Managing Work-Life balance while working from home

When you work in the same physical space that you eat and sleep, finding the right balance between work and everyday life can be challenging. All too often, the boundaries begin to blur, and we find ourselves torn between the two. When we think of work-life balance, we often think of both being in perfect harmony and equal hours spent on both sides. However, a view of this literal is unrealistic and bad for our mental health. It will only leave you feeling incredibly overwhelmed and unaccomplished. Work-life balance while working from home is more of a juggle or a blending of both aspects of our life. Work-life balance refers to how people prioritize their time and effort between professional and personal obligations. It will look different for each of us and could change daily. It will contrast drastically if you are single, married, or have kids at home all day. It varies so much between us because we lead such individual lives, and we all have our unique priorities.

We used to find it difficult to spend enough time with our families because we spent too much time on our work. Now, we have the same amount of time, and we need to divide it evenly so that both family and work should benefit from it. We used to bring stress home from work. Now we bring stress to work from our daily lives where we need to deal with our general anxiety and depression, the increased load of housework, and internal conflicts. We used to endure heavy workload periods anticipating a holiday when we can get away from it. Now we don’t know when we can get to escape, and it seems futile to bet on an escape that might not happen at the time we would need it. In the search for balance, we don’t only need to let go of the idea of having an 8-hour regular workday where we get everything done. Still, we also need to let go of a perfectly clean, structured, and organized home routine with a squeaky clean and tidy flat around us. The physical separation can mean to designate a separate space for working — i.e., not working from bed — or to signal your body that it’s working hours but getting dressed and making the bed. Mental separation is about having a different mindset for work and life. We used to unplug from work, and now we need to disconnect from the external work to ensure that we stay mentally stable. We need the time out, and we need to learn to reach for it. Previously it used to be about getting home from work, and now we need to find another way. Exercising, meditating, mindfulness, journaling can be the ways that can offer us the solution to escape — even if we can’t leave the house. When working from home, one of the best time management tips is to set specific work hours – and make sure your teammates and manager are also aware of them. Notify your colleagues, or mark in your hours using xTimesheet. xTimesheet has been a pioneer of this new economic order, with its built-in features like project expense & progress tracker & employee work/hour monitor. This way, you’re less likely to receive emails and meeting proposals during your non-work hours.

Transitioning to working from home and finding a work-life balance can take a bit of experimenting. Be patient with yourself as you learn to adjust to a new situation and take an active approach to find your work-life balance. A perfect work-life balance may not be attainable a hundred percent of the time, and the constant search for it can be exhausting, so allow yourself to embrace imperfection now and again.

Rise of Digital Employment, Gigs Industry & Work from home culture in 2020

2020 has been a year that has experienced some of the most turbulent periods in history. The digital and tech space continues to evolve at break-neck speed. As we dive into a new decade, it feels like there’s a little more change in the air. Digital employment is seen doubling in 2020 at a time when increasing cost pressures and an uncertain business environment is prompting many companies to go slow on overall hiring across other domains. Some of the most significant and high remuneration openings are with industry leaders. The funded startups are also competing with the branded big boys chasing some of the best available talents in the market. Startups and eCommerce companies are also looking to add people in new tech for a better customer experience. Gigs in industries that are the organizations and independent workers which engage in short-term work arrangements have also boosted up this year.

Today’s workplaces are going digital and remote working has quickly become the new norm. Working remotely offers many advantages for both an organization and its employees. Remote work is changing how the global workspace operates. In a trend that is showing no signs of slowing down, remote work is rapidly on the increase all around the world. More and more employees are working in remote positions, either full-time or some days of the week, with a large percentage of the workforce looking towards finding job opportunities with flexible schedules. Companies are also embracing this growing desire, increasingly using flexible work options as a way to entice new employees. Remote work has undergone a lot of changes ever since the first flexible telecommuting companies showed up. New technologies have appeared, and older ones have faded away. Remote work is also an increasingly desirable trait an employer can offer, with 57% of the workforce saying that the option to work remotely is their preferred employment perk. Remote workers are more productive compared to office workers.

