How to Explain the Need of Time Tracking to Your Employees

Tracking the time of employees can boost the productivity and output of any business. Companies everywhere are realizing this and deploying necessary measures among their workforce. Time tracking is known to create growth, economic stability, and enhanced workflow and job satisfaction among employees. But employees seem to have their fair share of concerns over being monitored. They will be worried about privacy being invaded, micromanagement, being policed, and stepping on their individual freedom. And understandingly, the introduction of time tracking can be met with hostility. But it is the duty of managers to ease the team into using time tracking by explaining the benefits and addressing all their concerns. Here we will have a look at how to explain time tracking to your employees.

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Explain the purpose and advantages

To make sure that time tracking isn’t seen by your employees as something harmful, you need to openly talk to your team about exactly why you’re proposing it. The absence of clear, straightforward communication breeds mistrust fast. A definite perception of reasons and advantages will make employees feel much more secure and open to new ideas. Explain precisely what it will mean for each employee and how they will profit from it. Time tracking should support the interests of your employees and the company. These are some of the benefits of Employee time tracking Software:

• Preserving against burnout
• Assuring impartial allocation of work
• Determining who is thriving and who is struggling
• Making overtime noticeable and organized
• Showing how people work at their best
• Minimizing distractions
• Recognizing problems in workflow and practices
• Showing careless practices and unproductive routines
• Enabling transparency over project progress
• Facilitating more efficient timelines and schedules

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Ascertain what it doesn’t mean

You have to identify how time tracking could potentially have a negative impact on the wellbeing of employees and make sure that they don’t happen. Employees need to be reassured and their trust must be gained. You have to be clear about what time tracking doesn’t mean. Employees can react with hostility towards time tracking if they feel their privacy and professional dignity will be jeopardized by it or when it isn’t clear how the data about them will be managed and analyzed. The best way to clarify this is to set boundaries and explain the processes.

It should be made clear that time tracking will not be the sole metric for judging employee performance or assessing progress. It presents a useful benchmark, but it won’t be used on its own to analyze the quality of work or productivity. It is not a substitute for in-person management or diminishes employees’ worth to a collection of figures. Likewise, it’s not aimed to spy on employees or implement severe digital micromanagement. It aims to help managers and employees manage their individual professional records better.

Have clear guidelines

For time tracking to work meaningfully, you will require proper guidelines. Before you start tracking time, explain to all employees the proper way to track their time. Discuss time tracking with team leads or managers and explain how it will be carried out. Establishing some ground rules initially will reduce any future confusion regarding time tracking. The aim should be to create clear guidelines so time tracking can work for both employer and employee, and not become a reason for conflict.

Through this, clarity can be achieved on matters such as:

• Will time spent on particular tasks be looked upon or will the focus be on results only.
• How and when reports will be made.
• How time tracking will be integrated into project management

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Train employees to use time tracking

You must provide employees with proper training on how to use time tracking software. This will assure they’ll understand how to track their time correctly. This is no just about the initial setup. Check in a few days after you have started. More doubts and questions may arise once your team starts using time tracking. You can even schedule a walkthrough of the software for your team at this phase. Making an FAQ and creating a specific policy for time tracking could also be important. The policy can be formulated by discussing the details with your employees.

Follow up and Feedback

Your employees are the most valuable asset of your business. Since they work with the finer details of your company every day, their feedback is vital for making healthy decisions and regulations. Keep an eye out to know how your employees are adjusting to time tracking. If they have any difficulties, concerns, or suggestions, make use of those to update your system. The more comfortable it is for them, the more reasonable it is that they will make good use of time tracking. Include your employees in the process while initially analyzing the time tracking data. This will be beneficial for both parties. Always encourage feedback about time tracking, and regularly ask employees about their feedback in meetings. When employees feel you consider their wellbeing and interests, they will be much more supportive of the technology.

Be flexible

You need to extend flexibility and openness throughout the whole initial phase. When you are trying out an employee time tracker, consider the initial learning curve and provide all the resources required to help your workers get started.

Instead of just testing the time tracking tool just by yourself, consider running a trial with a small team of workers to assess how they feel about it. Since they’ll be using it daily, they need to understand whether it’s straightforward to use and experience how it can be integrated into their workflow. If you implement a time tracker for a while and it just doesn’t suit the requirements of your team, you can switch it.

Conclusion

Time tracking can be hugely beneficial for both employer and employee when implemented correctly. It is important to explain the working, benefits, and evaluation of time tracking to your employees. All their doubts and concerns should be promptly addressed. Follow the steps mentioned above to explain time tracking to your employees.

Meet The Author

Saleem

Senior Content Writer at Desklog

Saleem is a futuristic researcher on time tracking softwares. He started his career as a technical content writer. His curious mind made him much interested with the automated time tracking systems. Thus, he started learning in depth on time tracking softwares, which made him explore its impacts on employees and management in detail.