Before you consider whether time management software would be a good investment for your business, consider this: What are your employees doing right now? Which one? All of them!
Who is on the phone with a client? Who is making a sale with a customer? And who is checking their Facebook account or streaming a video on YouTube? Probably fewer of the former and more of the latter than you think.
Most business’s use the global reach of the worldwide web to expand the scope and, hopefully, the profitability of their organisation. But giving your employees unlimited Internet access can be a double-edged sword. Unless you have a way of monitoring what your employees are doing while they are on the clock – in other words, when you are paying them real money out of your pocket – you can pretty much be assured that you aren’t getting the efficiency you imagine.
Unless, of course, you have effective time management software allows that you to properly manage your business.
What Time Management Software Isn’t
One of the biggest objections we hear about time management systems is that they invade the privacy of employees. Being able to use time management software to take screenshots of people’s computer screens, seeing what they are looking at and when they are working (and when they are not) creates a kind of oppressive “Big Brother” environment that is counter intuitive to the free flow of ideas, creativity and innovation that successful companies nurture in order to grow and succeed.
In a word: Horse hockey. Okay, that’s two words, but so what?!
When you are paying workers to do a job for you, the time they are on the clock is your time, not theirs. So they shouldn’t be allowed to waste your money by spending time doing non-productive things. You wouldn’t let your workers punch in and then sit and watch their favourite television show right in front of you, would you? So why is it okay for them to go back to their office or cubicle and click on their Twitter feed or exchange text messages with their girlfriends using your computer?
Time management software isn’t there to create an oppressive police state. It’s designed to allow employers to effectively manage their businesses, and that includes the money they spend on labour and payroll.
Your Competitors Are Already Using It
Time management systems aren’t some sort of new technology that has only just hit the marketplace. It’s been around for more than a decade and is used by some of the biggest and most successful companies to improve the efficiency, productivity and profitability of their operations.
What is new is that time management software is now so affordable and easy to use that organisations of any size can now use it effectively – from the multinational conglomerate with offices worldwide to the mom and pop store with only a handful of employees.
In fact, time management software is so pervasive that it’s a pretty good bet that your competitors are using it right now to understand how their business is working (or not working) and using it to make the best decisions to improve their performance and help them achieve their objective of beating you and running you out of the marketplace.
Manage Remote Employees and Freelance Contractors
If your business isn’t currently using remote employees and/or freelance contractors to handle specific responsibilities that don’t require in-office workers, it soon will. It’s the latest trend in business and is quickly making its way to practically every industry.
Companies are discovering that it is much cheaper – not to mention more efficient – to either allow some of their employees to spend some or all of their time working from home or remotely while on the road interacting with customers and clients. Or farming out specific tasks to freelancers who can handle the workload but who don’t need to be paid benefits or housed in your office.
Time management software is the best – and essentially only – way to monitor what these workers are doing. Your managers can use time management systems to monitor how these workers are progressing, use screen captures to ensure they are meeting expectations, and use time management software’s functions and custom reports features to increase accountability and improve the overall performance of both individual employees and the organisation as a whole.
Manage and Adjust Resources
When you use time management software, you can see how much time is being spent on each project. You can then compare this data to budgeted projections to see if you are on track. Because time management systems let you see this data in real time, you can instantly make adjustments before you go over budget.
You can use the settings on time management software to warn you when you are approaching 50%, 75% or 90% of your budget on a particular project so you can jump in and take action before it’s too late. This allows your managers to re-prioritise or streamline processes on the fly – or pull in additional resources to get a job under control before it goes off the rails.
See More about Managing Projects with Emotional Intelligence here.
Keeps Workers on Task
There’s no use pretending that there won’t be some push back from your employees when you introduce time management software into your organisation. But once they see how time management systems can actually help them stay on task and how much more productive they can be, there eventually is near-universal buy-in and it will become second nature to your business.
Plus, time management systems help set your organisation up for future success by having systems in place that allow you to expand if you ever decide to start bringing in outside contractors or allow some or all of your workers to work remotely some or all of the time.
Businesses that object to time management software on principle don’t understand how it really works. Once you see the benefits to having a time management software working for you, you will wonder how you ever got along without it!
