How To Integrate Your Flextime System with Outlook
How To Integrate Your Flextime System with Outlook
With modern technology in the workplace now advancing at such an astonishing rate, business owners can either sink or swim. By this, we mean that they generally need to embrace technology and use it to their advantage, as opposed to fearing it. Modern technology is beneficial for a whole variety of different reasons, providing you use it correctly. Over the years, the number of businesses using time tracking software in the workplace has increased drastically and as more and more people are becoming aware of just how beneficial these software solutions can be, it’s easy to see why. Despite this, some businesses are still opposed to utilizing a flextime system and incorporating time tracking software into their business structures. There are some naysayers out there who are under the illusion that time tracking somehow slows things down or that it results in resources being utilized in order to micromanage the employees. The truth however, is that the benefits of using a time tracking solution which also incorporates a flextime system far outweigh the drawbacks. To show you what we mean, here’s a look at a few ways in which your business can benefit from using such a solution.
What is a flextime system?
Flextime is a very useful function designed to make it possible for users to utilize the reporting function of their time tracking software to get a general overview of how many hours were supposed to have been reported for a specific frame of time. This info can then be compared with the total number of reported hours within that same period. To give a general overview, if you were supposed to have reported 9 hours per day, for 5 days in the week, the total time reported should be 45 hours. If, however, 50 hours have been reported, the flextime reports will indicate that you are 5 hours over. Basically, it offers you a comprehensive way of keeping track of time in a simple and efficient manner.
Time tracking can integrate with Outlook
Microsoft office is as common in the workplace as pens and paper. It is considered synonymous with the business world and getting rid of it would do far more harm than good. Thankfully many great timesheet reporting tools with an integrated flextime system have been specially designed to integrate with Outlook making these systems easier than ever for employees to get to grips with. In particular, integrating it with the Outlook Calendar will help employees manage their time and stay on track better than ever before. This brings us to…
Boost project schedules
We understand that businesses get overly busy from time to time, and occasionally it is virtually inevitable that a project should run past its deadline. While most clients will be perfectly fine to extend the deadline if it happens very rarely, if projects are running late far too often, clients may lose patience and may decide to look elsewhere. Losing just one client because of poor timekeeping with project schedules is unacceptable, which is another reason to consider using time tracking software in the workplace. Using a good time reporting system will give you an overview of each project and will tell you exactly how much time you happen to be spending on each job. If you can see for example, that there is one particular type of project that regularly falls a week behind schedule, this tells you that action needs to be taken. You can either explain to the clients that future deadlines will be one week later than they currently are, or you can simply put more resources onto the projects that are commonly late in a bid to get back on track.
Compare company productivity
Another awesome thing about using time tracking software in the workplace is that it gives you a general overview of virtually everything. If you’ve been using the software for a year or longer, you can go back to when you first started using it and can clearly and simply compare data to find out how much more productive you are. Time tracking will provide a general overview of how quickly tasks have been performed, how many hours have been spent on each job, employee hours, and much more besides. Seeing this data in graph form will easily allow you to identify your business’ strengths and weaknesses. Once you have identified these issues, you can then act accordingly.
Improved employee morale
We’re going to be blunt here, when you first decide to integrate time tracking software into your business, some of your employees may be bit reluctant. They may be against it as they might see it as them being spied upon and scrutinised. Ironically, time tracking gives them more freedom and once they figure this out for themselves their morale and productivity levels will actually improve. You see, time tracking helps ensure that employees are not over exerting themselves and pushing themselves too hard. If one member of staff is trying to do the workload of two, time tracking will identify this and will enable the business owner to give the overstretched employee some much-needed assistance. This then relieves the pressure and helps boost morale. The software also makes it easier for business owners to reward great performances from their employees. Members of staff will get the help they need, they won’t have to work themselves as hard, and as more deadlines are met, morale will go up. Once morale is up, so too is employee productivity and the entire positive cycle repeats itself.
Time tracking looks professional
Another very important benefit associated with time tracking software, and one which many businesses tend to overlook is the fact that time tracking helps the business look professional. To begin with, if you explain to potential clients that their time-sensitive projects are in safe hands thanks to the time tracking software that you utilize, this already looks good on your part as it shows that you have your stuff together. Clients also like to be kept in the loop with regards to how their projects and tasks are coming on. If an important client emails you or calls you asking for an update on the status of their order, rather than you pulling figures out of the sky, you can give them an accurate and precise answer. If for example, the software indicates that the project in question is almost complete you can pass this info onto the client and give them a fairly accurate delivery date as a result. Clients love to be kept in the loop and it also means that there are no nasty surprises or unnecessary tensions to deal with due to a lack of communication. In short, everybody wins, which is exactly what any business owner should want to happen.
Easily see if you report the number of hours you should
Besides all the above benefits, a timesheet solution with an integrated flextime system will also make it easier for you. If your employees are supposed to report a certain number of hours every week, month or year, you can also with the flextime part of the system check how many hours have been reported compared to this, and see if somebody should take some time off, or need to put in some more hours.
You can also give individual users access to this data, so that they can easily see how they perform, without necessarily seeing how their colleagues are doing.
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