Time management is known to be very beneficial to employers and employees alike. Without it, it is impossible to have any estimate about project progress and completion, and project budgets would go haywire. Employers track time to ensure good management of employee work time.
Tracking time gives a clear picture of how everyone is contributing to a project. It provides valuable insight into how long an employee takes to execute a task. This helps in allocating resources in a better way so as to achieve optimum results.
Having said that, is employee time tracking really necessary? And does it even prove effective for everyone? Let’s have a look at its pros and cons:
The Pros of Employee Time Tracking:
1). Accurate Billing:
Time tracking provides accurate details of business hours an employee works for a particular client. This helps in billing clients exactly for the work being done without any mistakes. Using time billing software simplifies this process by automatic online invoice generation.
2). Higher Productivity:
Time tracking shows how your employees are spending their time. It helps in monitoring all the activities an employee carries out in a given time frame, productive and unproductive both. This helps in scheduling work better in order to achieve higher productivity.
3). Better Resource Allocation:
Having an overview of what each employee is working on helps in fair allocation of work without overburdening anyone. It also helps to assess an individual employee’s capability based on their performance. This information benefits employers as they can then assign employees that are best suited for a particular project.
4). Saves money:
Better time management ensures better utilization of billable hours. So many companies lose a major amount of revenue every year due to poor time tracking. When employees are aware of the time being tracked, they spend their time more meaningfully and get more work done. This in turn saves money and brings a positive return on investment for the company.
The Cons of Employee Time Tracking:
1). Employees feel they are being controlled:
It is expected that employees may feel intimidated when employers want to track their time. Excessive tracking of every activity can end up being harmful to an employee’s mental health. They may find their work environment very uncomfortable since all their time is being monitored closely. This can also result in employee dissatisfaction and lower their morale.
Before implementing a time tracking software, employers need to come clear to their employees about when and how they’ll implement it, what data they’ll monitor, and how they plan on using this data. They should ensure their employees that they do not intend to spy on them or invade their privacy, but to help them self-learn ways of better managing their own time.
2). Increases risk of micromanagement:
Time tracking comes with the biggest disadvantage of micromanagement that can stress employees a lot. They may fear that their managers constantly want to know where they are and what they’re working on. This forces employees to populate all their time with some work or the other.
To tackle this, employers and managers need to understand that expecting their employees to be constantly busy with work can actually do more harm than good. They need to clearly communicate with their employees that the point of time tracking is not to nitpick on every small mistake. On the contrary, using time tracking software can actually help in finding better ways of managing tasks and ensuring transparency in operations.
Conclusion:
With the above-mentioned pros and cons, employers can determine whether employee time tracking would prove to be beneficial for your company or not. But if you do decide to go ahead with it, you must ensure your employees are aware about your intentions behind it and feel comfortable about it.
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