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Do you struggle to track employees’ work hours effectively? Do you often face inefficiencies and errors associated with billing and payroll processing? Do you lack insight into employee productivity because of a lack of proper visibility into employees’ time?

Then, it’s time to shift to timesheets to capture employee work hours and associated activities. 

This blog will uncover the basic use of timesheets and shed light on eight reasons organizations should invest in timesheets for maximum profitability.

What Is a Timesheet?

A timesheet is a tool that keeps track of employees’ work time data at the workplace. 

Many organizations use traditional timesheets, such as paper-based timesheets, punch cards, spreadsheets, and even Excel timesheet templates which are available online to track how employees spend their time and in which activities. However, these legacy systems require manual time entry of employees’ start and end times. These are also prone to errors that can lead to payroll discrepancies, inaccurate client billing, and even non-compliance issues.

“According to an EY report, each payroll error costs an organization around $291 on average to redeem directly or indirectly, and if a company regularly deals with such errors, they could? lose up to thousands of dollars each year.”

But, with the advent of technology, digital timesheets have become more popular options among digitally matured organizations that can capture employees’ work hours automatically without much human intervention and can also generate detailed reports to give a 360-degree view of where employees spend their time in which activities, and for how long. 

This data can help employers ascertain employees’ productivity levels, calculate employees’ payroll, and generate client invoices. Thus, a digital timesheet can be a game changer for organizations by helping them with advantages, as mentioned below.

Why Timesheets are Essential to Your Organization

1. Task Prioritization With Work Time Data

Timesheets serve as a record of employees’ work hours and the time they spend on each task/project. Armed with the timesheet data, employers can ascertain how their resources’ time is being used across various tasks/projects. 

With such analytics, employers can find out which projects consume more employee bandwidth and assess whether these projects are profitable. Among other things, this can help them make informed decisions regarding projects they need to prioritize and decide which ones can be done away with, considering they aren’t serving much value and consuming a lot of resource bandwidth. 

Also, by analyzing the timesheet data, employers can deprioritize the tasks that take longer and are less significant than necessary.

In addition, managers can use timesheet data while assigning tasks, i.e., they can check the timesheets to see who is working on what tasks and who is available to take on some work. Thus, timesheets help in better task allocation and work distribution.

2. Prevent Cost Overruns

The data retrieved from timesheets serves as the cornerstone for future projects.

For instance, if you embark on a new project, you’ll need to estimate the approximate time, cost, and other variables, as an inaccurate estimation can lead to cost overrun, missed deadlines, and delays in project delivery. 

However, organizations that use timesheets to record work time data can also leverage it for forecasting. For example, they can check the data of those projects with a similar nature that they’ve worked on previously to get estimates for future projects. 

Simply put, you can leverage the work time data from previous project timesheets to estimate the approximate resources, time, and cost for future projects. 

Thus, timesheet data serves as a reference for future projects and helps cut down unnecessary costs and labor.

3. Facilitate Client Billing

Clients that charge based on the number of hours can be billed accurately with a timesheet. The timesheet serves as proof for clients to show how much time was spent on their project. 

By accurately tracking billable hours, employers can generate invoices based on the hours spent by resources on these client-specific projects to ensure accurate billing. 

In the absence of such systems, erroneous data tracking can lead to under or over-billing, cost overruns, and damaged reputation, which eventually impacts relationships with clients.

With time-tracking software in place, employers can also generate detailed reports and share these with clients to help them understand how time was spent on different parts of the project and how their money was put to good use. This way, timesheets prevent billing errors, foster transparency, and build trust between employers and their clients.

4. Share Insights Into Employee Productivity

Timesheets help managers and employers ascertain productivity trends and performance levels. 

Organizations often aim for 100% employee productivity levels; however, this goal doesn’t seem realistic. Administrative tasks, training courses, personal leaves, and long meetings often consume a lot of employee bandwidth and thus contribute to lowering their productivity. 

Timesheets flag such areas of lower productivity so employers can discern the reasons behind the low productivity trends, areas of time wastage, and more.

For example, they can check which tasks are taking longer to complete, which ones they are able to do in a brief period, and which ones are insignificant or unproductive. This visibility helps them optimize and prioritize the tasks for better efficiency. For example, if some tasks are insignificant and consume a lot of employee time, they can consider deprioritizing such tasks to utilize employee time and bandwidth in a better way.

In addition, with the help of timesheets, managers can identify those resources who perform excellently in certain types of projects and use them where their skills are required.

On the other hand, employers can also identify those resources that are less skilled and usually take more time to complete certain tasks and can provide them with the necessary training to improve their performance.

5. Ensure Uniform Distribution of Workload

Timesheets provide a holistic view of the employee’s time, bandwidth, workload, and tasks allocated. Thus, employers can use this data for uniform work distribution. 

