Talking about “employee productivity” usually brings up a bad feeling.
Employees don’t like having their work scrutinized, and managers (at least, some of them) don’t want to be chasing people around to ask them about their work.
Yet, if teams want to improve, or at least have an idea of how their work’s been going. Monitoring and measuring productivity is necessary.
Thankfully, Timeneye gives managers the tools to do just that: help the manager find costs and time sinks, and also benefit the way the organization works as a whole.
Determining employee productivity can be challenging without clear metrics.
Should we measure the number of tasks completed, or perhaps the financial returns on projects after accounting for employee costs?
Each business operates uniquely, and thus, their definitions of productivity can vary widely.
A practical starting point for measurement is to analyze how employees allocate their time. As the age-old adage reminds us, “time is money.”
“I know! I’ll simply count how much time they stay in the office and the one who spends more hours wins! Right?”
Wrong!
It's not just about counting up hours; it's about understanding how those hours are spent. You need to determine if time and resources are being utilized efficiently across projects and teams.
That's where a time audit becomes invaluable.
Time audits, while often used for improving individual productivity, can be incredibly effective for entire teams as well. Essentially, a time audit involves a thorough examination of how time is utilized.
By conducting a time audit, it’s possible to identify time drains and see where improvements can be made. Managers can help employees with their time management skills and keep the whole team happy and productive.
For businesses that bill by the hour, time tracking is an absolute necessity—it's the only way to ensure they’re compensated correctly and fairly for their efforts.
However, conducting time audits is valuable beyond just billing purposes; it offers a comprehensive way to meause and enhance productivity, and of course find ways of improvement.
You can perform a time audit using only the following:
However, we advise against spreadsheets because in the long run, they become unmanageable, prone to error, and difficult to read
Instead, it’s better to use a time tracking tool like Timeneye with its comprehensive reporting features. Timeneye doesn’t just capture hours worked but provides insights into how those hours are allocated across different projects and tasks. This empowers managers with the data they need to make informed decisions. Timeneye also offers robust reporting tools to help analyse workflows and productivity.
Timeneye will give you exactly the tools and data you need to perform your evaluation.
What you need:
It’s important for your team to understand the reason why you’re evaluating their time. Otherwise, it just will feel like an imposition. The last thing you want is people stacking their timesheets with meaningless entries, just because they have to.
Also, include yourself in the evaluation: every good leader knows how important it is to lead by example. Not to mention, the evaluation for the team and business as a whole won’t be completed without you.
The team will need some time to adjust to the new tool, so give them the chance to get used to it. Timeneye thankfully offers a series of helpful guides and how-to posts on how to use Timeneye to track time every day.
Also, establish and explain some rules and good practices. (For example, it may be useful to add notes for every time entry registered for a more detailed evaluation).
Setting goals is important for any evaluation. It makes no difference if you’re evaluating yourself or your team. In the case of a time audit, you need to understand clearly the goals you're working towards and how a time audit fits in the scenario.
Make sure to write everything down so you can compare the results later on. If you don't know where to start, you could start from the SMART framework.
After the goals and setup have been laid out, it’s time for you and your team to track your time.
Consistency will be the key: tracking time every day will ensure you’ll have enough data to then carry out all the analysis you need.
Don’t forget to also think about when your team is on the field, in meetings, or switching between multiple projects. Make it easier for them to track time by activating the integrations with the tools they use, and recommending they use the Timeneye apps on their mobile phone.
Here comes the dirty work of the managers: keeping an eye on people.
Obviously watching your team like a hawk all the time would be a) a huge waste of your time and b) a huge bummer on the team’s morale.
Let technology lend you a hand. Schedule regular reports and weekly overviews from Timeneye on your team’s work, to be delivered to your email directly. This will allow you to keep an eye on the process without disrupting or interrupting your team’s rhythm.
Project status views will also help you see where the time efforts of teams has been going, and whether they’re sticking to their budgets or not.
This is where you go to really dig into the data.
While you and your team track your time, it’s immediately organized in Timeneye and associated with the correct project, team members, group, and phase.
All this data can be visualized in one of the many reports in the reporting section.
You can run the following reports in Timeneye:
Whichever report you choose, you should also know that you can schedule reports so that they run automatically, at the frequency you decide. This will save you a lot of time and also help you keep up with your reporting on a regular basis.
A Team report will let you see how the team allocated their time, and you can also target specific members you included. Then compare the data with the goals you gave yourself and the team and you’ll know if they were met or not.
When the auditing period is finished, you can use all the data you gathered to understand the productivity and effectiveness of your team.
Where the goals met? How much time did they take? What projects and tasks usually took most of the time? Is your team overworked?
The time audit will open your eyes to all these aspects- and more.
You’ve arrived this far. Good job!
But simply checking the boxes of your goals and counting hours will do nothing for the team's productivity.
Find out where the work can improve and strengthen what is already working.
If you have explained the importance of good time management for employees and colleagues alike, all of you should benefit from the time audit you carried out.
The Timeneye Widget, which adds a little button on your browser so you can track time anywhere on the web, now supports new services and features
Discover how you can submit your timsheets while working on your favorite Office 365 product, by using the Timeneye time tracking software
There are many ways you can track time with Timeneye: you only have to choose the one that works better with your workflow.