Moreover, remote workers took fewer days off on sick leave. Since most remote workers choose their work schedules, they can organize their work to fit their most productive times and hence produce more quality work. But one major problem which companies face is managing the time and resources of the remote employees. To solve this issue, we have got for you xTimesheet for managing their expenses, keeping track of their project progress & many other aspects of their business. xTimesheet has been a pioneer of this new economic order. With its built-in features like project expense & progress tracker & employee work/hour monitor, xTimesheet provides an easy-to-use & efficient solution for business-owners, of all scale & size. With the help of determination, pragmatism & xTimesheet, your business, too, can wade through this crisis, to emerge stronger & perseverant than ever.

Visit www.xtimesheet.com to know more.
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How to make the most of the available man-hours of your organization

The most important element of an organization is its employees. To make the most of the available man-hours, i.e. to achieve maximum employee productivity has been consistently a huge task for the organizations. After all, productive employees are what makes an organization successful in the first place. Employee productivity, also known as productivity in the workplace or workplace productivity, is the measure of an individual employee’s output. The purpose of any company is to be successful – and employee productivity can make or break the success of a company. Thus it becomes very important for organizations to maintain high employee productivity. To make the most out of the available man-hours, i.e. to achieve high employee productivity in the workplace, you should implement some of the methods enlisted below.

  • Improve employee skills with training

There are a lot of skills you can help your employees develop to improve their productivity such as from small day-to-day skills like touch typing and spreadsheet manipulation to bigger ones like developing their ideal time management style for their work. The proper training program also leads to greater efficiency and productivity. By improving your training procedures, you can train new hires without losing your mind.

  • Don’t Be Afraid to Delegate

Delegation comes with an element of risk, but increased responsibility is important for improving the morale and job satisfaction of your employees. Give responsibilities to qualified employees that have a proven track record with success in a certain field, and trust that they will complete the tasks well. This allows your employees to gain skills and leadership experience that will ultimately benefit your company and provide your employees with a sense of achievement and direction in their careers.

  • Reduce Distractions

Social media can be a huge productivity killer, but it isn’t practical to follow a no-phone policy. Instead, try to keep employees engrossed and involved while allowing them breathing room. Motivate your employees to switch off their mobiles but take regular breaks during which they can be free to check their phones. This will ensure that the time burnt at their desk is more productive.

  • Improve workplace conditions

An environment that’s too hot or too cold distracts from concentration, as employees will spend more time walking around to get their cold-weather clothes or an electric fan. Ensure both heating and air-conditioning systems are in working condition for when the relevant season comes around.

  • Focus on the future with effective communication

Communication is the key to success. Without effective and two-way communication, relationships end, and businesses fail. Managers who effectively communicate, clearing all the expectations and responsibilities to their employees will be rewarded with an engaged, productive workforce. Focusing on the future—instead of rehashing past issues helps demonstrate your commitment to moving forward. And that helps you find out positive solutions. This doesn’t mean that you should ignore past failures. Instead, learn to address negative situations in a positive, productive way.

  • Offer Support and Set Realistic Goals

A common problem for managers is having no clear, strong idea of whether their employees are high-performing or not. Do your employees need an incentive to stay on track? Please help them by offering achievable goals. Provide clear direction to supervisors and employees to help clarify expectations. This will help to increase their productivity, as they will have clear attention and clear goals.

  • Equip your employees with the right tools

Your employee’s skills are essential to business performance, but the tools they use in their work also play a vital role. Choosing the right tools will make their work easier and translates into a streamlined workflow. There are only a limited number of hours in a workday, and an infinite number of tasks your team has to complete. This is where time tracking apps, like xTimesheet, come in. xTimesheet makes it easy to track your team’s hours and productivity with activity rates, so your business can improve workplace efficiency. With xTimesheet, you can assign specific projects and tasks to each employee, so they know exactly what needs to get done and can track time more accurately.

