How to Motivate Your Employees to Use a Time Tracker Software

Posted by Tareq Aziz on November 7th, 2019

The benefits of time tracking software are numerous, however, not all employees understand them. Even if they do, they find that tracking time is a tedious job that interrupts their workflow and creativity.

Convincing your team that the time tracker software is beneficial and motivating them to use it is going to be a tough job. Which doesn’t mean it can’t be done, it will just require a bit of time and knowledge.

But before we dive into that, you need to understand why employees don’t like to use time tracking devices. As we already mentioned, it usually interrupts their workflow. If they need to start/stop the timer when they’re switching between tasks and projects, it’s inevitable their train of thoughts will be interrupted. Additionally, it could happen that they keep forgetting to switch tasks, then your data isn’t correct and you start wondering why you even started tracking time in the first place.

Explain Why Should They Track Time Spent on Computers

It seems like the most obvious tip ever, but if you spent some time explaining to your employees what are the benefits of time tracking, how it will help them and your company improve, maybe they wouldn’t be so cranky about it.

If they’re paid by the hour, the easiest way to get paid fairly for every second of the work they’ve done is by using a time tracker software. On the other hand, you might be billing your clients by the hour, and you’re tired of undercharging them. If you charge the clients correctly, everyone else will be paid correctly.

Another point is that your employees won’t have issues with overtime hours anymore. Your Accounts department knows this the best, and they probably had numerous complaints about the amount of overtime which was paid. If you’re using a daily time log app you can forget about these problems.

Clarify How You’ll Protect and Use the Data

The research has shown that the majority of workers don’t mind sharing their data if they’ll benefit from it. Yet, one of the main concerns your employees will have about time tracking is how you intent to protect and use the data you’re collecting.

For this, it’s best you create some sort of a policy, which will outline what will your employee time entry software exactly collect, where will you store the data (cloud or servers), and who will have access to it.

Most software solutions will allow employees to access their own data, so make sure you turn on that option. Additionally, you don’t have to be the only one who can see the tracker’s data. You can give managerial access to the team leaders in your company, so they can track time of their own teams.

Once your employees know the details about data collection, storage and access, they’ll be less likely to oppose the time tracker software.

Tracking Should Be Simple

In the best case scenario it will be automatic. Meaning the tracker will start working when the computer turns on, so your employees don’t have to start it. If you opt in for a more advanced solution, it will be able to detect on which project your team is working and it will allocate time to that project automatically.

If you aren’t able to afford such a solution, you can always choose software with a simple widget containing a start/stop button. Maybe it will even have a browser add-on and your employees won’t have to stop what they’re doing to start the timer.

The simpler the software, the greater the chance your employees will be using it on a regular basis.

Wrap Up

See, getting your employees to track their own time isn’t rocket science. It’s quite simple, and as long as you’re following our tips, you can expect that your team will be thrilled about the time trackers.