Have you ever found yourself staring off into space, caught up in your own little world, only to suddenly come out of the fog and realize that a lot of time has passed? Well, it is something that a lot of us have experienced. Sometimes, time just gets away from us.
Normally, it is not really a problem. However, in a work environment like an office, it can be pretty troublesome. That is especially true when multiple people are having that issue and can be found sitting at their desk, daydreaming, or doing something that isn’t really related to their work (while not on break, of course).
It is an issue for everyone involved, too. Workers who are doing it often are not purposefully wasting company time, and it can make things harder for them in the long run because they have to scramble to get important projects done, too.
Obviously, it is frustrating from a supervisor’s standpoint as well, which is why we’re here to talk about some strategies to mitigate this sort of thing.
Time reporting is often misunderstood, unfortunately. Folks often conflate it with stuff like you can see here, https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/business-efficiency, or assume that it’s an invasion of privacy. However, when used ethically for a business, it can really improve productivity. Follow along to find out how!

What Is A Time Report?

First, let us take a look at what they are. Put simply, a time report is a summary or page that shows all sorts of statistics related to time in your business. As far as what those might look like and some examples, there are a ton.
For the most part, they function to ensure that all the billable hours for a given client or employee are stored in one convenient place. Now, part of what specific data will be tracked will depend on the program that you are using.
Some companies opt to try to create their own sheets or trackers, but this often is not the most efficient way to get it accomplished. There are tons of resources already available that we can touch upon, after all.
An example of that is Get Harvest, which is able to track things like billable hours, un-invoiced hours, and the payable amount of money related to the hours tracked. It is for both employees and clients, to help keep track of payments that are received and that need to go out. In that way, these types of programs can help to automate processes that had to be manually completed previously.

How Are They Implemented?

As with most types of new tech that we introduce to employees, there will need to be some introductory or explanatory meetings to help everyone get used to the program that we pick. Thankfully, it should not be too complex in this case. Rather, you will just want to explain to your employees how you want them to go about tracking their hours.
To some extent, this can vary depending on how your business operates. If you want them to turn off tracking during things like their breaks (including smoke breaks, for anyone who takes them), then that should be explained upfront.
There are also ways to detect if there are non-work-related activities happening on a computer, which can automatically shut off the tracking for hours.
Of course, some folks view that as an invasion of privacy, so you will have to decide how strict you want to go with this. There is not really a “right” or “wrong” way, thankfully. Rather, try to figure out a tracking model that suits your specific needs.
Once you have gotten to that point, you can go over it with all employees to make sure that everyone is on the same page here. An example of how that could be done is here: https://hr.uic.edu/employees/new-employees/uic-101/positive-time-reporting/.

How It Works

Again, this can look a bit different depending on the program that you use and how you opt to implement it. However, there will be a few things to keep in mind as you start to track this type of data. For one thing, you will be able to choose between “time rounding” versus not doing that. All it means is that the hours that are getting tracked will be rounded either up or down, depending on what your preferences are.
Next, you will probably see a lot of tabs in the program that you’re using, no matter what it is. That is how we keep our data straight, after all. With that said, it is not always easy to keep track of all the different labels. Hopefully, though, they will be somewhat easy to understand.
For instance, if they’re something along the lines of “tasks,” “team,” “projects,” “clients,” etc., it’s fairly straightforward.

How Does It Improve Efficiency?

Of course, the main question is still at hand: how can we improve our overall efficiency and create a more successful and sustainable business by utilizing time tracking? You can get somewhat of an idea of that in this blog, but it’s pretty multi-faceted as you can probably imagine. The first thing to keep in mind is that depending on how many clients you have; it can be hard to keep track of the hours to bill them for.
Even then, taking note of both the hours that employees are working as well as what to charge clients for can get sticky, fast. Having a system to automatically do that for you can certainly speed things along, to say the least. Additionally, it can save you and your team a lot of headaches from untangling all of that data to sort it manually.
Beyond that, it helps both the employer and the employees to have transparency in terms of their workloads and the entire process. There is no more guesswork in terms of how workers are spending their time when they are keeping logs of it, especially when it’s being tracked with a program.
This takes a lot of stress off of the shoulders of both parties – it improves communication rather seamlessly.
In a similar vein, it also helps to increase the accountability of employees in terms of how they are spending their time at work. Even if your policies are not strict in terms of tracking, it can encourage them to re-examine their priorities and potentially improve overall efficiency. All of this speaks volumes about how a time-tracking program is worth investing in for a business.
There are a few more benefits, though, before we close out for the day. When you do this sort of optimized tracking, you can figure out if there are any areas in the workplace that need to have more resources allocated to them. Also, it allows you to see places where a lot of the budget is being spent.
When you have this sort of data at your fingertips, it allows you to take charge of your business even more than you have before. You will know what’s going on in the office without having to stress about keeping an eye on everyone all the time.
Instead, you can work on important projects and business partnerships and/or relationships – essentially, you will be able to spend your own time much more efficiently and effectively as well.

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