4 big problems employee time tracking software can solve ... · data on your business performance...

©2015 Yaware

4 Big Problems Employee

Time Tracking Software Can

Solve for Your Business

http://timetracker.yaware.com/employee-time-tracking/?utm_campaign=eBook%3A%204%20Big%20Problem%20Employee%20Time%20Tracking%20Software%20Can%20Solve%20for%20Your%20Business&utm_source=all

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..3 A Quick Guide to Enhancing Employee Creativity with Real Time Tracking……………………………………………………………………….…………………4 5 Best Practices HR Managers Can Try with Time and Attendance Systems………………………………………………………………………………………….8 How a Time Tracker Can Measure Team Dynamics…………..……………………………………………………………………….…11 Real-time Innovation Metrics with Online Time Tracking Software………………………………………………………………………………….……14 How Should the Best Time Tracking App Look Like?..........................17

© 2015 Yaware

CONTENTS

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© 2015 Yaware

INTRODUCTION

How can you quickly help your business grow faster? No one has time for thinking and re-thinking again and again because most often than not important decisions have to be made here and now.

What you need is precise figures on every aspect of your business performance which will tell how you can move forward or why you still lag behind.

How and where can you get such figures? A great way to get fresh and relevant data on your business performance precisely when you need them will be using the time tracking software.

It not only tracks time and productivity as you might have thought first. Time tracking software can be successfully used to solve a number of the other pressing matters which often keep businesses from growing.

This eBook provides you with some handy tips on how 4 big problems every business faces can be solved with the help of the time tracking software. These problems are: • enhancing employee creativity; • cultivating a team of high performers; • measuring team dynamics; • evaluating innovations.

Finally, you’ll learn what features the time tracking software must have to give you really complete, inclusive and insightful data on your performance. From now on you will be armed with a handy knowledge of how to make your company into a thriving business.

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Take a look at a website of a random advertising agency or check out several

CVs and you’ll almost certainly spot the word “creative” there. With such an incredible number of creative people around, one can only guess why our ways of living and working are not changing every month.

Creativity is an ability to come up with new ideas, solutions, suggestions on a specific situation or problem. Needless to say, the degree to which creativity is valued in business, art, science and, in fact, every other area is immense.

People usually have a quite straightforward opinion on creativity: either you have it or not. In the first case you are highly likely to succeed in any kind of work, in second one you can quietly analyze endless columns of figures for quarterly and annual reports and try to make the best of it.

© 2015 Yaware

CHAPTER 1 A Quick Guide to Enhancing Employee Creativity with Real Time Tracking

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© 2015 Yaware

Good news for everyone who have already decided to tolerate the fact they’re not going to re-invent the bicycle: creativity can be learned. For the time being let’s omit many techniques and advice on enhancing employee creativity and turn to some facts.

While things like opportunities, motivation and involvement are absolutely necessary, the most important factor is practice. In other words, the more you train, the more creative you can become. Or how Chuck Close, a famous American photorealist, has put it: “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just show up and go to work.” Practice means work and the more objective you are on your progress, the more odds there are that you’ll achieve excellent results eventually. Tracking time is great at providing you with objective data on your performance. Let’s now see how exactly it helps shake our common thinking patterns and break us free from usual paths our brain chooses to take every time a new problem has to be solved.

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In his book, The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators, Clayton M. Christensen, one of the world’s leading business theorists, researched that creativity is not just a function of the mind but a function of behavior.

1. Keeps us focused and pinpoints distractions.

Someone once calculated it takes 25 minutes to get back fully to the task once it was interrupted. Every time you try to focus again you use new resources and so the brain gradually exhausts. Now think how many times you are distracted by emails, social media or meetings. With frequent distractions your brain finds it harder to solve routine tasks, let alone produce creative solutions. Once you start tracking your time you instantly see how much of your time is spent on what.

You set up the time for accomplishing the task and its deadline and then check if you’re able to do everything in time. In other words, time tracking gives you a bit of a self-imposed nudge. Better focus means being thoughtful, understanding the roots of the problem and therefore more odds for identifying new, creative solutions.



© 2015 Yaware

2. Frees up time to be creative.

Everyone has a feeling they lack just one more day to accomplish things. Learning creativity takes time. How are you supposed to become creative if you don’t know where your time goes? Brilliant ideas won’t come by chance. Only people who work hard can expect to produce the best answer which will reward them for their efforts.

