Time management tools promote employee accountability. Why should you care?

1 of August, 2022

There is always the need to hold your employees to a certain level of accountability. In the absence of such accountability, employees often get lax and unproductive and this never bodes well for the business. Time management tools are great for promoting employee accountability and productivity and as such are tools every business owner should look to employ.

What is time management?

Time management is the process of planning, allocating, and exercising control over how much time employees spend on one or more activities in order to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and low productivity.

What is a time management tool?

A time management tool is any tool that allows you to properly plan, organize, and manage time allocated for certain activities. These tools can help you make the most out of your time management plans and efforts to make the most out of your day.

There are a number of time management tools out there for different uses. These include:

• Calendars for scheduling
• Time cards for planning
• Time trackers for monitoring time spent
• Lists for organizing and prioritization

Some time management tools often contain a combination of some and all of these tools in a software. These time management tools are modern time management solutions. 

How these tools affect employee accountability

The work of any time management tool is simple ─ to help ensure the time allocated for the completion of a specific activity or task (or group of activities of tasks) is used judiciously and aimed at the completion of said activity(s) or task(s). Thus, these tools are solutions to improve efficiency and productivity. In order to achieve these goals, time management tools employ time tracking solutions, and this is where accountability really comes in.

What is time tracking?

Time tracking refers to the process of recording the hours spent on giving tasks and how much work has been done within said time. While this tool is often employed for payroll use, the usefulness of this process goes beyond simply calculating hourly payments. 

With time tracking, employers know just how much time each employee puts into work. They also know just how much work each employee gets done in that time. This helps employers know which employees are underperforming and which ones are being productive. Hence it is a method of keeping employees accountable.

A typical time tracking solution tells when employees clock in and clock out, how much time each employee spends working, and how much progress the employee has made. This makes it easy for employers to check in on employees in real-time and monitor the progress of assigned tasks.

Other time management solutions

Simply tracking time doesn’t make for great time management, however. A truly effective time management software needs some more solutions including:

• A shift management solution that helps manage shifts, ensuring that as little time is spent during shift changes as possible. This time management tool is essential for businesses with multiple employees who work in shifts.
• A time off management solution helps avoid overlapping employee leaves. It also ensures you manage employee time off just as much as you manage their time on the job.
• An overtime management solution ensures that employee overtime is recorded in real-time so they can be compensated accordingly.

Having a time management solution that provides all these tools in one software greatly improves your company’s time management efforts. This also improves employee accountability since such a solution accounts for how your employees spend their work time and even their time off and any overtime. Invest in such a full-proof time management software with Sesame HR.