5 Essentials to Create a Productive Work Environment with Time Tracking   

Even though you might not bill your customers by the hour, you probably find it necessary to track your staff’s time. Many people assume that time-tracking is just used to bill clients by the hour. However, tools like Clock in Easy also help minimize duplication and optimize your work process, allowing you to cut your overhead expenses successfully.

Most significantly, efficient time management aids in improving the overall quality and productivity of your workforce. Allowing employees to establish a pre-set strategy for each work hour is a straightforward approach.

There are five things you can do to help your team manage their time better:

1. Establish Realistic Boundaries and Timelines

When it comes to employee time management difficulties, it’s apparent that they’re not always self-inflicted. Bad management is often to blame for several time management difficulties that employees encounter, including:

  • Uncertainty over which tasks to prioritize
  • Also, when their job is heavy, they find it difficult to say no.
  • Overwhelmed by a large number of jobs

Since they didn’t establish a clear schedule, they procrastinate or don’t finish what they start.

When you look at this list, you’ll notice that most time management concerns are communication issues. Members of the team are unsure about what duties they will be focusing on, where they should use their time, or whatever they can and cannot refuse.

Allow them to inform you where your expectations differ from their reality. Of course, this isn’t anybody’s fault. But when you know the issues plaguing your employees, you can take the necessary corrective action.

2. Conduct a Time Audit

When you talk to your staff, you’ll find that most of them believe they have 7–8 hours each day to do their essential tasks. But, sadly, according to many studies, other duties such as email, instant messaging, meetings, and administrative work consume the bulk of our workweek.

Understanding this, showing your staff how their time is spent daily may be a handy tool. A time audit is one method of accomplishing this. This entails your team outlining their goals and views about how employees spend their time and measuring how they operate.

In most situations, there will be a significant gap between intentions and deeds. Worse, when employees are requested to track their time at work, it’s simple (and logical) for them to feel pressured. So, as you begin, make it clear that this is an exercise to help them get better, not to impact their employment status.

3. Instruct Your Staff on How to Plan and Anticipate Their Time

It will take you longer than you expect to complete a task, no matter how quickly you believe you can accomplish it. You may establish a solid plan and estimate how long a job or project will take and expect the outcome to be in line with your expectations, but that doesn’t mean it will.

Experts call this the “Planning fallacy.” So, you must make sure your staff knows to plan, and also to deal with delays and other unexpected issues. If an employee rushes their work to avoid a delay, the quality and accuracy may go down.

4. Determine If the Systems Are Aiding or Hindering the Productive Capacity

Worker time management difficulties are not always the fault of the worker. At times, the tools that are supposed to help with productivity and time management in the office may actually hinder it.

Consider the simple weekly team meeting. These sessions may seem like a wonderful way to keep everyone up to speed, catch up on the entire project, and foster knowledge exchange, but they often end up taking longer than expected, thereby wasting time.

Too many meetings also take away time that could otherwise be utilized for concentrated work. Also, there’s your documenting policy, process improvement procedure, and communication tool selection to consider.

5. Create Regulations That Safeguard ‘Maker’ Time

As a leader, you’re undoubtedly used to putting out fires and dealing with problems as they arise. Unfortunately, these distractions can utterly disrupt those who spend most of their time doing head-down work like writing or programming.

Not only does this make it hard to track progress on larger jobs (one of the most effective methods to keep people motivated), but it also hinders creators from fully immersing themselves in their creative work.

Collaboration is crucial to the growth and success of any company. However, it may just get in the way of getting meaningful work done. So put procedures in place to safeguard your team’s time if you want to help optimize their performance.

You can boost your company’s motivation and effectiveness through various ways with a tool like Clock in Easy. Try out some of the ideas suggested above and keep track of your employee’s progress.

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