For instance, if some employees have more workload, managers can delegate some tasks to the employees with available bandwidth. 

In addition, if managers ascertain that the bandwidth of all resources has been used to its full potential, they can seek other ways to manage the workload, such as recruiting additional resources or hiring temporary freelancers. 

Thus, a timesheet helps in fair workload distribution and addresses the organization’s staffing requirements.

6. Provide Visibility Into Absenteeism Pattern 

Timesheets also show ‘time off data’, i.e., the number of days employees didn’t appear at work in a planned or unplanned way. Equipped with timesheet data, managers can try to identify the absenteeism patterns in employees by assessing if unscheduled absences have started becoming a trend.

There can be several reasons behind the absenteeism pattern, such as burnout, disengagement, poor health, lack of flexibility, difficulty in finding daycare for children, etc. Thus,  management can have a session with employees who are showing signs of absenteeism, understand and vet their issues, and take necessary measures to reduce absenteeism and improve engagement.

7. Provide Analytical Data on Project Progress.

A timesheet gives visibility into the time and resources invested in a particular project and managers can compare it with the planned timeline to understand the project’s progress. 

With the timesheet data, project managers can analyze if some of the tasks are taking too long or if there’s any bottleneck that is causing a delay in the project delivery. Thus, they can assist in addressing the potential roadblocks, optimizing the resources, and adjusting the workflow to ensure timely project delivery.

8. Facilitate Payroll Processing

Many organizations pay employees based on the number of hours they work, especially consultants and freelancers, who are paid on an hourly basis. 

So, timesheet data serves as a record of how many hours employees worked in a day/week/month. This way, the administration can process an accurate payroll based on the employees’ work hours retrieved from the timesheets. 

Also, timesheet data helps calculate how much employers should pay to contractors on a weekly or monthly basis based on the hours they worked for the organization. With timesheet software, employers can also meet payroll-related regulations around overtime, shift-based pay, and more, which helps them with compliance.

Bottom Line

Timesheets benefit employers in several ways, including payroll processing, accurate client billing, analyzing productivity trends, tracking project progress, etc. Many organizations have been using legacy timesheet systems, such as paper timesheets, spreadsheets, etc., to capture employees’ work hours. However, these timesheet systems are time-consuming and are prone to errors and even time theft.

Thus, many organizations are pivoting to time-tracking software that can accurately capture time spent by employees across several tasks/projects with minimum manual intervention. You can also leverage this software to avoid discrepancies in time tracking, billing, and payroll processing and make data-driven decisions to optimize workflows and enhance efficacy.

Featured Image by ijeab on Freepik

The post 8 Reasons Why Timesheets Are Essential to Your Organization appeared first on noupe.

Attaining a healthy work-life balance becomes a challenge for employees as they have to juggle multiple responsibilities at the workplace and at home while maintaining relationships with their family members. 

So, how can employers help their employees achieve a better work-life balance while being productive at work? 

From trying out different work schedules to doing away with unnecessary meetings, check out a few actionable steps employers can take to help employees find a healthy personal and professional balance.

What Is Work-Life Balance?

Work-life balance is all about creating a balanced environment for employees that allows them to accomplish their job duties efficiently while giving them ample time to prioritize their personal lives. A better work-life balance enables individuals to work productively while taking care of their well-being after office hours. 

However, due to the rising demand to achieve greater results, employees are struggling to strike the right balance between their personal and professional lives. This is the reason why business leaders and employers must step in to help employees achieve a state of equilibrium so that they can prioritize both lives equally.

Ways to Improve Work-Life Balance

Allow Adequate Paid Time Off

One of the best ways to help employees attain a work-life balance is by providing them with adequate paid time off. Many employers are, in fact, providing unlimited paid time off options to promote an employee-centric environment. Employees can take time offs whenever needed to recharge and refresh, spend more time with family, plan a vacation, or complete personal work. 

Besides, managers must encourage employees to use their PTO whenever they need it and make sure that employees don’t hesitate or feel guilty to request time off. Managers are supposed to set the tone of the workplace, therefore, they can lead by example by taking time off from work for a much-deserved rest. 

They can also demonstrate the significance of work-life balance by leaving the office on time, taking adequate breaks, and not mailing to employees when they are on time off.

In addition, employers can adopt simple practices to promote work-life balance, such as challenging employees to meet their friends and family at least once a week, whether on weekends or by using paid time off. 

Try Alternative Schedules Over Traditional 9 to 5 Approach

As the demand for more flexibility has surged, employers are experimenting with different work schedules that are way too versatile and flexible over the regular ones. For instance, in the flex schedule, employees can work at their own pace; that is, they can work during the time which is convenient to them and when they feel most productive. 

In other words, here, employers give their employees the freedom to do their work any time of the day or week. 

