Once upon a time, it was rare to be able to work at home — but times have changed during and post-pandemic. The truth is that now, more than ever, we are a culture with thousands of people who spend their days working outside of a typical office environment.  

The future of work is rapidly evolving, and time tracking software is playing an increasingly important role. As more people shift to working remotely, the need for accurate and efficient monitoring of hours has never been greater. 

What your business gains with time tracking software

Time tracking software allows employers to accurately track employee activity in real-time, giving them a better understanding of how their workforce is performing. By providing an accurate overview of time spent on projects, employers can ensure that their team is working efficiently and meeting deadlines. Time tracking software also helps employers manage payroll costs and identify areas of improvement in productivity.

With the rapid rise of remote work, more businesses are turning to time tracking software as a way to increase efficiency and maximize profits. With detailed insights into employee performance, employers can make better decisions about how to allocate resources and improve the overall productivity of their workforce. 

Time tracking software also helps employers ensure that employees are being paid according to the time they’ve worked, eliminating any discrepancies. 

As more businesses continue to embrace technology, it’s clear that time tracking software will become an essential component of any successful work environment. By providing employers with an accurate picture of how their employees are working, time tracking solutions ensure that businesses are running as efficiently as possible and maximizing their profits.

Time tracking software also provides visibility into your team’s performance metrics, enabling you to measure and analyze the effectiveness of your team. This data can help you identify areas where they may need additional training or coaching, or where they can improve processes to become more efficient. 

Using time tracking software allows you to easily monitor progress on projects, providing a better understanding of the timeline and potential delays. It can also help you better understand the cost of your workforce. By providing detailed data on employee productivity, you can easily calculate the costs associated with each worker and identify areas where you could save money. 

What role does time tracking play in our workforce's future?

The demand for employee monitoring has been on a steady rise as more and more businesses are adapting to the work-from-home culture. During the pandemic when physical offices had to be vacated to save on rent, most enterprises were forced to shift towards remote working. 

Those companies that were already in the habit of allowing their employees to work from home had more ease in transition. However, it didn’t make things any easier. With the lack of physical presence, distractions and loss of focus was natural among employees operating remotely. This led to businesses worrying about their output and a persistent hesitancy to approach colleagues due to physical separation, both of which led to burnout in many cases.

But it’s safe to say that working from home isn’t going anywhere. We are a culture that likes wearing yoga pants to our desks and putting fewer miles on our SUVs. Many of us are fighting the idea of going back to an office every day.

This means that more organizations are now turning towards employee technologies for effectively managing remote workers and keeping track of their productivity levels. This allows you to keep a better pulse on your team’s performance from anywhere at any time. 

Out of sight but definitely not out of mind

In the past, when employees worked inside a physical office, management was able to directly supervise and track their working hours as well as how they were getting tasks done. 

When it comes to remote work, you only see fragments of what is actually going on. This lack of visibility can create trust issues between employers and employees, with supervisors needing to constantly verify that all tasks are performed adequately and on time. Additionally, the ambiguity created by remote work has given rise to micromanagement practices that can ruin team dynamics and demotivate workers who don’t feel appreciated or trusted.

People tend to become less productive when someone micromanages them. And managers are less effective when their sole focus is checking every task of their people and asking for constant updates. As you can imagine, this causes people to avoid their managers, resulting in irritation that spreads among your team like a bad cold.

Enter in time tracking software. When everyone is monitored from the same source, both employers and employees tend to be more productive due to a better performance standard being set. Plus, having one central application allows you and your team to get real-time reports on how each individual is performing while also giving them the means to ensure that no activity gets overlooked or neglected. 

It puts the monitoring in the hands of an application rather than a human being who feels more like a taskmaster than a manager. Both the manager and team members can see the exact same progress through the software without the need to request or send updates. The software reduces pressure and tension, making for a better working environment. 

Breakdown of time tracking software benefits

 

Distribution of work

Managing work requirements for any team can be a daunting task. Allocating and monitoring the tasks that need to be completed by each employee or team requires detailed knowledge of their capabilities and the capacity available. 

Without clear data on the role and contribution of employees, it can be difficult to decide how much time they should dedicate to particular tasks. It can be hard to estimate accurately the overall amount of time required by teams to complete specific tasks. Bad data equals bad time and task distribution.

Time tracking software makes it easier to allocate tasks based on insights into individual or team capacity. Through this technology, employers have access to detailed data regarding who is currently working on which projects and can quickly adjust deadlines or reassign work accordingly. 

