Timesheet data is a valuable asset in understanding how your workplace functions and how you can improve it. By tracking this information and combining it with other data points, facility managers can make more well-informed decisions surrounding their resources, workflows and overall efficiency. Here are four ways you can use timesheet data to your company’s benefit.
Estimating a project’s timeline and costs is often a difficult task, but an accurate assessment can help you avoid wasting time and resources. It’s important to make these estimates based on available data—use of employee time is a crucial point to consider here.
Managers can use timesheet data from one project to make an analogous or parametric estimate of how long another project may take.
This is effective in cases where projects share similar workloads and resources. Work time estimates are especially helpful in calculating rough labor costs by combining your time estimates with employee/contractor wage rates.
Time is a finite resource, one that should be invested with careful thought. Just like your company’s finances, you should track how much time is available to your organization. Timesheet data can be useful in finding out which tasks your workplace is prioritizing and how they match up to larger business goals. By analyzing your timesheets, you can see which projects and tasks take up the most time and consider what changes your team can make to improve workflow.
Delegating new tasks also becomes a clearer process as you can examine timesheets to see which employees are working at full capacity and which ones might be able to take on extra work. In order to do this, you’ll need to track tasks on a granular level—popular time tracking apps like Toggl make this an easier and more accurate process.
Keep in mind that time isn’t the only variable that determines how effectively your workplace is working towards its goals. You’ll need to combine timesheet data with other performance metrics (such as quality of work) to create a more comprehensive and reliable view of your team’s progress.
How employees are spending time in the office can help inform workplace policies for issues like work-life balance, resource usage, vacation time and remote/flex working. This data is most effective when taken into consideration with employee feedback and work culture, which allows you to understand the more subjective, human components of your office policies.
By checking in with employees and performing regular analyses, you can see how policies are being followed after they’re implemented.
As a result, timesheet data can help gauge change management processes.
Having empirical data is helpful here, as workplace policies can directly affect your employees’ mood and productivity on a daily basis.
Performance reviews can be a major source of conflict and disagreement. Coupling timesheet data with other established performance metrics can help you develop a better understanding of why an employee may be underperforming, so you can address the issue on more objective grounding. The more specific your timesheet data is, the more contextualized your reports will be—you won’t have to rely solely on opinion or a comparison between different workers.
By looking at past timesheets, you can also gain an overview of an employee’s typical workday, and develop insights about proper evaluation.
Data that comes from time tracking can be highly meaningful to an organization, but its effectiveness depends on specificity, workplace participation and the consideration of other factors. By incorporating timesheet data into broader evaluations, managers will be able to understand how best to use their employees’ time and resources.
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