Time Tracking: Is time tracking the right thing to do with your staff? Regardless of whether they are remote or local, what approach should be taken, if at all? Should you be tracking clicks, time, shifts or projects?

Steve has tried several approaches to this problem, and in this episode, he will share his experience and successful solutions with you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Many feel that tracking a staff member's time can result in a loss of trust and that the finished project is more critical than counting hours worked.

If someone has a different type of task requiring them to shift roles often or perhaps even daily, tracking their time will be difficult. The non-repetitive workload can also be challenging to quantify. Tracking time also means more work and extra software costs on top of your systems.

Efficient staff won't mind their time being tracked, as they will want you to be aware of the amount of work they produce over the time allotted. This will only concern those who obviously feel they are not meeting your required standard. Evidence to identify these people is to great advantage.

You can improve things that you can measure. With the data gathered, you will also be able to identify work blocks, misunderstandings, or too heavy workload. This is a way to locate time-consuming tasks that can be automated or streamlined.

MORE TAKEAWAYS

Ask your staff to put the estimated time taken on each recurring task on their taskboard so that you will have a good idea of their capacity and spare time for extra work or projects.

Having the estimated time taken on each of your staff's recurring tasks is also helpful for delegation.

There are different ways to track staff's working time. With sites like Upwork, you can record the actual keystrokes. Moreover, apps like Toggle and Harvest allow a clock-in, clock-out type arrangement. And Asana enables you to directly add the task's link to your staff's timesheets.

You could use a spreadsheet to track your staff's time where they can log the task's name and the start and end time of working on that task and add notes about any problems they have encountered while working on it. It's the simplest way to determine which tasks took longer than expected and why.

BEST MOMENTS

1:56 – 'There is a belief about not tracking people's time because you don't want to lose their trust.'

8.04 – 'All of our staff have task boards and on their task boards is all their recurring work, whether its daily work, weekly, monthly or periodic. Every month we ask them to track the time it took them to complete all their tasks over the past month.'

19:30 – 'You've got to be prepared to understand what they do and talk about it. It can create a lot of work. You could say to somebody, 'What on earth have you done today? You've got no activity monitored, yet you've charged me for six hours of work?' That can put huge amounts of distrust into that scenario.'

23:54 – 'If you do this, I believe you will have improved systems. You will have a better ability to give feedback to your staff. You'll be able to increase their work's efficiency and productivity. And you can congratulate them and reward them for working hard.'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Facebook Group: Facebook.com/SystemsAndOutsourcing

Website: www.SystemizeYourSuccess.com

LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/SystemsAndOutsourcing

Instagram: Instagram.com/SystemsAndOutsourcing

YouTube: YouTube.com/DrSteveDay

ABOUT THE HOST

Steve used to be a slave to his business, but when he moved to Sweden in 2015, he was forced to change how he worked. He switched to running his businesses remotely, and after totally nailing this concept, he decided to spend his time helping other small business owners do the same. Steve's been investing in property since 2002, has a degree in Computing, and worked as a doctor in the NHS before quitting to focus full-time on sharing his systems and outsourcing Methodology with the world. He now lives in Sweden and runs his UK-based businesses remotely with the help of his team of Filipino and UK-based Virtual Assistants.

Most business owners are overwhelmed because they don't know how to create systems or get the right help.

Our systems and outsourcing Courses and coaching programme will help you automate your business and also work effectively with affordable virtual assistants. That way, you will stop feeling overwhelmed and start making more money.

If you've also got value out of this episode, then so will someone else you know. So please hit the share button and don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don’t miss future episodes!