Time is our most valuable resource, but it’s also often the most mismanaged. When you’re juggling the efforts of multiple people working on the same project, the struggle of time management becomes amplified.
You don’t necessarily want to monitor an employee’s every move, but you do need to know where they are in their work and how to support collaboration between different departments to make sure you meet all of your deadlines. One way to improve the workflow of your entire team is to implement shared time tracking.
What is shared time tracking?
With shared tracking, employees log their time completing tasks for specific job-related responsibilities, clients, or projects. That information might be visible to the entire team or only the project manager. Either way, the data is used to bridge communication gaps and increase productivity so your project stays on track until the very end.
5 benefits of shared time tracking
Teams using shared time tracking reduce project management time by 20%, ensuring quicker task completion and fewer billing discrepancies. Here are some other benefits we’ve seen from implementing this tracking method.
- Enhanced collaboration
According to research from Gallup, about 1 in 5 employees who hold a remote-capable role work fully on-site. 26% of employees are completely remote, and 55% have a hybrid schedule. This means that more than 80% of employees are rarely or never working together in the same office space.
Even for teams who are fully in-office, project collaborators may be spread throughout a building or across a campus. All of this distance makes it harder to successfully collaborate.
Shared time tracking creates real-time communication between everyone involved in what’s happening with a project. Coupled with your project management software, this creates a single source of truth for task status and timelines.
2. Increased accountability
I bet I can bring back some of your least favorite school memories with just two words:
Group project.
Just search ‘group project meme’ and you’ll realize that the nightmare associated with group projects is a shared experience.
Even in the workplace, some of the hurdles associated with group projects remain. With shared time tracking, every team member on the project is accountable for their part. Individual contributions are visible to the entire team, spurring everyone to meet their deadlines and complete their designated tasks.
There’s also an added sense of individual accountability involved with time tracking. When they see exactly how they spend their time, employees are more motivated to spend that time more efficiently.
3. Proactive planning
For projects that involve multiple teams and interdependent tasks, shared time tracking identifies the specific tasks that prevent you from moving forward. You’ll also be able to see if any tasks are taking longer than expected so you can make adjustments to the project schedule so you stay on schedule to meet your deadline.
4. Improved project planning and scheduling
The data gleaned from shared time tracking is a gold mine for long-term planning. When you’re creating proposals for new projects, you can analyze data from similar projects you’ve already completed to determine your bid, deadline, and resource allocation. When you build out an entire project plan, you can use data from past projects to create a detailed timeline, assign tasks, provide the appropriate resources to different departments, and ultimately maximize the efficiency of your team.
5. Improved employee wellbeing
You’ve created a team of people you consider to be top-tier, which means you’re probably working with at least one or two overachievers. Shared time tracking helps you notice when employees are consistently putting in more than their fair share of time.
Use this information to intervene before team members reach burnout. If someone puts in 60 hours a week, it may be time to reallocate some of their tasks because their workload is too high. You might also encourage individuals to set stronger work/life boundaries or work with them to develop better time management skills.
How to use time tracking in shared projects
The applications for shared time tracking are nearly endless. Here are some of our favorite ways to use the practice in your projects.
Assign tasks
Shared time tracking is a powerful tool for assigning tasks effectively based on team member’s workloads, skills, and availability. You can:
- Distribute work equitably. If you notice a discrepancy in hours worked by employees in similar roles, you may need to redistribute tasks to even the workload.
- Prioritize tasks based on deadlines. For example, if a client deliverable is due next week, you can check the progress of other tasks and reassign low-priority work to free up capacity for more urgent tasks.
- Match work to skill sets. By asking employees to categorize their tasks, you’ll find patterns regarding who has experience with specific activities. Experience is often accompanied by efficiency, so you can assign tasks to individuals who are well-suited to do the job both quickly and effectively.
Track project status
Project managers, rejoice. You don’t have to keep tracking down individual employees to determine where they are in their part of the project.
With shared time tracking, you have a broad picture of how work is proceeding in all aspects of the project. You’ll be more aware of where things are rolling along smoothly and where delays can potentially put you behind schedule. Immediately catching these delays means immediately addressing them. No surprises three days before the deadline.
Manage billable hours
Better managing of billable hours has a two-part benefit.
First, it helps accurately track hours worked by any part-time or freelance employees. Instead of asking employees to submit a manual timesheet, time tracking software helps log their time so you’re sure you’re paying them for every minute of work.
Second, shared time tracking comes in handy when you have multiple employees completing work for a single client. For example, I used to work for an agency that offered social media marketing. Each client was served by a team that included a writer, graphic designer, content planner, and project manager. Knowing how long we spent on each project helped the agency price their packages appropriately. And if you’re billing clients on an hourly basis, it’s critical to have a clear idea of how much time is spent on their projects.
