How to Track Time Employees Spend on Tasks?

In this article, you’ll learn about the importance of time tracking for task management and find out how to correctly track time spent on work tasks.

In today’s workplace, for businesses to be successful and efficient, it is essential for both executives and employees themselves to manage time in an effective manner. It’s not enough to simply complete tasks, the quality and efficiency of tasks are crucial, and therefore it’s important to track time spent on them.

Why should managers track time spent on tasks? To put it simply, time is money. Understanding how employees spend their working hours is invaluable. Using various features of time tracking tools helps maintain detailed time entries and provides insights that can drastically improve workflow. After all, it’s not just about logging hours – essentially, it’s about making each minute count.

Whether employees are juggling multiple projects or focusing on a single big task, understanding how your team allocates their time can lead to significant productivity improvements.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at different techniques and tools that help track time spent on tasks at work, as well as define how managers can integrate effective time tracking into the work routine of their teams.

Benefits of Tracking Time Spent on Tasks

There’s a common misconception that tracking time simply helps keep tabs on the workday of your workforce. In reality, it can become incredibly helpful for enhancing task management across your organization. 

With the right application of the practice of tracking time spent on tasks, you can streamline workflows and boost productivity. Over time, accurate time tracking can help teams boost their productivity levels and create a culture of efficiency within the company.

Here are just some of the key benefits of accurate time tracking:

• Improved productivity. The practice of tracking time spent on tasks can provide valuable insights into how employees’ time is allocated throughout the workday, helping identify time-wasting activities and shift focus to tasks that actually move the projects forward. 
• Enhanced project management. Accurate time tracking helps with more effective resource allocation, which essentially translates to better planning and fewer delays or missed deadlines. When project managers understand how much time different tasks require, they can set realistic deadlines, allocate resources effectively, and ensure projects stay on track. This means better planning and fewer delays. To enable even smoother project flow, time trackers can even have dedicated project management features and offer integrations with other PM tools.
• Insightful reporting and performance evaluation. If you decide to introduce time tracking through automated apps, they can also generate detailed reports, providing you with a clear picture of time usage across different tasks and projects. This helps with identifying top performers, recognizing areas for improvement, and providing targeted feedback to help your team thrive. Such insights are invaluable for making data-driven decisions and improving future performance. 
• Increased focus and efficiency. With automated time tracking, employees can concentrate on their tasks without the burden of manually logging every task they do throughout the workday. Such seamless process enhances their ability to work efficiently and maintain their focus on business-related objectives.
• Better transparency and accountability. Accurate time tracking and, as a result, awareness of how everyone on the team spends their time foster a culture of accountability and responsibility where employees take ownership of their work and contribute to the overall success of the team.

At the same time, you should also keep in mind that the overall success of time tracking greatly depends on the right intent. If it is introduced solely for micromanagement purposes, it can destroy trust and demotivate employees. The goal therefore should be to empower employees with insights into their work habits, not scrutinize their every move.

Best Practices for Tracking Task Time

Time tracking isn’t a magic pill, but when performed correctly, it can significantly improve productivity and resource management. Here are some time tracking practices you can implement to ensure your efforts yield the best results: 

• Set clear goals and expectations. Communicate to your employees the objectives you want to achieve with time tracking and how the data will be used, emphasizing the importance of improving workflows and project timelines. After all, clear goals help align the team’s efforts towards better time management.
• Conduct reviews. Regular reviews of time tracking data ensure that it accurately reflects work patterns and productivity levels within the team. Analyzing this information helps identify trends, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement.
• Make time tracking part of employees’ daily routine. When it comes to the accuracy of time tracking, consistency is key. By reminding your team members to make it a part of their daily schedule, you reduce the risk of them forgetting to log time or entering inaccurate data. (Pro tip: To save everyone time and efforts, you can simply choose the tool that will do this task for you automatically!)
• Automate where possible. Automated time tracking tools minimize the manual efforts required in time entry. These tools can track time employees spend on various work-related tasks with minimal intervention, reducing errors and saving time. This lets you focus on productive, results-bearing work instead of administrative tasks. 

Popular Methods of Tracking Time Spent on Work Tasks

We want to preface this by stating that the ultimate way to track time spent on tasks is by using time tracking apps, which offer a convenient and efficient way to monitor work activities of your employees, helping you make sure their time is allocated accurately and tasks are managed effectively.

However, besides time tracking digital solutions, there is a variety of other ways to monitor and measure time that range from traditional manual approaches to utilizing fully automated software. Ultimately, you should choose the method that works best for you, based on your own needs and preferences. 

