Time tracking is exceptionally popular in some industries, but has not made its way into others.
Business owners and managers often believe that time tracking could be a waste of time or could make employees feel micromanaged. But this doesn’t have to be the case, in fact time tracking could be a huge asset to your business in terms of productivity, motivation and keeping your clients happy.
Manage projects more effectively
Perhaps the most important aspect of time tracking is that it makes it easier for you to get the job done on time. For time tracking to be successful, it is important to set realistic targets for how long each task should take.
Ultimately time tracking will help you standardise exactly how long you should assign for the completion of each task without overstretching workers. Understanding the amount of time it takes to complete a task allows you to more effectively stay on top of projects.
If you are then billing clients for the work that you complete, it can stop the project from overrunning and either having to charge the client more money for the work, or cutting in to your own profit to make up the difference.
Ensure productive time
It may be the case that your staff are not as productive as they could be. That doesn’t mean that they are lazy, it could just be that they are not aware of the urgency of deadlines or don’t understand how important it is that they complete the work on time. Time tracking shows your team the tangible benefit of completing their work.
On the other hand, time tracking can also be a very valuable way to understand if a member of the team is overexerting themselves or is being forced to do too much work. If the majority of staff members are logging 8 hours per day and one is logging 14, that either suggests that they are rushing their work or that they are being forced to do too much.
Motivate your employees
To some, this might seem like overburdening your team and micromanaging which may not have the positive effect of improving productivity. But this doesn’t have to be a negative for staff. Time tracking provides a trackable goal for many roles that otherwise lack a tangible proof of productivity. This makes it much easier to for management to notice hardworking staff members and reward them for their efforts.
Ultimately this makes it easier to review the performance of each member of the team. When staff understand that their efforts are tracked and will be appreciated, they will be motivated to continue doing an excellent job.
Impress clients
If you provide outsourced work for clients, time tracking can be a way to really impress them. Whenever a customer pays you to carry out work for them, it is vital that they feel that they are getting value for money.
Completing the work is an aspect of this but it is also valuable for them to see exactly how the time was spent. This can show your clients that they are getting exceptional value for money and this can allow you to hold onto them as customers for much longer.
Improve your own quotes
If a potential customer comes to you with a request, it’s probably the case that you will quote them for the work. But for many businesses, each job is very different. This means that coming up with a quote for specific work can be difficult. You may find that the quote you provide is completely uncompetitive with your competition or that you drastically under-quote and give yourself too much work to do for too little profit.
Time tracking makes it much easier for to understand exactly how much the work will cost you to complete. You can then quote the job with confidence, knowing that you aren’t pricing yourself out of the job or taking on too much.
Understand where improvements can be made
Time tracking makes it much easier to manage performance so that you can understand exactly where improvements can be made. If certain areas of the business are underperforming you can look immediately at the issues around the time spent on tasks. It could be the case that processes need to be altered in order for the business to run more efficiently.
Article provided by Mike James, an independent content writer working together with staff scheduling specialist Planday, who were consulted over the information in this post.
