In the push for optimum performance, many organizations are turning to employee time tracking software. On one side, these tools provide valuable data and structure to the workplace; while on the other side, they can quickly move from support to suspicion, a source of resentment.
This tension between helpful and hated defines the current conversation around employee monitoring software. For any leader who decides to implement this kind of software successfully and ethically, they must recognize both sides of the river.
What Is Helpful: The Benefits of Time Tracking
Because time tracking software, when done effectively, brings clarity to vagueness and creates tangible benefits for the organization.
1. Accuracy in Billing and Payroll
Service businesses with clients are well served by this kind of accounting system because it provides a clear, detailed, and verifiable record for billing clients and ensures the work performed matches the bill presented. This is a hallmark of good client service and generating and maintaining profit.
Compliance with Payroll: Automatic time tracking generally reduces payroll errors and ensures the computation of hours worked, breaks taken, and overtime authorized are accurately computed. Accurate time records also improve compliance with laws of labor.
2. Increased Productivity and Efficiency
- Data-Driven Workflow: Time logs indicate precisely where time is being spent—and where it is not. This data provides actionable insight for managers to spot bottlenecks, optimize workflows, and make data-driven decisions regarding resource allocation.
- Self-Imposed Management and Focus: Tracking one's own time creates a sense of accountability for the employee. It prompts them to become more deliberate about how their work hours are utilized and leads them fully into the 21st century of focused work and time management software.
3. More Strategic Distribution of Resources
What's more direct and objective than data? This quantitative information replaces anecdotal or instinctual estimates about workload. Management can effectively identify who is stretched and who has capacity, leading to a more equitable distribution of tasks and therefore decreased odds of provider burnout.
The Cons: Tracking software excuses
The pushback against time tracking often originates from questions of trust, privacy, and feeling like they will be under a microscope at work.
1. The Invasion of Privacy
The crux of the debate here can be reduced to productivity vs. privacy. Software that takes screenshots, tracks keystrokes, or looks through the webcam can lead an employee to feel their space is violated regardless of whether the employee is using a company device. This man's anxiety, stress.
2. The Culture of Distrust
The lack of transparency in tracking indicates that management doesn't trust their own people at all. The tool may be seen as a way to punish employees or, worse, a tool for micromanagement, which could create resentment toward the process and affect morale.
3. Measurement of Activity, Not Value
Most employees feel that the software is measuring activity (clicks or minutes clocked in) instead of output or value (creative problem solving or strategic thinking). Employees feel penalized for important thinking or communication that falls outside of "active time."
