Month: September 2020

A regular office-goer works “nine-to-five.” We all know that. Then what is the need for tracking the hours? Because now, neither the hours are fixed nor the workspace. People are busy working from home for prolonged hours, which makes tracking the worked hours even more necessary today.

Time tracking has been in the regime for a long time now, and its boundaries are not just limited to mere payroll activities. Time tracking is very important task for any organization, and in this article, we will delve deep into the process.

Why is time tracking important for employers?

For paying the Salaries (plus OverTime)

Employees work hard to accomplish the goals of the company, and they must be paid accordingly for every hour that they had worked. Shifting to the office workspace looks farsighted, and therefore, software like xTimesheet can monitor the tasks.
Employees can fill in the timesheet mentioning the hours invested in each project.
You can quickly generate an excel sheet for a detailed report and know about an employee’s worked hours and other work-related info right on your device.
Features like charts and graphs hand easy statistics which make salary computations easier.
Continuous time-tracking ensures reliable data.
Every hour that an employee works beyond the dedicated schedule entitles him/her to an OT, and he/she can easily claim it on the basis of the xTimesheet report.

Prevent time-theft

Studies show that people waste almost 8 hours a week. This might lead to reduced productivity and a substantial increase in the expense report.
No more Proxies! Proper time tracking methods will put a stop to buddy-punching.

Why is time tracking important for employees?
Keep track of the time for menial tasks

The extended work hours have resulted in the addition of work out of the job description. Therefore it is necessary to track each activity so that employees can have proof if their primary duty gets hampered.

Organize Productivity
Using software like xTimesheet will help the employees to keep an eye on their productivity. The analytics used in xTimesheet will indicate the areas which need improvement, and an employee can work on his/her growth accordingly.

“The most efficient way to live reasonably is every morning to make a plan of one’s day and every night to examine the results obtained.”

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” –Michael Jordan.

In the times of remote working and work from home, staying connected is the biggest challenge that a team faces. “Connection” is a very vital aspect of a workplace for accomplishing the objectives of a company. Organizations have strived to work on team building activities so that people can build in real connections.
Rather than following the pyramid structure, companies nowadays prefer a tree structure where instead of departments, they work in teams. It is very important for employees to relate to each other’s ideas and perspectives and connect to them so as to achieve a task efficiently.

Now the question is if a company is productive on the front, is it really important for the people to be connected? The answer is Yes! If employees are connected with each other and with the company objectives, they tend to give in more efforts. Let’s say, a task is aspired to be completed in 6 days, if an employee feels the connection with his/her workplace, they may increase their productivity and provide their deliverables before time.

A good software like xTimesheet fosters the process. An employer can assess the progress of an employee on the basis of their timesheet. Its feature like Statistics can give a detailed analysis of the productivity of an employee. If there is the transparency of information between the company and the employee, they will feel connected ergo, working more effectively.

Companies can leverage thousands of communication tools for a team to work efficiently, but only when the human and social capital come together, a connection is formed. It is important to gauge the labor that an employee has endeavored to achieve a goal, but it is more important to evaluate what a team brings to the table with their acquired resources and knowledge.

FTE for an employee is used to calculate the number of hours that she/he had worked in a week. It is calculated as:
Employee’s scheduled hours are divided by the Employer’s hours for a full-time workweek.
The primary 9 to 5 job (with 1 hour of lunch break) has a scheduled workweek of 40 hours. So, an employee who accomplished the complete shift of 40 hrs has an FTE as 1.0. Similarly, if an employee covered 20 hrs, her/his FTE will be calculated as 0.5 and so on.

Calculation of FTE is very important for an organization in terms of determining the cost and billables for a project. Converting hours worked by part-time employees into full-time equivalents can be helpful when calculating these metrics. It is also crucial for decisions pertaining to resource management, especially for staffing- in terms of measuring project duration, resource compensation packages, among other functional aspects. A company may also use the FTE data to benchmark revenues or profits per employee.

This metric can be very useful for companies which usually charter the services of contractors on a large scale and endure projects for months. In the same way, part-time employees can benefit from FTE since they tend to sometimes lose benefits as compared to full-time employees.
Many Softwares allows for achieving this objective, such as xTimesheet. It has a well-built timesheet approval system and invoice module, which can handle this very well. The user only needs to click generate a monthly invoice after selecting the required project and duration of the billing period. Its advanced time tracking feature dispenses the option to make more reliable budget estimates.

Summing up, FTEs give the success of accurate forecasting. It will help you plan your project work in regards to deadlines and your budget. Once you decide the specific purpose of FTE, follow through with it.