Here are just a few methods you can choose to track the time your team spends on tasks:

1. Time tracking apps. When you need to monitor employee time and tasks simultaneously, time tracking software can simplify the process tremendously. Digital solutions offer a convenient and efficient way to monitor work hours, and with their automatic time tracking features, these apps can log employees’ activities without constant manual input. These tools have built-in time and activity trackers that log everything your employees do at the work computers throughout the day. But time-tracking tools actually do more than merely create daily logs. They also offer scheduling capabilities as well as provide insights to help you spot work trends among your employees and improve their productivity.
2. Manual methods. This type of time tracking involves manually recording tasks’ start and end times. Such traditional methods provide a straightforward way to track time. While they require more manual effort, they can actually turn out to be effective for those who prefer a tactile approach. Still, as with anything that’s done manually, this approach is typically more prone to errors. Additionally, it may not provide the same level of accuracy as digital solutions. No matter what technique you choose to adopt – whether it’s manual time entries in a notebook, visual and organized systems for tracking tasks and time in a journal, or actual physical timers – you need to remember that you will need to manually start a timer every time you begin a new task and stop it when you finish. And when you track time with an entire team of people, it will often involve sending manual timesheet reminders as well.
3. Spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are digital files that can track and organize tasks. Those of you who prefer a hands-on approach can turn to spreadsheet tools like Microsoft Excel that offer robust functionalities for time tracking. You can create custom time logs, use formulas to calculate total hours, and generate visual charts to track employees’ progress. But while spreadsheets are a powerful method of manual time tracking, they don’t have built-in task tracking templates and they can’t actually serve as a timer. You’ll also be required to create your own or customize a public template, which entails spending quite some time and efforts of manual testing on such a miniscule task.
4. Calendar integrations. Even though it’s far less common, time tracking can be easily incorporated into your work calendar. All you have to do is create dedicated events for each task or project (not unlike the timeboxing technique we’ve already covered). Then you simply set the start and end times for these events, and at the end of the day you review the calendar to calculate the time spent on each task.

Choosing the Software for Tracking Time Spent on Tasks

Overall, the tool you choose plays a decisive role in how effectively you can implement the practice of time tracking in your company. The right time tracking app has the capability to streamline your workflow, enhance productivity, and provide valuable insights into the work patterns of employees.

We’ve already taken a look at some of the top time tracking tools here. We recommend that you check this article out, since it provides a nice comparison of the most popular solutions currently available on the market.

Finding the right time tracker for your business can transform how your employees handle their tasks, which in turn can greatly ramp up their productivity. Here are some essential features to keep an eye out for when choosing the time tracking tool:

• Ease of use. The time tracker you choose should have an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate. A tool that’s user-friendly ensures that everyone on the team can quickly adopt it without a steep learning curve.
• Automation features. Trackers with automated tracking capabilities reduce manual data entry, which not only saves time but also minimizes human errors.
• Reporting and analytics. Advanced reporting and analytics features are essential for gaining insights into employee work patterns. Detailed reports help you understand how time is spent and identify areas for improvement.
• Integration with other tools. The option of seamless integration with project management and other productivity tools ensures that your time tracker will coexist well with the software and systems you already use.

Making Time Tracking for Task Management Easy with Kickidler

Kickidler software can truly revolutionize the way you monitor and manage work hours of employees. It is a comprehensive solution equipped with sophisticated tools that’s designed to capture, analyze, and optimize time your employees spend on various tasks and projects. 

Kickidler provides multiple methods for inputting work hours. Employees can manually log their time entries by inputting start and end times or specifying the duration of their tasks. Alternatively, they can use the automated time tracking feature to seamlessly capture time spent on tasks.

Kickidler also provides the option of real-time monitoring of work hours, allowing for efficient time tracking during any point of the day. This allows for incredibly correct, granular tracking of time spent on different tasks. Users can view their accumulated time, remaining time for tasks or projects, and any deviations from their planned schedule.

One of the key features of our software is its robust reporting and analytics capabilities. The software generates detailed reports that provide insights into employees’ time utilization, their productivity levels, and overall project performance. These reports help identify patterns, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement and optimization, enabling managers to make data-driven decisions.

Kickidler also helps managers keep track of exactly how much time employees spend on various tasks with its Project Tracking functionality. This allows for streamlined workflows, more organized work processes, as well as better collaboration and communication among team members.

Get started with tracking time employees spend on tasks!

With the right software, you can set up effective task management and time tracking, simultaneously gaining the insights you need to improve employee productivity. Check out Kickidler to experience our state-of-art time tracking and employee monitoring software.