You started worrying about some of your employees staying at the office much longer than everyone else? What about their colleagues that manage to arrive late, leave early and be found drinking coffee almost each time you leave your office?
Well, as long as you’re satisfied with the result of their work, there’s nothing to worry about – is this you’re hearing from others? In fact, your concern is totally understandable and it has solid ground.
Overtime – a barrier for ultimate productivity
In many companies working overtime is encouraged and considered something to be proud of, as it shows strong intention to reach the goals and demonstrate one’s dedication. Especially in case with fixed salary, when overtime isn’t paid. But you, as an attentive boss, should know that working overtime too much has negative effects.
First of all, it leads to productivity drop, since a person literally cannot get enough rest by switching to other activities. As the song goes “Work hard, play hard”. So, if an employee works long hours, on the one hand, it can be a sign of too heavy workload. This leads to exhaustion, fatigue, lack of motivation and finally can result in the worker quitting their job.
The picture described above is extremely unpleasant, so in order to avoid its turning real, it’s time you seek the way out.
The first idea that comes up in your mind might be about hiring help to handle the big volume of work. However, taking into consideration the time needed to spot the right candidate, go through the internship period, educate him/her to adequately fulfill the duties, it might be too long, plus means additional expenses for the company.
But what about those employees we mentioned at the beginning of the post? Those who always find time for rest and still manage all their tasks done successfully and deadlines met in time. The thing is, often such employees are capable of doing more or performing more complex work, but find themselves comfortable as they are. Their indulgent mode of work results from the insufficient workload. So, by assigning more duties/tasks to employees who evidently have a lot of free time, you will help the overloaded employees.
Use a time tracking service to detect employees with inadequate workload
In order to identify the staff members who are working too much or not enough, mere observation can be insufficient. Probably, your seemingly overworked “candidate” stays late because it’s hard to focus when everyone’s around. Or, possibly he/she needs to catch up with the tasks because of a lot of wasted time during the workday.
To dispel the doubts and base your decisions on data rather than assumptions, a time tracking service can come in handy. It collects data on employee attendance, Internet and software used, hours worked and even offline activity (absence from the computer).
The data is automatically formed into reports that literally present the picture of the company workday which can be viewed by departments, teams, or individual employees. Analyzing this info, you can discover the workers who are really overloaded (they typically don’t use any non-work related resources, take few breaks and work overtime). The employees who, according to the time tracker, spend a lot of time for entertainment and coffee, but nevertheless successfully handle all their duties can be given some more work to even out the workload. A more balanced workload also means higher productivity, so you will kill two birds with one stone.
Wrapping up
As you can see, a time tracking service has versatile spheres of application and can make a good asset to your business. To make sure, take advantage of Yaware.TimetTracker trial – it is available upon registration and provides unlimited features for 14 days at no cost at all.
