One question that puzzles the employers is why employees hate to fill the timesheets?
From the time of industrialization till the technology revolution, the type and techniques for successful business have changed a lot! Nevertheless, one common thing all employers agree on is, discipline their employees to fill the timesheet.
Today there are timeless software and tools that capture the mundane activities of the employees and illustrate quality time spent at work. Then why is it that still the submission of the timesheet is necessary?
Why is the timesheet important?
Nowadays, business processes are complex, plus the nature of work differs. Work like fixed price, overtime work, contract projects, and even time-bound projects requires timesheets to manage billings and profits of the company.
Benefits of having a timesheet
1) Increased productivity:
Having a real-time online monitoring and tracking tool increases the efficiency and productivity of the employee. As it continuously tracks their working hours, it further aids the workability of the employee. Enriching its working environment, the employee dedicates himself to the priority work.
2) Simplified payroll processing:
Automated tracking tools calculate the working hours of each task. This gives a detailed report and analytics for the calculation of wages and salaries.
3) Cost reduction:
Daily time tracking, assist in forecasting the project requirements, increases productivity, and reduces overtime costs, positively affecting the budget.
4) Increased accuracy:
As no employee can claim over falsely collected data or overtime, web-based time tracking provides accurate data and ups the morale of performing employees over others.
5) Estimates for resource requirements:
Lack of resources can lead to unimaginable situations. Timesheet forecasts resource requirements. The patterns of resources used in previous projects are studied and implemented with confidence in current projects.
Advanced estimation of resources during the planning phase freezes the tasks, time, and resources before the project starts.
6) Identification of improvement areas:
Evaluation of employees by their skills and tasks gives a better idea of the improvement areas for the employees.
7) Focused approach:
Advancement in technology has increased the distraction, social media platform, news alerts, and reviews interrupt our work.
To eye on employees, micromanagement is unwise instead, the time tracking tools act as micro managers track working hours and the habits of the employees.
8) Tracking of billable hours:
Tracking and identification of billable hours are eased by automation. The tools come to handle for the companies outsourcing the various tasks and to multiple sources. This saves time as the contract resource skips the task of filling the sheet enabling the benefit of the real-time time tracking feature.
9) Time management skills:
No wonder we all are busy, but only if it reflects on the time tracking tools. Tools present a review of working hours for employees and managers and improve time management skills. The awareness of the number of tasks and managing them in a short time increases productivity.
We focus more on distractions rather than our priority work, it’s good to cut down on time-wasting activities, so you focus more on current work.
Tricks to encourage filling timesheet:
Although there are numerous benefits of using a timesheet, employees don’t submit their timesheets at a given time. To over the delay here are the tired workable tricks.
1) Keep it simple and automated:
Using automated tools works well for managers and employees.
- Automate tools: Automate the tasks, so the employee can just pick the right tasks and set the time. Automation will save the employee’s time by just selecting the tasks instead of writing the tasks.
- Ease in Submission: Make the submission easy, by automation process or workflow. Let the approvals be initiated automatically for real-time data.
- Flexible in time tracking: Be flexible in tracking the time. Our goal is to get the work done, don’t deviate from the goal. It doesn’t matter if the timesheet shows the deviation of 15 minutes from the tasks.
- Avoiding penalty/ reward system: Avoiding penalty/ reward system for timesheet. Timesheets are necessary for budget, but announcing the rewards or penalties could be a nasty step to undermine the team unity. A must thing to avoid for “built to last” companies.
2) Timesheet reminder templates:
The frequency of reminders depends upon the count of the employee however, company, culture, and policies also matter.
- Direct mails: It depends upon your position and number of employees, directly send them a reminder mail to submit the timesheet before the timeline ends. For some companies, timesheets matter, so missing deadlines could result in a pay cut.
- Informal timesheet message: An informal and casual timesheet reminder can work for employees who work and know company culture. If a short and sweet message works for your colleagues, then go with it.
- Setting reminder for timesheet submission: Set the timesheet approval system on automation and automate business process workflow to remind your employees. This works well since the managers do have to deal with the timesheets directly as HR does it for them.
TeamBoard Time in Jira
Managers use Jira as a fully automated project management tool. Extend the additional features that are required for project management using TeamBoard Time. It manages the employee profiles, track time, create a timesheet, applying for vacation/ leave, holiday and billing for the project.
Initiated by program managers, the tasks are assigned to team members using flexible cards. Characteristics of cards various as per the color, resource name, time, used for setting the progress it allows the flagging along with details.
Take away:
Getting the timesheets on time is a tricky business. We have discussed why submission of timesheets on time is essential for business, and also ways to get your employees to submit the timesheets on time. Tricks like timesheet reminders, the informal chat could work for the unautomated business process.
But we recommend using the tools or automate your business process so that it could automatically send reminders or collect the real-time data in your timesheet. Plugins like TeamBoard Time works well for Jira users contributing to the success of the company.
Also published on Medium's nagasada