How to Track Employee Time with Timesheet Tracking Software in Outlook
At the crux of any establishment’s success are their most valuable assets – their employees! The performance of your employees is pivotal to the overall success of your business, and the key to an employee’s success is efficient time tracking. Fast, accurate and methodical time management through timesheet tracking software allows employees to enhance productivity and achieve their work assignment goals with minimal effort without having to compromise on the quality of their work.
Although time tracking is essential to maximizing the productivity of your workforce, you cannot always have your eyes and ears on each employee, especially if you are running a big corporation with multiple employees working with you. This is where time tracking comes in for the rescue. You need to know how to track employee time without having to put in any additional effort. With the right time tracking tools by your side, you can say goodbye to cumbersome and time-consuming traditional methods of employee time tracking. Equipping your enterprise with the right time tracking solution that is integrated with Outlook promotes transparency and efficiency in time tracking and time management.
Benefits of Using Timesheet Tracking Software to Track Employee Time
You might be wondering why you should go through the trouble of automating timesheet management in your business at all. Using timesheet tracking software in Outlook can help you monitor your employees’ performance, identify areas of improvement, or simply calculate accurate payroll based on your employees’ working hours.
From agencies to freelancers to even some of the biggest enterprises in the market rely on automated timesheets to track their employees’ work hours, for the wide range of benefits it brings to their company. Here are some of the advantages of investing in timesheet tracking software for your business.
1. Tracking Attendance
One of the basic features of timesheet tracking software is that it allows you to monitor who amongst your team is working on which projects and how much time they put in. If you bill clients by the hour, this gives you a record of all the billable hours of your employees including a record of their sick days, time off, and holidays. Using timesheet tracking simplifies the calculation of your employees’ payroll and ensures accurate employee compensation.
Even if you don’t bill clients by the hour or pay your staff on an hourly basis, you still need to know how they’ve spent their time.
2. Improved Productivity
Time tracking helps employees track their work progress on individual projects to assess the best use of their time. It helps employees identify obstacles and distractions that reduce their efficiency, and help them focus on tasks that lead to a more productive working environment. In addition, time tracking helps employees prioritize their work assignments in order to concentrate their time and energies on the tasks that matter the most.
Time tracking provides recognition to employees for their work and establishes accountability within them. This equips employers with the data needed to appreciate the efforts and highlight the achievements of deserving employees, which significantly boosts their morale and increases productivity levels within the workplace. Because there is greater accountability with timesheet tracking software, employees are also motivated to work harder and/or smarter, which significantly boosts efficiency.
3. Improved Time Management
Time management and meeting deadlines have always been one of the biggest challenges for any business’ workforce. Fortunately, most companies today have timesheet tracking software at their disposal, which makes the process of time management and time tracking much easier than ever.
Timesheets provide employees the benefit of getting to see how they are spending their time and which projects need more time and where it is being wasted. This way, they can adjust their schedule accordingly and prioritize to ensure that they always meet task or project deadlines.
4. Employee Management
Not only do employees benefit from time tracking, but so do their supervisors. Knowing how to track employee time with time tracking software can be a huge advantage for employers. With the aid of time tracking tools, supervisors can get detailed insights about the number of hours spent by their team members on each individual project. Armed with this data, supervisors can make informed decisions regarding the distribution of workload amongst team members. Supervisors who know how to track employee time with time reporting tools can use this data to identify who is struggling and needs help, and who works the best at which tasks, for assigning future projects. Timesheets also enable supervisors to determine the availability of their employees when delegating tasks among team members.
5. Project Management
Timesheets accomplish much more than just clocking the start and end of a working day. They play a crucial role for data-driven project managers by monitoring all tasks and projects being carried out by team members. With so many people working on so many different parts of a project, it is much easier for project managers to use timesheets to track the progress of these projects. This can be used to anticipate delays in any project and the reasons for the delays, so that steps can be taken quickly to overcome them. Different projects can also be compared based on the time spent on them to maximize efficiency in every project.
6. Seamless Flow of Data
Timesheet tracking software in Outlook that integrates with other management systems makes it easy to sync data between different departments of your business such as Sales, Finance, Accounting, HR, etc. This brings together different systems in your job cycle as one unit. When the software is used in conjunction with these project management tools and systems, the processes of other departments such as archiving, billing, analytics, and management become much easier.
7. Makes Employees Happy
Happier employees are the cornerstone to business success. Studies have shown that employees who are happier and enjoy their work tend to be more productive and successful. Time tracking inspires better performance by cultivating a positive environment where trust is established between employee and employer.
Employees don’t need to worry about whether they are being paid fairly because they have objective, automated, and transparent time records to rely on to verify their work hours. Time tracking also makes work hours fair and equal for all employees and makes them visible for all the work they put in. Employees also tend to work better when their efforts are appreciated and credit is given where it is due, which promotes better workplace performance.
How to Track Employee Time
Implementing time tracking is just the first step. Your time tracking system can never be a success until you learn how to track employee time and motivate your employees to actually use it. Timesheeting is in some cases not favored by some employees. Getting employees to fill their timesheets is one of the biggest hurdles in your way towards implementing a time tracking solution.
The only way to combat this issue is to address any and every concern your employees have and present the benefits of using a time tracking system before them. Here is how you can successfully optimize your business with time tracking software by convincing your employees to track time properly.
Explain the Purpose of Timesheet Tracking Software
As a scarce and irreplaceable commodity, time holds the key to your business’ success, and getting your team to realize that, is one of the most important steps towards successful implementation of timesheets. Employees will only be motivated to track their time once they know why they are doing so, and can see how it will benefit them. Communicating the purpose and benefits of time tracking to your team is one of the best ways to incentivize your employees and achieve your time reporting goals.
Craft Guidelines
Setting out guidelines and policies on how employees must fill in their timesheets is vital to ensuring that your employees do so. This will help create an organized system of time tracking within your organization, which will help employees view time tracking as their responsibility, and not a burden, and done right, even a benefit.
Simplify the Process
Explain to your employees how to use your chosen timesheet tracking software. Start by implementing the software with only a few people to identify any issues, and figuring out how they can be resolved. Choose a tool that is simple, quick, and easy-to-understand with a basic interface.
A solution that is integrated with Outlook is ideal for this purpose, as it allows employees to track time on projects from their MS Outlook calendar. Since most employees use Outlook as their calendar system and are already accustomed to it, they don’t have to learn how to use a completely new time application. With the help of training sessions and video tutorials on how to use the software, time tracking can become a smooth process for your company.
Follow-Up
No one can tell you how good your software is than the ones using it – your employees. Keep checking up with them to identify any hiccups and to see how they are adapting to the new system. Use their feedback to improve the way you work and make it easier for them to use.
Bottom Line
We hope this guide was helpful and that you have an idea of how to track employee time using time tracking tools now. When implemented correctly, timesheets can prove to be one of the most valuable tools in a business’s arsenal that can gear you towards success. Many small businesses and large-scale enterprises alike make use of timesheet tracking software integrated with Outlook to track employee time. They are easy-to-use, reliable, accurate, and offer a long list of benefits. Why should you not benefit from that?
How To Continue From Here - What You Should Do Now
