We all know that the best way to check how productive exactly we are at work is looking at the results. But sometimes the effects arent’s enough, especially when we’re working on the hourly rate. Make your hours count with time tracking and achieve a productive timeline and budget for your working hours.
Why time tracking doesn’t lie?
Can’t Track Time
Working at an office is not compulsorily work all the time. Much of the time when we are waiting for instructions or working on a tiring, long project we will find ourselves browsing the internet randomly, playing a game or even reading a book just to keep busy while we can prepare ourselves for work.
This procrastination at work is not intentional. It often happens as an effort to cram everything in our daily lives.
That is because we see the time that we spend in terms of daily schedule. We never consider our days in hours.
The simple answer for not being able to track the hours is that we can’t. Most people can account for their day in general terms, they will remember the part of the day but not the hour. Professionally, the most important hour that anyone can account for is lunch break.
Do you think that time tracking isn’t for you? Check why you’re wrong: Who Really Uses Time Tracking?
Why Should You Track the Hours?
It is funny to think that tracking hours could yield any benefit.
You set a goal for everyday and then you work to fulfil it in let’s say an hour. Then you always somehow overshoot your time limit. You think that you either estimated the time wrong or that the work was more than you expected but the last thing you will think of doing is tracking that hour that you spent on working on achieving your target.
Ask yourself:
- What did you do in that hour?
- Did you check any emails?
- Did you stopped to check your phone?
- Did you spend five minutes on a call with your boss during which you were only staring blankly at the documents in front of you?
If you track the time in the hour that you actually spent on working on the target, you will discover that you will have spent less than an hour on it. This will allow you to realize two things; how much time do you actually spend on the work and how you can change your behaviour to accommodate more time.
Tracking Team’s Hours
If you are a project manager or a manager in general, you’re not just responsible for your own work but all the employees that you are managing.
The on-hand experience and influence has not been effective in most organizational studies. You cannot force anyone to do more work or just work on that one thing. The best way to be productive in that time is monitoring just how much time in hours is spent on every part of the project by the relevant employee working on it. By tracking the hours of the employees, you’ll be able to make the following changes;
- You can track the time that is spent on every part of the project and take an average of that time for future projects.
- By tracking how much time was spent on each part of the project, you can estimate the cost of the resources that have been spent on the project making your budget evaluation easier.
- By tracking the hours, you can tell your employees where they need to be more productive and how they could improve their work performance.
- You could also make a more conventional and flexible work schedule after you have determined how much time is spent on every project.
- You can estimate the total hours that are required to achieve the company goals everywhere and by determining the productive hours, you can make a schedule that is inclusive of recreational duration.
Read more about best hour tracking apps!
There are apps and devices for individuals with which they can track their hours but it would be better if you have an app that is able to track all your employees’ time and help them and you track the hours that they spend on each project, prioritize their work and make their work hours count. TimeCamp is a specially designed software that is best for team use. Now you can track the hours of every project team and become more productive.