The views expressed by the business participants are their own.
Maximizing productivity should always be a top priority for business owners, but trying too hard to control every inch of your operations can actually backfire.
Systems within a business must be in place to ensure it runs smoothly – from having a daily structure to setting meeting agendas, establishing company values and setting hiring criteria – without them, businesses can fail.
Time tracking is a good example of a system used by employers to improve employee productivity by increasing self-awareness, promoting accountability, reducing time wastage and increasing profitability.
The growing demand for time tracking software, due to the increase in remote work, could put the market for this technology at an estimated value of $31.88 billion by 2028.
But it’s not all good. While time tracking may seem like a smart business move, it certainly has its drawbacks if not used carefully.
Trust is everything
What separates good leaders from great leaders is their ability to provide direction, resources and support to their team. At the same time, they need to allow employees room for self-management.
A healthy working relationship between an employer and an employee depends largely on a strong sense of trust and relatively balanced power. Time tracking to monitor employee input and output can blur the lines if clear expectations are not set.
Asking employees to record every minute of their workday can leave employees with unnecessary stress and feeling like they aren’t being trusted to do their job. When employees feel untrusted, trust has the potential to be broken both ways.
Tying people to their desks
In the past few years, the importance of having a healthy work-life balance has been emphasized more than ever. The truth is, people work better when they have time for things that are completely unrelated to work.
As a manager, being too nit-picky about the hours an employee logs into the time tracker every day can cause real problems.
Workers are people, not machines – they need bathroom breaks, coffee breaks, time off to make appointments and always finish on time.
Time tracking often ignores these important aspects of the work schedule. It may even result in employers penalizing employees for not spending a certain number of “benefit” hours at their desks. The bottom line is that this is completely absurd.
Related: The Importance of Striking the Right Work-Life Balance
Privacy concerns: Is it wrong?
Then there is the big concern about surveillance.
Not only should there be legal requirements to monitor employee productivity, but the ethics of tracking a person’s every move should also be questioned.
People come to work to do their jobs, earn money to live and reap the rewards of their efforts in their spare time. What they don’t want is to feel like they’re constantly being watched or waiting to be criticized for not doing enough.
Excessive supervision can be a great motivator for employees. It can cause them to question what other jobs are in store for them, which can lead to serious conflict.
Related: It’s a Hiring Market – Here’s Why Employers Should Think Twice About Using Surveillance Technology
Cheating the system
When employers are strict about how their employees use time tracking software, it leaves room for deception. This is even more true with the increasing number of people working from home.
If you don’t sit in the office and physically monitor what the employees are doing, there is no way to see if they are actually doing the work. Your marketing manager can have his time tracker working on a client project while sitting on a beach in a completely different country. You will be none the wiser.
This is where it comes back to the trust factor. If employees feel pressured to make every second of work count, they may be more inclined to cut opportunities.
Don’t overestimate success
There is a common misconception that tracking your employees’ every move will allow you to determine how much value they add to your business.
However, the truth is that there is no 100% way to accurately measure business success with this software. The main thing to remember here is that there is a distinct difference between productivity and profit.
Take staff meetings, for example. They may not directly generate income, but they are necessary to keep your team up to date, on track and on the same page. Without “non-paying” activities like this, a business cannot function effectively. The same goes for looking for clients or communications – the success of these interactions is too complex for time tracking software to measure.
Related: Defining Success: 4 Key Metrics That Go Beyond Revenue
Food for thought
While I would never suggest that business owners ditch time tracking software entirely, as you can see, there is a lot to consider.
If you choose to use these systems in your workplace, it’s important to find a way to use them that doesn’t hinder your team’s ability to do their work – or set it back.
Transparency is everything. Let your employees know how time tracking will be initiated and monitored from the start, and allow them to raise concerns they may have. It is also necessary to constantly review what is working and what is not.
And if you think time tracking isn’t right for your business, there are plenty of other traditional ways to measure your success without you.
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