  • Ensure Employees Are Happy

A stressful workplace will not produce results. Workers that constantly work under highly stressful conditions are found to be less productive and have higher levels of disengagement and absenteeism. Hence, they need to be happy!

5 Effective ways to succeed as a manager

If you are looking at how to be a successful manager, it’s not going to easy — you must work and earn it. Being helped with a management role does not assure achievement. Successful managers are operative and productive. They can motivate, lead, and inspire others to achieve their best. It’s essential to realize that the people in your organization—especially young people—are the fuel to your long-term success. The one person who influences that outcome more than any other is the frontline manager. Becoming a better manager isn’t something that magically happens overnight; it’s a process that occurs by implementing simple and effective tips and changing your current habits. As a successful manager, you must adopt key effective ways that allow you to accomplish your goals and bring out the best in others. You can start by adopting the 5 effective ways we’ve highlighted below.

  • Motivate your team members

If the work atmosphere is positive, everyone will put in their best to achieve the goals set. Equally, if a low-spirited atmosphere at the workplace, you can be sure that morale and productivity will be low. How can you increase the motivation levels of your team members? The first step is to confirm that there is clarity as to each employee’s role. Every person should have a clear set of goals and an understanding of how to achieve them. If expectations are clearly defined to employees, they are less likely to disappoint their manager. Only handing over a list of responsibilities is not enough. As a manager, you should speak to each employee and carefully listen to their thoughts and feedback. Defining goals, help and providing the facilities and tools to help achieve their goals can be the best way to motivate your team. If your staff doesn’t know what is expected, don’t be surprised by what you get.

  1. Make decisions based on productivity

By tracking the goal and having your employees focused, everyone will understand why individual decisions are made and can trade-in. If disagreements occur in discussions, they must be welcomed because they focus on achieving a better outcome toward the end objective. When disputes do happen, be sure to ask what the ultimate goal is.

  • Exercise restraint

There are times when the stress level at work gets too much to handle. In such situations, managers get their frustration out at their team members. And this is delivered in an unpleasant tone and the presence of co-workers. If a task is mishandled, or the desired outcome is not achieved, you must allow the person responsible for it to tell what issue they faced, which prevented them from achieving their goals. It will give you the chance to provide the required feedback and, in all likelihood, prevent a recurrence of the same issue. Your team members will significantly applaud a little patience on your part. An extra benefit you will get that they are likely to put in a much higher level of effort the next time.

  • Have the assertiveness to drive outcomes

You need to decide what you more concerned with the process or the outcome? Managers strive for positive outcomes. Employees may find methods to give an outcome that the manager never thought of providing employees with the freedom to experiment and take on new techniques for doing things. When your employees see that their work is making a difference, they will continue to contribute. If you avoid providing relevant feedback on your employee’s progress, you’ll immediately notice a decline in team members’ contributions. Remember, feedback is the breakfast of champions—be liberal with your thoughts and expectations.

  • Effective time management

Time is of the utmost precious and valuable. Time management isn’t solely an art – it’s an entire artistic discipline. Effective time management skills sets can have a positive impression on your work and life in general. When you learn how to use your time daily, improve your ability to get things done in the first attempt, make better decisions, and, most importantly, gain ultimate control of your key priorities. Learning how to prioritize your needs, your team members, and those of the business as a whole is one of the first steps to effectively managing the entire team’s day. Only managers understand the importance of time management in the workplace, especially when you have to handle too many tasks and team members at the same time. Many effective managers use time tracking software to stay on top of everything. Such tools help in managing and track the exact time being consumed on all tasks. There is a tool which will help you, try xTimesheet. It enables you to manage and keep track of every minute so that you can manage your and your employee’s time efficiently at work.

Best Timesheet Software for your Business

xTimesheet is a time tracking tool that stores a record of the measure of time an employee has spent on a project at work, on a specific task, or working for a particular client.

