.

  • Keep track of the project’s progress

Consider using a time tracking system that displays tasks in a card view to make your project progress more visible. Following the determination of project development stages, you evaluate task progress based on their position on the board.

This visual representation of task phases can encourage your team members to complete their jobs and continue to the next stage, while you can use it as a project manager to keep track of project progress, detect problems, and solve them as quickly as feasible.

  • Tasks should be estimated

For a project to succeed, correct task estimates are essential. Undervalued tasks, for example, can block project progress due to a lack of resources such as time, money, and labor. That is why it is critical to maintain track of historical data in order to create more accurate projections for future initiatives.

  • Examine the team’s performance

Employee performance evaluation is a critical management strategy that gives project administrators insight into employees’ strengths and limitations in the workplace, as well as valuable feedback and opportunities for development.

Employee performance can be evaluated using time tracking systems through various charts and reports.

Reports evaluating expected and actual time, reports on how work schedules are split across tasks and projects, and analytics on whether task deadlines have been reached are common examples.

  • Meetings and reviews should be held on a regular basis.

You may arrange a feedback meeting at the completion of the month, Sprint, or project after you’ve acquired productivity insights through charts and reports.

As a project manager, you can provide comments on your team’s performance and identify areas for improvement.

Task estimation meetings are another sort of meeting that provides value to your time tracking practice. If you lead an Efficient team, you must plan and forecast your next sprint before entering the information into your time tracking system.

  • Organize your absences

Employee absences are another factor that managers should consider. Sadly, few time trackers incorporate absence management capabilities including as absence records, automatic paid time off balance calculations, and reports on team member absences.

Consider how much better team management and communication would be if you and your team members could review staff availability and future absences in a single team calendar.

When choosing time tracking software for your team, what should you look for?

Hundreds of solutions for teams and individuals, specialized industries, and extended capabilities to fulfill unique demands are available on the modern time tracking software market. Managers want to pick the perfect technology on the first try and get the benefits straight away, so their testing could take weeks or months.

The following is a list of characteristics that you may find useful while using a team time tracker:

  • Timesheets, timers, and manual time records are all options for keeping track of time.
  • Management of tasks and projects
  • User roles and permissions can be customized.
  • Payroll and overtime administration
  • Reports and analytics
  • Work that is billable and non-billable
  • Invoicing and billing
  • Management of absences
  • App for mobile devices
  • Integrations

If you’re not sure where to begin, UBS – a team time tracker that supports all of these functions, is a good place to start.

So, what are you waiting for?

Schedule a free demonstration with one of our professionals.

Alpesh Vaghasiya

Alpesh Vaghasiya

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