Over the past couple of years, remote and flex work have increased which increases the need to adopt time-tracking technology. But how do you get your workers on board with it? Not to just agree to using it, but to appreciate it?
Thankfully, it’s not as difficult as you may think to get employee buy-in for time tracking, but it is very important to get.
Why Is Time Tracking Important?
According to research, organizations lose $11 billion annually due to time theft; $7.4 billion per day from unrecorded work activities; and $373 million to buddy punching. Aside from these massive losses, there are positive reasons to adopt time-tracking technology including accountability, increased productivity, and better profits.
Benefits Of Time Tracking For Your Workforce
If you’re still using paper timesheets, spreadsheets, or other outdated forms of time tracking, you’re likely losing money in the form of inaccurate timesheets and job data, lower productivity, excessive administrative work, and uninformed decisions.
1. Boost Productivity
Productivity is about more than just getting things done. Productivity is about increasing the output of your services that expand better and faster than the things you put into it. Key components of increased productivity include better communications and project management, as well as proper delegation.
Time-tracking software provides you with the ability to improve communications, manage your projects, view schedules, and improve the overall performance of your workers and your company.
2. Improves Workload Management
Workload management is about getting the right people to complete the right jobs in the right way. Time tracking helps your teams stay organized by keeping track of where they are and when they start and finish a job. For administrators, time tracking simplifies their bookkeeping and accounting procedures thus making their work flow smoothly and easily. All of these things will enhance your employees’ experiences working for your company.
3. Boosts Profitability
With employee time tracking, you’ll not just save money by having accurate timesheets and running payroll more quickly, you’ll also have better job costing which will increase your bottom line.
4. Helps With Data-Driven Decisions
Data is crucial to making decisions when it comes to your business. When you’re able to see things like where too much time is being spent on something, which employees do which jobs better, etc. you can make better decisions about growing your company. With reports based on time-tracking technology, you can review things like your most profitable projects, your least productive employees, and even trends in things like drive time and routes.
5. Establishes Accountability
When you have teams and employees outside of the office, you can’t monitor what they’re doing when they’re clocked in if you’re using paper timesheets. Time tracking eliminates this and since they’re clocked in on a particular job and task, they’re accountable for the time they spent on that job and task. Similarly, it gives your company the ability to provide proof of hours worked to your clients which increases trust with them and provides transparency.
6. Accurate, Reliable Paychecks
With outdated time tracking practices, your employees are more likely to receive inaccurate paychecks. Time tracking eliminates that and ensures they’ll get paid the right amount every paycheck.
Most Common Problems With Time Tracking
Whether you’re using paper timesheets or an automated time-tracking system, there are some common issues with time tracking among them all.
Inaccurate Time Records
With paper timesheets, the probability of human error is high. Often, employees wait to fill out their time cards until the end of the day or even the end of the week. This requires them to recall where they were and what they worked on throughout the work week.
You might also receive incomplete or damaged timesheets that result in the wrong times being entered for payroll which puts you at risk of either over- or under-paying your workers. Plus, it makes the process of running payroll even more tedious and time-consuming than it should be.
Automated Time Tracking Seems Invasive
Some employees may feel a sense of violation or micromanagement when they use automated time tracking. They get the message that you don’t trust them or want to spy on them. This is a legitimate concern, but one that can be alleviated with the right communication.
How to Get Employee Buy-In for Time Tracking
Time tracking is largely beneficial, but some employees may not appreciate the idea. We conducted a survey to ask American workers how they felt about GPS time tracking and 64% said they believed GPS time tracking would be a negative experience. However, the majority said they would accept GPS time tracking if it was adopted by their employer, despite any misgivings.
Even if you feel they might resent time tracking, there are things you can do to make them more open to it and even appreciate it.
1. Make The Process As Simple As Possible
Change is hard, especially when you’ve been doing things the same way for a long time. That’s why it’s important to review your time-tracking software before introducing it to your crew so you can see for yourself if it might be too complicated for them.
When change is made simpler, it’s more likely to be accepted without a lot of friction.
2. Showcase The Benefits Of Time Tracking
In general, employees care about the companies they work for and they want to do the best job they can. Conversely, employers need to have their employees in mind when building their companies.
That’s why it’s important for your employees to know the benefits they will enjoy when they start tracking their time with a time tracking app. Remind them it is not a punishment but, rather, a way for the company to grow as a whole. Explain how much time it will save them and how it will make their jobs easier. Be sure they understand how much easier it will make communication, and how much more accurate their paychecks are going to be.
If they understand the benefits to them as well as the company, it becomes an exciting part of work.
3. Make It Part Of Your Culture
Workplace culture happens whether you try to make it or not. It’s about keeping people connected and reaching for the same goals as a collective. By making time tracking an important part of your workplace culture, it’s more likely to be embraced - and enforced - by your employees.
4. Have Clear Guidelines
One of the greatest concerns to employees about time tracking is micromanagement and, although time-tracking software absolutely could be used to do this, it shouldn’t be and isn’t intended to.
Instead of letting your employees guess and worry about how time tracking is going to be used, set clear guidelines for them, so they know how it works, when it will be used, and how they will use it. This will further help you get employee buy-in for time tracking.