Your mind is already curious about everything you deal with in your work. All you have to do is give it more time to think it all over and investigate new opportunities. Real time tracking helps you organize your daily routine in ways best to spur active enquiring. With it, you can distribute your work evenly, perform everything on time and leave enough time to wake up your creative genius.

Similar to the feeling of too little time for a task one also has a feeling of “Today I just can’t come up with something decent”. It feels like thoughts are swirling in your head, very scattered and unorganized, and you try hard to bring them together but for some reason you can’t. Real time tracking means you can establish a comfortable schedule by providing you with fresh information on how your productivity fluctuates during the day. This way you can identify your most productive hours and make the most of them, not waste them on answering emails which could wait till the afternoon. Therefore, you’ll be able to perform the most challenging and complicated tasks during these most productive hours (when your brain is most likely to produce creative solutions.)

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3. Helps preventing creativity crisis and fatigue.

Even geniuses whom we now admire so much followed this rule. Beethoven, for example, worked from sunrise till the early afternoon only. He then made long walks across Vienna with a pencil and paper in his pocket – after all, inspiration could come anytime. So he was well away from work for about 14 hours. The same goes for Victor Hugo who worked in the mornings only and rested for the rest of the day.



© 2015 Yaware

Creativity and inspiration is not something you can plan. You can hardly expect them to come every day starting from 9 a.m. However, they are more likely to come when your brain is not exhausted with fruitless attempts to fight distractions and focus on work. Real time tracking shows us dynamics of our productivity. There are 4 to 6 creative hours a day on average. That’s why track your time management skills because you just have to know when exactly these hours come and make the best of them without testing your limits in the remaining time.

4. Balances your work and rest.

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Final thoughts - enhancing employee creativity is not super easy but possible

Tracking time can be a good option for enhancing employee creativity and helping them unleash their creative potential. At the same time they can boost their personal and professional growth.



© 2015 Yaware

High performers on a team won’t appear overnight. While they already have

great skills and experience, HR managers still have to help them maintain that high level and encourage their personal development. Here’s a little insight into the best practices of exploiting the data from time and attendance systems HR managers can turn to their advantage.

Chapter 2 5 Best Practices HR Managers Can Try with Time and Attendance Systems

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© 2015 Yaware

1. Managing proactively

Proactive managers don’t wait for obstacles to come when they least expect them. Rather, they plan carefully to minimize the risks. Surely, no one can know what the future will bring and with markets changing so rapidly even short-term forecasting could be outdated quite quickly. But when big changes are underway, it’s best to be prepared to meet them in full armor. Work environment is changing constantly. Time and attendance systems are great in visualizing productivity trends and dynamics for employees and companies at large. Having such real-time data at their disposal, managers can then align their plans and HR objectives with real capabilities of their staff.

2. Assessing new staff on the team

Evaluating trainees and newly hired employees could be quite a challenge – mostly because new people find it hard to fully engage in the new work environment instantly and so their potential can be overlooked. Time and attendance data collected by special software will help determine realistic entry level for each position. Managers can then assign achievable goals and realistic deadlines based not on the empty suggestions of desk research, but real-time, objective data on everyone’s performance and team dynamics. HR managers will definitely find it useful to see how new staff distribute their work time (i.e., their time management skills), how they are carrying on with the pace of work within the team and if corporate standards of attendance are followed.

3. Managing talent

Talent management is among major trends in HR in 2015. To make sure the company stays sustainable, HR managers have to make this process real and not just take it as part of their professional jargon. Employees are the driving force behind every success in the company and therefore, the most valuable asset it may ever possess. That's why it’s crucial everyone’s at their own place. Fostering talent development is not easy and it can hardly bring excellent results immediately. This is where time and attendance systems could help as it will show who is best at what and so you can distribute the roles accordingly.

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© 2015 Yaware

4. Managing schedules

These days you can hardly imagine a company without employees with flextime schemes. Flexible schedules are highly beneficial for both parties for multiple reasons. Employers use them as an effective recruiting tool and as means of retaining talented staff on the team, if for some reason they cannot work a full day in the office. In turn, employees get greater freedom and increased productivity by sensing the company’s support and understanding of their needs. What can cloud this mutually beneficial cooperation is recording the flextime for adequate payroll calculations. One of the best practices HR managers can try to prevent both parties becoming suspicious on each other’s metrics for performance could be exactly time and attendance systems.

