Time tracking for employees - What to consider

Time tracking for employees - What to consider

Now that working from home and hybrid working have become a big trend, many people expect a company to allow their employees this benefit. Working from home can be less stressful as it gives employees with small children more freedom to pick up their kids and employees that need a familiar and silent working environment the rest they need. Keeping track of the employees hours is extra important if they are working from home. Find out why and how you should track hours in this article. 

Should I track my employees hours?

The short answer: yes. You should always track employees' hours, whether they are working from home or from the office. This has nothing to do with trusting your employees and everything to do with keeping your books up to date and accurate. Time tracking is the easiest when using an online program such as papershift.com/en/Timesheet. This program makes it easy for employees and managers to track hours and create payroll reports. 

Accurate payroll numbers

The most important reason to track hours is to produce accurate payroll numbers. Especially when you work with a number of clients and different projects, it is important to be able to accurately allocate hours to specific people and projects. If employees are able to track time daily, they are assured of accurate payroll numbers and will be sure that they receive the actual hours that they worked. Especially for part-time workers that are paid on an hourly basis this system can be beneficial.

Increase productivity 

Time tracking can be very beneficial for staff productivity. When using an online time tracker, employees are able to track all of their activities and create a daily overview of the time they have spent on certain activities. This can help employees to divide their time better and identify distractions. Distractions can be eliminated once they are identified. Furthermore, the employee can see where they are multitasking and try to make a better time division so that multitasking is not necessary anymore. In this way, time tracking helps as a little push in the right direction towards better time management and productivity. 

Keeping track of overtime

An employees’ contract states if overtime is allowed and how much is allowed. To be able to prove that overtime is used and to keep track of how much overtime is used, time tracking should be applied. Companies must adhere to the compulsory overtime laws. This law states that a worker cannot be forced to work more than 48 hours per week, unless otherwise specified in their contract. In addition, a company may not discriminate by allowing some employees to work overtime and others to not work overtime. To prove that your company abides by this law and that you do not discriminate, a paper trail must be made. This can easily be done by tracking the employees time. 

How can I track the hours?

For managing business affairs, there are many tools available. The best time tracking programs have functions such as reports and integrated time trackers. The employee can install a mobile or desktop application, which has a time tracker that can be started and paused when working on certain projects. These time trackers keep the time that the employees have worked on a certain task to the second and ensure accurate payroll and overtime tracking. This is both beneficial for the employee as for the company as the employee gets proper compensation and the company enjoys accurate workforce management.