Be it in-office or remote, the biggest fear most employers have is about their employees wasting time at work. It’s painful to see the time your employees should ideally be working for you going waste.

It’s not just employers, employees also complain about having too many distractions at work. There are tons of things happening in the office that distract the employees and make them waste their valuable time.

The common time wasters or distractions in a workspace are –

• Tons of emails
• Unproductive meetings
• Co-workers stopping by
• Cellphones
• Social media and internet surfing
• Coffee breaks

Employees who do remote work face more distractions at home or co-working space that affect their productivity –

• Checking and responding to emails
• Family and friends
• Pending house work
• Cellphones

This may result into low quality work, missing deadlines, Strained relationships, financial losses and much more.

Ways to keep employees from wasting time

To avoid employees from wasting time at work –

• Set clear goals & expectations
• Limit number of meetings and practice productive meetings
• Use instant messaging apps like Skype or Slack to reduce number of emails
• Block the non-work related sites during work hours
• Allocate time for coffee breaks and chats
• Use time tracking apps

While all of the above solutions are practical to implement, some of them might lead to administration issues or may even result in the employees being unhappy due to the micro-management.

Time tracking may also seem to be a painful process to implement. But once you and your employees are convinced about how awesome time tracking is, all further administration becomes easier.

Here’s how time tracking is beneficial to the employees –

• It gives them flexibility
• It helps them to manage their tasks
• It makes them more organized and focused
• They become more productive and produce better results
• There is no need to fill in the timesheets daily
• Payroll integration ensures accurate and on-time payments

Once time tracking becomes part of your company culture, you can get rid of all the annoying micro level monitoring.

5 ways you can make time tracking a part of your company culture

Many companies find their employees are reluctant to time tracking. Employees don’t like to be monitored when working.

Convincing employees to track time is the biggest challenge most managers face when implementing time tracking in their company.

Introducing time tracking solution is not like installing a new water cooler in your office. A forceful and sudden change can be risky. It has be handled carefully.

Here’re 5 ways you can implement time tracking smoothly in your company.

1. Explain why time tracking is important

Time tracking is a bliss for the employees and the employers, both. Explain why it is important and how it is going to help the employees work effectively. Employees can assess the number of hours they work, the tasks they perform, where they waste time and where they can improve each day. Also, the payroll becomes easy and on-time given the exact hours tracked.

2. Time tracking guidelines / process

Clear guidelines are really important when implementing time tracking in your organization. Set rules and processes well in advance, communicate those clearly to the employees. Nothing should be kept secrete. Ask for suggestions of the employees. Consider all the possible scenarios and add a clause for each of those scenarios. This will make implementing the system smoothly.

3. Transparency in policy

As your employees are going to use the system to track their time, nothing should be kept secrete. Keep the policy simple and transparent. There are many programs available that spy employee activities. Choose a time tracking solution that the employees will trust and will want to use everyday.

4. Analysis

Setting up the system and process is not a one time task. You need to analyze what is working and what is not. Have a review of the process after a month. Share the results with the employees and management. Make necessary changes to use the system more efficiently.

5. Feedback and suggestions

Ask for employees feedback and suggestions on regular basis. Ask how it can be better implemented. Have short survey to get insights from all the employees. Improve or implement suggestions from them.