Employee time tracking is a proven way to boost your business on every level.
The best employee time tracking solutions are shown to benefit employers and employees by increasing:
- Trust
- Efficiency
- Productivity
- Transparency
- Profitability
In addition, employee time tracking helps ensure everyone in your business is working toward a common goal and playing by the same rules. On a personal level, time tracking helps employees take control of their workday and gives them a sense of purpose as they can see, in real-time, how they fit in and contribute.
The missing link
Many people are surprised to learn that attendance tracking software can help with those goals. Often, a disconnect occurs simply because no one takes the time to explain the value of time tracking to them.
As owners and managers, we’re often so busy focusing on the “how” that we forget to explain the “why.” But that’s a key element to successful onboarding, especially when it comes to something you’re asking employees to engage with every day, like time tracking.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to engaging new employees with attendance tracking software.
Education is a crucial piece for employee time tracking, yet it’s the one companies skip most often.
Before you jump into specifics, give employees context about why attendance tracking software is beneficial — to the company and to them.
1. Make Education Hands-On
The onboarding process is packed with lots of new information. But anyone who’s joined a company knows that there’s a limit to how much information you can take in by reading pages and pages of material in a handbook.
Make your introduction to time tracking engaging:
- Create a handout or short video that explains the benefits of time tracking and make it specific to your industry or business. Keep it as short as possible — one page for printed materials and three minutes for videos.
- Ask employees to complete a short quiz on those benefits after learning about them.
- Customize your training. Have an employee with a similar role or one who works on the same team walk new employees through how they track their time. Ask them to highlight one or two specific examples of how time tracking helped them streamline their workday, become more productive or identify when they needed (and got!) extra help or resources.
2. Show Why Trust Matters
If you’ve ever worked in an environment marked by distrust, you know how exhausting it is. If a manager doesn’t think an employee is reporting time properly, or if employees suspect the executive or management is slacking while they’re on the clock, the workplace becomes tense and toxic.
The good news is that trust is relatively easy to build, and it can benefit employees as much as employers.
Any time you’re talking about time tracking, spotlight the fact that you’re all in this together, from maintenance to management. Showing that everyone’s playing by the same rules goes a long way to setting a tone of unity and trust.
If you’re using Time Tracker, highlight the fact that your system:
- Standardizes the way everyone at your company tracks time
- Gives every employee more flexibility when it comes to taking breaks and planning their day
- Streamlines paid and unpaid time-off requests, which can all be done online
- Allows managers to approve time for employees in seconds, which means everyone gets paid faster
- Connects the hours you work to your pay, which ensures you get paid for every minute you’re on the clock
3. Stress Employee Independence & Control
If you could only have one perk at work, which would you choose: more flexibility or more money/benefits?
Studies show that:
- 64% of employees choose added flexibility over a 10% raise.
- 35% say flexible work is more important than having a prestigious title or position, and
- 30% say that they value flexible work over additional vacation time.
And those numbers are only increasing as the world navigates COVID-19.
The best employee time tracking solutions will have clear benefits that you can market back to your workers.
For example, if you’re using Time Tracker, highlight the facts:
Other benefits of Time Tracker to employees include the fact that it:
- Is user-friendly with little training
- Has a customizable dashboard so they can drag and drop widgets where they want them
- Is flexible so they can input time from anywhere
- Tracks time with the push of a button (timers) or lets them clock in and out (time clock)
- Offers transparency by showing their schedule, priorities, and even up-to-the-minute changes
By taking time to highlight the features that matter most to your company, you make it easy for new employees to understand why time tracking benefits them.
Once you’ve outlined the benefits of attendance tracking software, walk employees through your system.
If you’ve skimmed this eBook, you’ve probably noticed this is the shortest section. That’s by design. The best employee time tracking solutions are simple to use — a fact that’s automatically communicated to employees when the onboarding process is simple and stress-free.
1. Outline The Details
Start by giving employees guidelines for tracking their time, such as:
- Whether your company uses time cards, time clocks or weekly timesheets
- How to clock in and out
- How long their breaks should be and how often they should take them
- How to correct entries if time is entered incorrectly
- Who to contact with questions
2. Keep Instructions Simple
Create a simple educational process or checklist that employees can work through to learn the basics. The best employee time tracking solutions will give you a headstart in that department.
For example, with Time Tracker, start with the Online Help Center. There, you can find answers to common questions such as:
- How do I edit my user profile?
- How do I make a time entry?
- How do I submit entries for approval?
- How do I take back a time entry I already sent for approval?
- How do I delete an entry?
Scroll through the topics to determine which articles will benefit your employees, or simply search the entire help database whenever you need it. Remember: Less is more. With solutions like Time Tracker, employees can ask questions or get support as they need it, so you don’t have to give them all the information at once.
After you’ve educated new employees on your attendance tracking software, give them time to get acclimated. Then circle back as needed, offer support and market the value of time tracking back to them.
1. Schedule Check-Ins
Check in briefly on day 2, day 5 and day 10, or set your own schedule.
Whatever the schedule is, avoid micromanagement. The best employee time tracking software will allow you to take a hands-off approach, and if yours isn’t doing that, consider another solution.
2. Use The System Yourself
Studies have shown that productivity among engaged teams is 14-20% higher than those that aren’t — and productivity starts at the top. Managers and team leaders alone account for 70% of a team’s engagement level, yet most companies treat engagement as a one-time effort.
How does that apply to employee time tracking? Easy: Remember that you’re an employee, too. Managers, owners and leaders can set the tone for time tracking simply by using the system, working through challenges and talking about how it benefits the company.
3. Report On Results
Finally, don’t forget to close the loop. After an employee’s first month, offer insight into how their work affects your business and how time tracking makes that contribution concrete.
If you’re using Time Tracker:
- Pull a report that shows them where they’re spending their time.
- Tie that back to the company’s profits or productivity. Be as specific as possible. For example, “The 20 hours you worked on Client X made Project Y a huge success. In fact, they’ve signed a new year-long contract, and I think Project Y is a big reason they did.”
- Tie time tracking to their benefits. Explain how the hours they’re working are contributing to PTO, health insurance, etc.
- Consider offering small rewards or shoutouts for employees who bill the most hours on a key project or initiative.
Eventually, you can use employee reports during the review process to improve efficiency and identify places for improvement. But at the beginning, focus on the positives. The best way to keep your workers engaged in employee time tracking is to show them how and why it’s working.
Onboarding is crucial to employee time tracking success. And while many companies forget to prioritize the why over the how, you now have the tools to give employees the why, how — and everything in between.
The one thing you may not have is the best employee time tracking system. Before you create a customized onboarding process, ask yourself and your key employees if your system works for you. If not, take time to find the right system before you commit.
Get started today with a 14-day free trial of Time Tracker.
There’s no credit card required, no contracts to sign and nothing to lose.