“The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.”
-Tom Peter, American Writer on Business Management Practices

Accolades and shout outs are great, but a formal performance review is vital to an organization to get insights on the accomplishments of their employees, their areas of improvement, and their overall success. To achieve this, there are five standard methods that each company follows to conduct performance reviews.

360-Degree Feedback Method :
The name itself justifies its purpose. Imagine it to be a system where the employee under scrutiny is in the center of a circle, and her circumference (here, environment) encompasses people like her managers, team members, her co-workers, etc. who are familiar with her work culture, behavior, and her performance. The primary data here is the feedback provided by these people.

Management by Objectives :
It aims to evaluate the employee based on his achievements towards the company objectives. It ensures that the employee has an understanding of the company goals and is working towards the success of the organization. This is also known as the Management by Results method. For implementing the MBO method, the company needs to have fixed goals inlined with the SMART process:
S – specific,
M- measurable,
A- achievable,
R- realistic, and
T – time-sensitive.
Software’s like xTimesheet can succor to achieve this goal. Managers can keep a check on the employees’ productivity and performance. So, when employees display excellent results, they get rewarded with a raise or a promotion. On the contrary, if employees have unproductive results, they will receive further training.

Checklist :
Just like a To-do Checklist, a company imposes a behavioral checklist, which entails a list of behaviors that an employee is expected to display in a work environment. A questionnaire is prepared by the organization for the employees where they have to respond to each question with a ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ The evaluation may differ based on the job type.

Rating Scale :
This is a standard metric that is followed by almost all organizations worldwide. It is commonly done on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10. It evaluates both the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of an employee, like behaviors, competencies, on-time completion of the tasks, attendance, etc. Softwares like xTimesheet cater to tracking some of these traits. The determining behavior at the top of the scale should be arriving to work on time and leaving after the shift is over. xTimesheet has a Modern Time Tracking tool, which aids in clocking employees’ worked hours and can keep a check on their productivity as well as their attendance.

Self- Evaluation :
The name itself informs about the method. The employee has to evaluate her/ his own performance based on specific predetermined criteria and values adhered to it. Employees have to identify their strengths and weaknesses and rate them accordingly.
Self-evaluation should be as follows:
Specific- The employee should provide facts and figures and should not include vague statements. It should give a clear insight into the performance.
Connected to organization goals- The employee should describe how her/his performance has been a value-addition to the companies objectives.
Based on the STAR method- The employee should demonstrate her/his Situations and Tasks, and how he had taken up a course of action to yield the desired results.
Employee’s Aspirations- As much as the self-evaluation seems to focus on the previous work and achievements, it is also an open door for the employee to mention his goals and intentions for the future.

Performance ratings are incredibly subjective, but quantifying an employee’s performance is very crucial for any company. Else it would be difficult for a manager to keep track of the productivity of their employee. Appraisals are dispensed based on these ratings, which in turn depends on multiple metrics. The rating is generally done on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 and assess the frequency of a job deliverable or other behavioral elements of an employee.

360- degree Feedback System
As the name suggests, points are given based on the feedback of co-workers, supervisors, and other peers the employee is working with. It proffers an overall image of the employee in his/her workspace. It determines the attitude of the team member and uncovers the areas of improvement with regards to his/her interpersonal skills.

Management by Results
This is generally a one-on-one discussion between an employee and their manager, where they jointly determine the individual’s objectives. Rating is done based on how effectively the employee has managed to accomplish the task within the stipulated time. It helps employees to have a clear understanding of what’s is expected from them and allows them to participate in the process, which helps in better communication and increases motivation.

Consistent Improvement
“Perfection is a goal that will forever remain impossible for any human being to achieve. Therefore, the only achievable goal is to only strive to become the best that you can be.”
― Edmond Mbiaka

Taking this thought into account, employees are and should be rated on their consistent improvements. It can be achieved by keeping a check on their productivity and conferring with the employees on a monthly or quarterly basis. Softwares like xTimesheet are very convenient in such situations. xTimesheet provides employees with more control over how they put their time in and instills trust toward the organization, increasing productivity. It monitors their rate of completion and evaluates the quality of their work to ensure they are working on things that are in line with the completion of their task and at the same time with the growth of the company.

The desire and effort to become better should be the most rewarding quality for any company.

Self-evaluation
Talking about productivity, asking an employee to evaluate themselves in terms of performance can be very effective. It empowers them to be critical of their performance. It gives them a better understanding by comparing their self-evaluation to that of their managers and helps them to identify the similarities and discrepancies if any.

Although appraisals and promotions do depend on these metrics, it is the comprehensive evaluation done over time that determines the productivity and performance of an employee.