In accountable organizations people are willing to learn the feedback on their performance because they know it’s going to add to both their personal and team’s success. Time and attendance data will show if someone falls short and so something could be done about it. However, this is not about just knowing or, even worse, telling off, this is about improving instantly and providing necessary guidance so that everyone stays happy and productive. Time and attendance data will help focus on the real-time processes that keep your team busy at the moment. How is everyone progressing? How work time is being distributed? Is it productive?

5. Increasing accountability

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It will also help align your company’s commitment to hire and further support talented staff with realistic indicators on their performance. Expecting high results is good but expecting too much (or too little) do nothing but harm. The above metrics will show what is the limit to these expectations.

Final thoughts - use time and attendance systems to fuel productivity

As you can imagine, such data provides managers with much more than just records of who came when and how much time staff spent on social media. It helps them explore the patterns of productivity within the team – this way they can ensure the company employs and supports talented, motivated and highly loyal professionals.



© 2015 Yaware

Chapter 3 How a Time Tracker Can Measure Team Dynamics

Assessing an individuals’ work on a team is not easy; assessing a teams

performance is tenfold harder, but absolutely necessary. Team dynamics is like a current: you can't tell which direction it would choose to take. It derives from the ways people interact with each other, the environment they work in and the nature of the work itself.

Team dynamics can be good, in which case team members are motivated and able to produce their best results, and bad, in which case unproductive conflicts and poor performance take over.

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© 2015 Yaware

To prevent employee identity crisis (that is, a feeling of detachment from the rest of the team) managers have to carefully track team dynamics. With so many factors influencing it, it’s impossible to consider them all. But some of them can be measured. Let’s see how exactly team dynamics could be quickly and accurately assessed with a time tracker on several typical examples of team dynamics. Measuring a teams performance with a time tracker

You need to consider two basic indicators: the teams processes and the teams productivity or results. To effectively measure the first one real-time data is needed. To make the information complex historical data on performance is necessary. A time tracker will provide data on both.

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When people are doing jobs they don’t like, it benefits no one on the team. Without a meaningful attitude towards work it’s impossible to reach productivity highpoints. Wrong people in the wrong places mean not just poorer performance, but bad influence over work ethics. Instead of performing tasks which match the skills and inclinations, employees have to maintain appearances and constantly think about what others would think. In order to have a team of individuals who are passionate about their work you have to make sure they are doing what they love to do. Tracking time will show inconsistencies between employee positions and their skills and abilities, if there are any. It’ll also provide feedback on how they perform basic tasks and key competencies.

Defining roles and responsibilities

Determining realistic entry levels and performance standards

As soon as all plans are based on a teams real capabilities, not imaginary standards, the goals can be achieved much faster. Not only synergy works but everyone's performance is high in the first place. Real-time data on productivity collected by a time tracker is great for seeing productivity high- and lowpoints. It’s then easier to set the right pace of work – neither too fast, so everyone gets exhausted, nor too slow as seeing an approaching deadline speeds up performance.



© 2015 Yaware

A really good thing about it If the teams productivity is not measured how can the efforts be fairly rewarded? It’s important to show everyone on the team that their work won’t go unnoticed. Indeed, overlooking one’s progress is a sure way to kill motivation. While many companies focus on the pure financial side, it’s clear that's not enough.

Tracking every success

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For if a teams progress beyond finances is not measured, it’s hard to figure out what is well and what is not. If time is tracked, a fair reward system can be established. It will be based on objective information and so everyone knows: if I work well I could have respect and reward for my work.

Cultivating trust and transparency

Establishing clear metrics of a teams work, explaining the rules, distributing the right work to the right people, instantly rewarding for success, sharing feedback on a teams performance with every member – this is what a time tracker could give you. This way equality and transparency would be eagerly supported by employees themselves in the first place. Let’s sum it all up: to build a workplace culture in which everyone's work would be valued is really difficult. But who said it’s impossible? Tracking team dynamics means you can bring positive change in behavior and therefore, performance because:

"If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself." – Henry Ford



© 2015 Yaware

Are you adequately assessing your progress and failure for each innovation? Is

there any real-time data which you can instantly turn to your advantage? If you are not tracking key indicators of a project, correct decisions on the future of your business are impossible.