Best practices for implementing shared time tracking
When you’re introducing shared time tracking, a few strategies can get everyone on board and maximize the success of your efforts.
Encourage team buy-in
Some team members need to warm up to the idea of shared time tracking. Even if your employees are already tracking their time, they may need a little encouragement to participate in team-wide time tracking. To encourage buy-in, emphasize the benefits on all levels:
- Improved time management for the individual.
- Better task management and a fair workload for the entire team.
- Improved transparency and adherence to deadlines for the project.
If you really want to gain team buy-in, involve all of the members in choosing what time tracking tool will best suit their needs. You may not have every individual agree on the same software, but you’ll gain a majority consensus and a deeper investment in using the tool they helped select.
Another method to gain buy-in is to start implementation from the top down. Ask leadership to begin time tracking and sharing snippets of their time logs from projects they’re a part of. In doing so, you communicate that time tracking is a tool for everyone, not a new way to ‘spy’ on lower-level employees.
Train and onboard team members
Don’t make this a ‘learn from experience’ situation. Schedule training sessions to help employees feel comfortable using new software or share access to resources that walk users through how to get started with the method you’ve chosen. Expect a learning curve as team members learn how to implement shared time tracking within their daily routines.
Your job isn’t done once your current team is comfortable with the time tracking program. Include the same training in your onboarding experience for new employees so that all of your employees are fully informed on how to implement shared time tracking.
Regularly review data
Implementing time tracking tools is pointless if you don’t review the data they provide. Data analysis reveals patterns and pressing issues. For example, you could learn:
- how much time is being spent on billable vs. nonbillable tasks
- where there are inefficiencies in team communication
- which routine project activities are eating up time and should be automated
- when your team’s productivity dips, which might be a good time for meetings
- which projects may need additional team members to reach completion by the deadline
Addressing challenges
Implementing a new solution across an entire team or company is bound to come with a bump in the road. Proactively address potential issues to help implementation go as smoothly as possible.
Resistance to a new tool or system
Employees may balk at shared time tracking for a few reasons. We take an in-depth look at the reasons in this post, but it boils down to a few hesitations.
- Concerns about constant surveillance and a lack of privacy
- Adding to an already full workload
- Micromanagement based on data provided by the software
The best way to combat these fears is to be transparent about how you’ll be using shared time tracking and emphasize the fact that you trust your employees. Communicate the benefits of shared time tracking and how the new system can benefit individuals.
Data accuracy
Inaccurate data isn’t really data at all—it’s just best guesses.
One of the most straightforward ways to ensure data accuracy is to use time tracking software instead of manual timesheet methods. With a time tracking program running in the background, employees don’t have to remember to log their time.
If tracking software isn’t in the cards right now, create clear guidelines for logging time. Provide employees with examples of accurate entries and be specific about how often they should be logging their time.
Your team culture is a key factor in obtaining accurate data. Foster a culture of honesty and encourage team members to log their time accurately, even if it shows delays or inefficiencies. Remind employees that you hired humans—not robots—so you don’t expect an unending streak of perfect concentration. This isn’t a witch hunt; this is a chance to improve your team’s time management and the way you collaborate on projects.
Balancing flexibility with structure
The phrase ‘equal vs’ equitable’ comes to mind here. You need structure for consistency, but you need to be flexible enough to adapt to diverse workflows and individual needs. There are several ways to strike this balance in shared time tracking.
- Establish minimum standards. Choose a few essential data points that need to be reported, but don’t overload employees with too many mandatory fields.
- Choose a tool that lets you tailor features. Being able to generate customizable reports or create unique task categories will ensure you have the most pertinent data.
- Encourage outcome-oriented tracking. Focus on results instead of micromanaging hours. For example, ask team members to track time spent on a project instead of monitoring what’s happening every minute of the day.
- Ensure tracking capabilities for all employees. You may need to offer multiple time tracking avenues, including a desktop app, mobile app, or manual options, depending on where an employee is working and what they’re working on.
Choosing the right shared time tracking tool
Time tracking and time monitoring are two very different systems to keep track of employee output. It can be hard to find a tool that helps log employee work but doesn’t log every keystroke or request access to their entire screen.
That’s why we created RescueTime Timesheets.
With RescueTime Timesheets you’re able to assign tasks, set billable rates, and track project progress collectively, simplifying timesheet generation for teams and improving coordination. The program runs in the background while users work, so all they need to do is categorize their time worked at the end of the day. The result is a clear picture of how much time was spent on various tasks and projects.
Ready to get tracking? We’re here to help.