It is used to keep the: –

·       Work tracking

·       Track efficient and exact time recording

·       Manage your projects

·       Track your progress on your projects.

If you are working with clients on a project or need to spread out work by the hours and so on, then xTimesheet is very profitable for you. xTimesheet provides you with all the important tools for scaling up your desired business objective.

Why xTimesheet is needed?

As we all know that the way the xTimesheet tracking work of the employees in a company known as Time Entry. xTimesheet gives a significant analysis so that company can increase its revenue to stats provided by employees in xTimesheet.

  • Employee’s project progress can easily be managed.
  • Accessibility from where
  • Track record of every single project or task.

Xtimesheet platform to keep all database of the employee, it helps to control each feature in this software. It’s a web and android based application so it can be accessed from anywhere. With xTimesheet you get detailed information about each and every aspect of whether an employee, organization, or any project. Additional features like invoice can be generated from each Timesheet submitted by an employee which can be used to bill clients, the automation is the process of capturing and time tracking employees working hours without any problem, users are able to see the hourly reports by graphs pie, line and bar to represent users worked hours in a better way and easy to understand at any particular time of the month.

Our xTimesheet Software is an easy to use task-based time recording tool. It does not require any kind of technical knowledge to use it. Since we have managed to keep it simple to be user-friendly, the organization does not require any dedicated staff or team to use our product.

TOP BENEFITS OF USING xTimesheet FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION

Are you still tracking your employee timesheet manually, relying on Excel records to track their time worked on projects.

Upgrade your time tracking method with xTimesheet software. xTimesheet digitizes employee time tracking and expense monthly so nothing can get miscalculated or misreported. xTimesheet is an advance tools help you focus more on your business and less on IT.

Here the following points

Invoice:  A invoice can be generated from each Timesheet submitted by an employee which can be used to bill clients. With xtimesheet your clients need not to worry about the status and billing of their project and the amount of dedicated time has been spent on their as a proof of how correct your billing is.

Track Time/Expense: Do you want to track your monthly Expenses? Do you need to track your time management? Managing time track is effortless is what xTimesheet is all about. xTimesheet enables tracking of the expense occurred while delivering the services. Project managers can monitor employee working hours and the project completion progress.

Automation: Timesheet automation is the process of capturing and tracking employee working hours without any problem, your employee may forget to fill their timesheet, xTimesheet gets reminders notification via email, and supports push notification on your device also handles efficiently timesheet approval system.

Statistics: We’ve got charts, where users are able to see the hourly reports by graphs pie, line and bar to represent users worked hours in a better way and easy to understand at any particular time of month. It displays a project’s overall performance and progress, spot past or present activities and highlight particular problems that require further attention by the managers.

Timesheets – your time “accountant”

Just like capital, any business strives to get the most out of the work hours of their employees. A productive workforce can be the difference between success and bankruptcy for a company.

Every business, small or large, has an accountant which accounts for every expense incurred by the organization to deliver its services to its clients. In a similar manner, a timesheet accounts for the work hours spent by each employee for the organization to deliver its services to the clients. Wikipedia has defined a timesheet as

“A timesheet (or time sheet) is a method for recording the amount of a worker’s time spent on each job. Traditionally a sheet of paper with the data arranged in tabular format, a timesheet is now often a digital document or spreadsheet

Traditionally a sheet of paper with the data arranged in tabular format, a timesheet is now often a digital document or spreadsheet. With the emergence of internet, many online or web-based timesheet services have come up. However, among all the timesheet services the internet has to offer, only a few stand out due to their easy-to-use UI, accuracy & compatibility with other popular services.

xTimesheet is one such timesheet service, which complies with each of these criteria. With its accurate expense accounting, progress tracking & invoice generation features, xTimesheet is among one of the most efficient timesheet services out there. Moreover, xTimesheet allows you to export your reports & other data to an excel spreadsheet or other formats.

