Why Everyone in Your Company Should Track Their Time

Let’s face it; no one likes to track their time. It is yet another small task that employees have to take time out of their already busy schedules to do. While some employees might need more convincing than others, tracking time is a vital operation for any organization. The data collected reveals many insights into the working parts of a company and can help make crucial business decisions.

Estimating future projects

Having historical data to help project future costs, resources, and people needed for certain projects can help eliminate some of the trial and error at the beginning of projects. This historical time data can help when estimating costs to compare with actual costs at the end of a project. These don’t always mean monetary costs either; they can be the time spent on certain aspects of the project or resources used throughout the project. Having historical time data on which to base your estimates can help you forecast and compare your actuals to determine if the project was profitable or not.

Reporting on projects

When all of the members on your team track their time, you have accurate hours for which to bill your clients. Without this data, you could either over charge the client or sell your team short. Keeping track of the amount og time your team spends on a project is crucial to preventing members from being over worked. When project managers have insight to team members’ hours, they are able to prevent worker burnout early on in a project.

No only is tracking time spent on projects important, but also keeping track of all of the other resources used throughout the process. Having resource management capabilities can help you determine resource capacity and ensure your project resources are scheduled and allocated properly. Being able to see and report on these things throughout the process helps to eliminate potential pain points before they even happen.

Insight into where salaried employees spend their time

While most salaried employees are exempt in the eyes of the Fair Labor Standards Act, it doesn’t mean they are exempt from tracking their time. Having salaried employees track their time keeps them accountable for where they are spending their time. Most of the time, salaried employees make more than hourly, so where they are spending your time is a valuable piece of data to a company. It answers the question, “Are these employees spending time on the move valuable areas of the business?”

Everyone gets a yearly review, where they’re hourly or salaried. Having a log of the amount of time spend and where it was spent can help the salaried employee build a good case for a raise during reviews. Without that data, your supervisor can never be 100% sure of where the time was spent, how long a project was worked on, and if it was a valuable use of time.

Salaried employee time data can also identify unrealistic work expectations and how to improve them. Many times, salaried employees end up working more than 40 hours a week. They might be spending weekends sweating over their computers to meet certain deadlines, or endless caffeine-filled nights making sure their report is just right. They may also be spending too much time during regular work hours in meetings or answer emails. People feel that they add more value when they can see what their time has contributed to.

You need to know where people are spending their time

How many hours a day are you spending not working and either in meetings or sorting through your email inbox? Tracking  your time helps to lay everything out to see where you are actually spending your time. This gives employees and the company as a whole insight into where their greatest resource is being spent. It can empower your people to improve how they work.