For most companies metrics for the project’s success are blurred and unclear: “increased customer satisfaction”, “increased market share”, “increased profits” to name a few. While these ones are really important, they must have precise figures behind them. How many customers have to get a better service and how large the new target audiences have to be so that managers can say the project goals were achieved?

Chapter 4 Real-time Innovation Metrics with Online Time Tracking Software

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© 2015 Yaware

Real-time data is everything

While some second level managers still don’t see much sense in automatically measuring employee time and productivity apart from periodically making an office tour, it’s clear the future is now in digital technologies. Web-based solutions are a must have for tracking employees performance. Completely automated, they provide updated reports on performance and detailed description of an employees working day. Time and cost-consuming manual checks gradually disappear. If you’re not using the best modern practices, you lack agility, in which case your business is losing profits. Online time tracking not only builds insightful reports but makes them available from anywhere so you can make the right decisions instantly.

Key time metrics to look at

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Set up goals to measure everything

Successful practices show it’s best to track 5 to 8 metrics for a project. First you track certain quantitative indicators (e.g., financial investment). Secondly, indicators such as time are equally important. Once the innovation project is set up, time tracking software will collect the next metrics: • time spent by employees on innovation activities and its share in total work

time; • time spent by senior management on innovation activities; • time spent on beta testing, trials, launches of pilot programs, etc.; • time spent on each phase of an innovation project, from generation of ideas

to actual launch; • ROI on the innovation project in terms of time and costs spent on its

realization.

Once your metrics are defined, it’s time to proceed to goals for each of them. Here’s where data collected by time tracking software are irreplaceable as they helps set up achievable goals. With real-time reports on how your team is progressing, what the most time-consuming activities are, what phase of the project demands more time, etc. you’re able to motivate the team with realistic timelines, not test everyone’s limits.



© 2015 Yaware

Online time tracking software helps you stay flexible

Agility is everything: one can hardly expect a project will proceed in strict accordance to the plan. Data collected by time tracking software will show where change is needed. This way you could adjust your goals and deadlines to real results. Providing your team with the metrics on their performance is a smart way to keep them posted on current progress as well as a guide towards improvement. This could be another way to help everyone stay flexible.

Online time tracking software helps avoid lagging metrics, that is, data which you can analyze only retrospectively. If the interim, results of the project are not what you’ve planned (and there’s a 100% probability that at some point something will go wrong as Murphy’s law wisely reminds us), lagging metrics won’t show you what exactly is pulling you back. At the same time, online time tracking software accumulates historical data on productivity so dynamics of different projects’ progress can be compared and analyzed.

One more advantage of online time tracking software for the project’s success

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Practice shows that if innovation progress is accurately measured actually foretells success of the project. Only with precise feedback positive change can be fostered and goals can really be achieved.



© 2015 Yaware

Creating handy, easy to navigate apps for almost any activity is now among

the major trends of software developing. Work, being one of the most important parts of our lives, couldn’t be left outside this trend, so managers can now sigh with relief and start searching for the best option quickly. The reasons for tracking work time are already well known, so now it’s high time to check out what qualities the best time tracking app should possess.

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Chapter 5 How Should the Best Time Tracking App Look Like?



© 2015 Yaware

Here’s the list of the absolutely necessary properties without which this app can be comparable to a cell phone which doesn’t ring when there’s an incoming call. 1. Plain user interface which won’t require specific computer skills or specially trained staff to manage it.

2. Automatic collection of data on productivity (number of worked hours, late arrivals, early leavings, duration of breaks, offline activities, etc.) to give a complex overview how the time is distributed in the organization. 3. Automatic collection of data on application use – all programs and websites employees work with as well as duration of using them. 4. Offline activities monitoring ( a feedback on where employees were when not at the workplace). 5. Conversion of collected data into comprehensible, easily analyzed formats (graphs, diagrams and the like) to save time on its processing. 6. Employees’ access to statistics for greater transparency and involvement (seeing one’s own results is sometimes a better motivator than constant reminding of what still has to be done). 5. Flexible settings (especially handy when it comes to monitoring employees with different work schedules, both fixed and flexible, or the ones which work remotely, or freelancers). 6. Absence monitoring with webcam snapshots and current activity monitoring with screenshots of employees’ computers. So these are the features that make the best time tracking app work really well and provide you with precise and timely data you need to help your staff achieve great results. Make sure you keep them all in mind when making a final decision.

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What Features Has the Best Time Tracking App to Provide?



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