‘Outsourcing’ can be considered as the word of the decade (the worldwide outsourcing market had already surpassed $524.4 billion back in 2015), and some companies (especially the IT sector) tend to thrive on this. Although an InHouse team promotes better liability and consistent communication with the organization, Remote employees manifest their own merits.
However, a recent survey by the training company VitalSmarts claims that 20% of leaders are unprepared to lead their teleworking team.
With a different set of rules, perks, and management style, let’s delve deep in this arena of In-house vs. Remote Employees.

There are three essential differences between the two modus operandi:

Conflicting time zones.
Work Culture
Physical presence

Conflicting Time Zone
Organizations with remote teams and In-house teams face the biggest challenge of a diverse time zone. 9 am in India is 11.30 pm in the USA. Managers have to adhere to “time fairness” and schedule calls in such a way that is feasible for all the team members. And it is no easy task to achieve.

On the flip side, a manager will have a propensity for the InHouse employees since she/he will be spending some hours of the day with them and hence render the feasibility of communication.

Apart from meetings, managers will also have to decide on the deadlines accordingly to avoid any hassle due to separate time belts.

Work Culture
Remote employees tend to exhibit more independent behavior. Since they demand less supervision, companies may require fewer managers to control their co-workers and, therefore, more money on the plate.

Work culture also incorporates the cultural and language differences that may turn out to be a hindrance to the project deliverables. It is essential to understand the messages of the employees with clear objectives and find common ground among the variations for seamless management of the team. A manager needs to make the remote team feel comfortable and connected.

Physical presence
The space difference appends to the challenges of managing a remote team for the manager. Since they are not sitting next to you, leveraging the best communication tools to stay in touch is the only viable option.

Frequent video calls and scrum calls are the only efficient way to keep the whole team on board. Although scheduling too many meetings can induce various problems and lessen productivity. According to the recent Harvard Business School report, starting April this year, there’s a 13% increase of meetings per person, compared to the first quarter of this year (before there were worldwide lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Luckily, there’s a decline in the average length of these meetings – by 20%. This survey gathered 3.1 million workers from North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

Another challenge of having distributed teams is that performance and productivity tracking becomes a bit tricky. A few of the most effective solutions to the problem are filling out timesheets. But a manual timesheet again tends to give way to ‘timesheet stress’! xTimesheet is the answer. It is automated and sends a notification via email and push notification on your device.
In addition to this, xTimesheet gives out reports and charts to give a glimpse of your working hours in a better way and easy to understand at any particular time of the month.

Wrapping up with food for thought:

“Remote working is the future, but you need a physical presence at least a couple of times a year to truly create an amazing team.” – Ricardo Fernandez

‘Time is Money’ and our white-collar workers extensively abide by this mantra. Every time an employee flakes out, the company loses a huge chunk of money, and therefore efficiency and productivity are the two pillars an organization works on. So what exactly does ‘efficiency’ mean?
The concept says, ‘How efficient a person is, depends on where the resources and energy are going and how much of them are being used to obtain a certain result’.

The efficiency of an employee is mainly categorized in two ways:

Static

Static efficiency is measured when an employee has to take advantage of a preliminary process or product and entails improving it. In other words, it is mostly concerned with pre-existing resources.

Dynamic

Dynamic efficiency refers to the creation of new processes or products with time, ipso facto generating new opportunities, and improving profitability. So, it mostly deals with acquiring new resources.

There are 4 metrics on which efficiency is measured:

Desktime: The time spent on the system (computer).
Productive Time: The time spent on the productive application.
Productivity: It is defined as a Productive time divided by the Desktime.
Effectiveness: It is the amount of time invested in doing the right thing for the aforementioned time (generally, the 9 to 5 routine).

It is important to note that productivity and efficiency are two different elements. An employee may be productive but dissipating the resources, whereas an efficient employee perchance is producing lesser work output.

Efficiency analysis also uses math to calculate potential losses one might incur for costs. The following formula identifies these losses as a result of inefficient use of time:

We observe that the term ‘Project Cost’ is an integral part of calculating losses and hence, reducing it is indispensable. What if there was a way to keep a check on these types of costs?

xTimesheet is an application that can assist in tracking the project cost. Each hour spent on a project results in an hourly wage and overhead, xTimesheet incorporates features like the hours spent on a task.
The application has a fluid interface to track progress irrespective of whether a project is internal or external. xTimesheet app is super easy to use. It will mark the unproductive activities based on the details filled by the employees, which in turn will make the decision-making process easier for the managers. It also provides better insights into future estimates.

In case of any discrepancies found by the manager, she/he can reject the timesheet and ask the employee to resubmit their timesheet after making the required changes. In this way, the time spent on each task will be managed effectively and the employer will be aware of the productivity and efficiency of her/his employees.