‘Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion’. In simpler terms, it means - if you give an employee a week to complete a 2-hour task, they would do it in a weeks timeframe and not in 2 hours.
The argument for the excess time taken here would be attributed to the sudden rise in complexity of the task or that they needed to keep perfecting the task until the deadline is reached. That’s the very essence of Parkinson’s law.
This makes it pretty clear that inefficient time tracking does not exhibit employee efficiency. A timesheet management tool that helps you zoom in on the larger aspect of the project is the need of the hour. It should primarily help you point out the incorrect estimation of the tasks as well.
Choosing uKnowva’s intelligent timesheet management tool will help you do the same. It will automate all reminders and emails while assisting you to understand the exact time spent on individual activities with derivative reports and logs.
Having said that, employees tend to be usually reluctant on filling their timesheets at the end of the workday. That’s where you can leverage automation to promote orderly timesheet filling.
Understanding the reason behind the reluctance and overcoming them with the help of evolving tools will help solve the problem.
Here are few tips to get your staff onboard on filling the timesheet regularly
1. Get rid of Excel sheets and record time on the cloud
Using a tool over excel offers a convenient and secure system for your data management. Employees would be more willing to log the time against a super easy tool than a boring excel any time of the day.
Keeping in mind that convenience is the key, employees love the fact that filling timesheet is feasible on any device. Having access at a single touch of a button definitely puts the ease in time logging task.
2. Make it as easy as possible
Tracking every hour of the day spent on different assignments is itself a daunting task. Automating task assignment based on projects to individuals via a timesheet management tool eases the process.
Having automated reminders to fill timesheets further eases and keeps employees from forgetting to record the time.
3. Define the Value
Defining a clear motive and value behind timesheet management with your employees will make them more accountable for their efforts. Make the staff aware of the fact that timesheet data will actually help to assign more and enough resources to projects which have more workload. All these efforts would lead your managers to make better leadership decisions, oversee the roadblocks thus helping increase productivity.
4. Limit and streamline tracking to definite items
Categorize the tasks that are being assigned to employees. It can become a tedious process for employees to keep mentioning the massive varieties of tasks undertaken throughout the day. A steady streamlining of projects and the branching tasks from it should be assigned to the relevant team members only.
Here the uKnowva timesheet tool aligns with a similar concept of allowing the employees to add and choose varied projects and tasks relevant to them.
5. Automate Reminders
Having automated reminders will help staff submit timesheets on time instead of the hasty last-minute submissions done at the end of the month. Regular reminders will help them to track more accurate data as its easy to remember the track of tasks undertaken in a weeks duration compared to a month.
uKnowva Timesheet tool offers not only reminders and emails but log reports for the managers to find the recurrent offenders. Managers can get clear visibility with reports stating employees who have delayed filling timesheets.
Final Thoughts
With all these guidelines it becomes relevantly easier to get the staff onboard on filling timesheet. The practice of maintaining timesheet may receive reluctance from employees at first, but the mentioned guidelines can help make a difference.
Implementing timesheet has proven to pave the path for many profits in an organisation.
Some include :
- Accurate invoicing to the clients based on the time and efforts spent on the project.
- Increase the efficiency of staff by identifying time spent on immaterial tasks and reassigning them with relevant tasks instead.
- Precise estimation of the project timelines and efforts based on insights from the timesheets.
- Better allocation of resources based on workloads.
For the managers who wish to implement a timesheet tool which would help in a smooth transition rather than employees detesting to record time, you should definitely give uKnowva timesheet management tool a try for free. It will help you incentivise smart automation to make your employees fill timesheets orderly.