Similarly, compressed workweek schedules such as 9/80 and 4/10 are renowned for their different approaches, which squeeze the total work hours of a week into fewer days. For instance, in a 9/80 work schedule, the total 80 hours of two weeks are completed in 9 days rather than ten days, thus providing an additional day off every second week. 

In addition, companies nowadays are also opting for a 4-day work week to render their employees more flexibility and work-life balance. 

Adopt Remote and Hybrid Work Culture

Remote workers cite better work-life balance and overall wellness, as remote working provides employees with the freedom to organize their day at their convenience. As a result, they can do their job when they feel most productive and make sufficient time for other activities outside of work. 

Besides, many employers are switching to a hybrid work culture that enables employees to work 2 to 3 days from the workplace and other days from home. This schedule allows employees to interact with colleagues on a regular basis and gives them a break from the daily commute while offering more time to spend with their families.

Cut Down on Unnecessary Meetings

One of the major productivity killers is the time squandered on various meetings. With the work-from-home culture, the biggest disadvantage that appeared is that the meetings or discussions that could have been done within a few minutes have now taken the form of half an hour-long Zoom meetings. 

What’s more, in order to discuss a few things with multiple stakeholders and colleagues, employees may have to block their calendars for a certain time.  On top of that, some employees don’t need to attend certain meetings since they don’t have much to contribute, which ultimately wastes their time and reduces their productivity.

So, look into the calendar of employees; if they are loaded with multiple meeting slots, then there are chances that they may not be able to focus on their main work and may have to compensate for it by working extra hours outside the office.

Consider freeing up the employee’s calendar by discarding unnecessary conferences and meetings. Instead, establish a system of half an hour brainstorming sessions in which team members of a project can meet and discuss things in advance in order to clear any doubts or roadblocks.  This is a great way to eliminate time sinks.

Build an Employee-Centric Company That Supports Young Parents

All employees have a family to look after, and the best way an employer can improve employees’ morale is by supporting them with their responsibilities. For instance, many organizations are providing their employees with free backup childcare, workplace daycare, remote learning pods for kids, sabbaticals, and additional paid family leaves, so that young parents can pay attention to their young children while pursuing their jobs.

Employers should also consider providing perks and benefits such as maternity, paternity, or shared parental leaves to employees with young children so that they have sufficient time to complete their parenthood responsibilities. 

Avoid Glorifying Busy Work Culture and Overworking

One of the biggest reasons why employees in certain industries feel more burnout is due to the culture of staying super busy and working extra hard. Especially in organizations where it’s a norm that overworking and taking extra responsibilities is a measure of your dedication to your job, it is likely that employees will face burnout, stress, and ultimately experience work-life imbalance. 

Thus, it is crucial that employers should stop promoting a work culture where overworked employees are considered the epitome of ideal workers. Instead, they should spread a message that the ideal worker is someone who is efficient at the workplace but at the same time has a great life outside of their office. Furthermore, they should encourage employees to take ample rest and sleep every day as the well-rested employees are most productive and creative.

Encourage Employees to Take Sufficient Breaks

According to a published survey report from Tork, 9 out of 10 respondents revealed that they are more likely to stay in an organization where employers encourage their employees to take breaks in between work. Breaks are crucial as they help restore productivity and creativity levels when working long shifts. 

Besides, breaks give desk job workers some time to rest their eyes and the entire body. Taking breaks in between work not only helps in increasing productivity, but also makes employees feel more engaged, energized, and relaxed. 

To promote breaks in your organization, managers can leverage the Pomodoro technique method that follows the approach of taking a 5-minute break after every 25 minutes of work. Managers can also organize some fun activities or games to help employees disconnect from work for a while. Some employers are also establishing a dedicated space known as a nap area or nap pods, where employees can take a nap while at work to get refreshed. 

Communicate with Employees Regularly

If you want to create a better work-life balance for your employees, the foremost thing is to communicate with your employees regularly. For example, managers can book a monthly one-on-one meeting with their team members to ask them about their well-being and workload. Let them know if they can do anything to support their wellness or need help in prioritizing their work schedules. 

It is recommended that managers regularly assess the employees’ workload and productivity. Suppose they witness a sudden slip in performance or an excessive absenteeism pattern. In that case, they should try to communicate with employees if they are facing any challenge inside or outside the workplace and if they can help them sort it out. 

In addition, they can encourage them to avail of their PTO if they need a break from work or offer other such solutions. Besides, employers should have an open-door policy so that employees can reach out to management if they face any issues and express their concerns freely without any fear of repercussions.

Bottom Line

Striking the right balance between professional and personal lives is challenging for every employee. However, employers can help their employees find a better work-life balance by adopting the above-mentioned ways. Following these practices will not only make workers happier and more productive but also, your company will be known to promote a better work-life balance that will help you attract top talent and retain the best ones.

Featured image by mostafa meraji from Pixabay

The post Ways To Improve Work-Life Balance For Employees appeared first on noupe.