This allows managers to more efficiently distribute and manage workloads according to their needs while also providing employees with more control and flexibility over their day-to-day roles.

Making every minute count

Time management is an essential skill for successful professional personnel, both in physical offices and remote work. The mismanagement of working hours can lead to decreased overall efficiency, wasted time, and ineffective task completion. To prevent these negative effects, supervisors and managers should have a closer look at how their team is spending their time throughout the day. 

A simple way to do this is through the use of a time tracking app, which allows supervisors and managers to get insights into employees’ day-to-day activities. This includes analytics reports detailing whether tasks are completed productively or not, as well as detecting any time spent on non-work-related activities or when an employee has been idle for extended periods of time. 

With these updated analytics existing in real-time, it simplifies accurate tracking of how tasks are being handled in a simplified fashion to increase overall productivity levels in the workplace. 

Better productivity

Time tracking software gives you complete visibility into what individual team members are doing throughout their workday, allowing them to understand exactly which tasks are taking up their time and the amount of effort each of them is investing in their workload. This detailed insight helps to make every single employee accountable for their own activities and keeps track of spending a longer time on non-work-related tasks. 

You can then take active steps towards developing more effective work processes as well as preventing your team from wasting time on distracting activities on a day-to-day basis. Saving time means saving money. 

Tracking can increase productivity and give you actionable data that can be used to further enhance your policies and procedures. This includes creating task lists and job descriptions that cater specifically to individuals’ skill sets, building accurate job profiles, and fostering better communication between departments by understanding how they interact with each other on a daily basis. 

Employee time tracking moves beyond just measuring performance. It gives you and your managers a clear picture of where improvements need to be made in order to create an efficient working culture, motivating your employees and ultimately enhancing the business's overall productivity levels.

Get the most out of reports

Finding the right balance between correctly recording employees’ time and managing their workload can be challenging for any organization. Traditionally, manual reporting has been used for capturing employee data, but this method rarely provides an accurate representation of time spent on particular tasks. 

For employees, it can be burdensome to have to fill in timesheets after completing various tasks as it often doesn’t add value to their work and takes extra effort from them. As a result, timesheet management accuracy is often put into question and effective reporting becomes difficult. It’s a vicious cycle.

Fortunately, organizations now have the option to implement time tracking software that simplifies the process of creating automated timesheets, allowing greater flexibility, and streamlining the workflow across multiple teams. The software also includes comprehensive reports, empowering managers with real-time insights into team performance, efficiency trends, and impact assessment of their strategies so they can make more informed decisions regarding resource allocation.

That part in and of itself is something to cheer about, right? And by automating routine activities that don’t require human intervention or input, organizations can increase productivity among their teams while still maintaining a high level of accuracy in their management reporting.

Increased engagement

Being at home creates a distance that some businesses need to overcome if they want to be successful. Employee engagement is a key factor for productivity and success in any organization. An employee monitoring tool is a great tool to help improve employee engagement. 

By using this type of tool, you can measure your employees' performance more accurately, as well as provide an easier way for your team members to collaborate on tasks and keep track of progress in real-time. This will show employees that their work is recognized and appreciated, increasing their sense of value within the company. And you can’t put a price on that.

Moreover, with a time tracking tool, you can easily manage the workload and allocate tasks according to who best can handle them right away. This practice encourages collaboration between teams, leading to more motivated employees working together on projects to reach their common goal of achieving company objectives.

Automating manual labor is also important. It reduces mundane repetitive activities while increasing the value of data analytics over time—better visibility of progress from both employer and employee perspectives will further lead to a better-engaged workforce.

Here’s the deal

Time tracking is a necessity when you have a team that works outside of a traditional, stationary office environment. The reality is that people are going to continue to work from home —they like it, and they want to do it. 

And time tracking software is making that reality more appealing and acceptable. We’ve just told you many of the ways a good time tracking app can improve your work life. It’s changing the face of our work for the better. 

By removing the snags of disorganization, forgetfulness, and micromanagement, time tracking frees up mental space and actual time in your day to allow for better focus and increased productivity. Those two things will improve your bottom line and work stress — and that’s priceless. 

When you are ready to improve your work life with a time tracking tool, we are here to help you do it. Get started with a free Harvest trial to experience the benefits of tracking your time. 

Our team is passionate about helping you make the most of your business by ensuring that time isn’t slipping through your fingers. So, please reach out to us, and let’s talk about all the ways that Harvest can change the way you work for the better.