With FREE registrations for up to 5 members, join xTimesheet to help your business embark on the journey of its success.

Get ready for your new workplace in a post-pandemic world- Your Home

COVID-19, apart from being one of the worst health crises in human history, has been a major disruptor of the markets & the commerce sector around the world. Social distancing has led to Lockdowns in major economic hubs, globally, giving birth to the widely popular concept of “Work-from-home”. And keeping the office-nostalgia apart, employers, as well as, their employees have embraced this concept wholeheartedly. This can be seen in a study by fundera.com which states that by 2028 it is estimated that 73% of all departments will have remote workers. Apart from that, two-thirds of managers who offer telecommuting flexibility report that employees who work from home are overall more productive. This could be seen way before the COVID-19 pandemic took place, as Employers offering at least part-time telecommuting flexibility collectively save $44 billion each year.

On experiencing this massive boost in productivity & cost-saving, many tech-giants like TWITTER have been issuing statements like:

The past few months have proven we can make that work. So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen

(Source: BBC news)

Among the emergence of this new work-culture, restructuring of small & medium scale business has never been more necessary. Coordinating a team in these turbulent times, especially with its members separated geographically, can prove to be a monumental task. This would require businesses to plan it’s time & resources strategically, along with keeping their staff motivated, in order to come out of this crisis, unscathed.

xTimesheet is here to cover all aspects of your business. From progress management features to expense accounting, xTimesheet allows you to stay in control of your business. Moreover, xTimesheet is absolutely free for up to 5 members, which makes it even more feasible for your business. So register on xTimesheet today, to help your business take its next big leap!

The race of productivity is on- how can your business win?

While the COVID-19 crisis still looms large over our society, nations across are easing lockdown measures, albeit with concessions. Society now seems to be poised for lukewarm normalcy, but the race of productivity & economic competition was never as fierce. In a post-pandemic world, life is going to be different from what it used to be. Social distancing, public disinfections & strict health policing are going to change consumer behavior in the long term.

Among this new world order, the competition among small & medium scale businesses has grown fierce than ever. With mass layoffs, economic downturns & stock market crash on the global markets, the spending behavior of consumers has undergone a massive shift. Businesses, especially now, need to focus on getting the most out of their resources right now. This requires intricate planning, efficient execution & critical management.

xTimesheet is here to provide all the necessary tools to sustain your business in these turbulent times. With a security-level based timesheet approval system, project management features along expense accounting, xTimesheet can take care of every aspect of your business. Apart from that, xTimesheet supports the community-sentiment by allowing free registrations for up to 5 members. So, don’t miss out on revolutionizing your business by helping it to adapt to the new norm.

Businesses need to focus on time management-now more than ever

Business owners and managers lead by example. The values and work ethic displayed by a company’s decision makers have a direct influence on company culture, and many times, on a business’ profitability. Time management improves the efficiency and effectiveness of a business, and business owners should continuously work on developing, or improving, their own time management skills.

When it comes to small & medium scale business, they’ve taken the worst hit amongst other segments. Now, most of their employees are WFH (working-from-home), which makes co-ordination & collaboration an even bigger challenge than it used to be, before the COVID-19 crisis.  Online video conferences & strategy meetings are getting more prevalent, as the situation worsens. Time management has become an integral part of this new corporate culture. Employees are getting an opportunity to learn to prioritize their affairs, balance work-life & expand their skill set.  This can prove beneficial for overall development of each employee, as well as contribute to an increase in their productivity. This productivity needs to be channelized & monitored by their executives, in order to get the most out of each employee’s potential.

This where xTimesheet steps in. xTimesheet has a variety of features to help you manage your employee work/hour metrics, along with other project management & expense accounting features to help your business take an edge over the competition in the current scenario. xTimesheet support export of data into excel sheets along with free registrations for up to 5 members.

So join xTimesheet and your business into taking a step towards a more positive & efficient future.