Improving personal and collective efficiency includes such an important process as organizing the working day. The topic of planning and time-management involves many factors of a company’s activities: from delivering documents on time to arriving on time for negotiations, on which the firm’s annual profits depend.
The organization of working time includes:
- staff labor planning processes;
- improvement of personal and collective efficiency;
- principles of achieving goals and completing tasks on time;
- quality work-life balance.
For the competent organization of working time and rest time of the staff, let us consider what is the work schedule and how to properly plan their activities.
Work Schedule
This is an official work schedule, which is prescribed in the employment contract or job description. Guided by this document, the employee can plan how to organize his work and rest. There are several types of working hours:
Standard
The regular set schedule with a five-day working week with an eight-hour working day and mandatory lunch breaks. Suitable for ordinary employees with clearly defined responsibilities that are within specific time frames.
Irregular
This schedule is suitable for employees whose duties involve frequent travel, business trips, working beyond the usual hours, such as weekends, and performing non-standard duties.
Flexible
This is a part-time schedule. It is convenient to use such a schedule when an employee combines activities with other work or studies. However, this does not mean that the employer can put absolutely any timeframes and call the employee when it is necessary. As the rule, labor law provides that a flexible schedule also attributes a certain number of hours worked and at what time interval an employee can be called to work.
Shift
In this case, in the contract, it is necessary to prescribe the schedule of shifts of employees and let them familiarize themselves with it in advance. If it is necessary to work night shifts, payments are made at double the rate.
Methods of Tracking Employees’ Working Time
Each organization chooses a recording methodology that is convenient for its operating format. Thus, there are several basic ways to check staff efficiency:
Daily
Work is recorded each day by hours worked, from which the salary is made up. This is the easiest way to calculate the efficiency of an employee. By looking at activities by the hour, it is possible to see at what point the work is done best, when problems arise. This is how the employer identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the employee.
Weekly
Accounting is carried out at the end of working days, if the legally prescribed norm for a 40-hour working week has not been exceeded. Otherwise, data on overtime worked is added, after which the salary is calculated.
Summarized
The reporting schedule is selected individually, but it should not exceed more than 3 months. This format is characterized by a fixed rate salary with additional payments in case of overtime work. It is necessary to organize summarized timekeeping in order to note all the necessary labour indicators.
Managing Working Time in The Organization
In order for management to know exactly what stage the work is at and how much work each employee is doing, it is necessary to implement time tracking. There are several methods other than the standard paper timesheet to do this effectively: spreadsheets and documents, control by cards on arrival at the workplace, tracker programs and CRM-systems.
Let’s consider each of them in detail:
- Google Docs and Sheets
The simplest method. You can create one template and use it throughout your work. With its help, it is convenient to keep track of what stage the project is at. However, this method becomes inconvenient when it comes to accounting for the time spent on tasks. The human factor plays a big role here, which can lead to a lot of errors.
- Control of employees’ arrival at the entrance.
This method can be called outdated and inefficient. Many companies work remotely, or keep track of efficiency not by the fact of an employee’s presence, but by the task performed. This also includes access cards for offices. They allow you to track the presence of employees at the workplace by the minute. However, this method is not efficient enough, extremely costly and can harm the company’s work, in case of failure. It is also impossible to track the quality of work, only the fact of presence.
- Software time trackers
This form of task reporting provides a complete picture of employee performance. This is called «photo of the working day» or «fixing working time» — with its help, the employer can track by hours the activity of employees. However, here, too, it’s worth paying attention to the human factor. An employee may forget to turn on the program or vice versa — leave it on all night, which will create an incorrect perception of their efficiency.
- BPM-systems
Such systems make it possible to control the entire work process and the fulfillment of individual tasks without harming the budget. The work is done directly in the system. The manager can always log in to the system and see the time of work, at what stage the project is, and how much work each employee is doing. This method also provides for quality control of the completed work — the manager can view the files and documents uploaded to the task. An example of such a system is Projecto, the functionality of which allows combining several methods of time reporting.
Who Organizes Working Time in the Organization
Regardless of the format of time tracking, it is the responsibility of the director of the organization to appoint a person who will be directly involved in compiling the results of the data received.
What is the responsibility of the person in charge of timekeeping in an organization:
- records or verifies the correctness of data on the time of arrival at the workplace;
- confirms the availability of documents on valid reasons for the employee’s absence from the workplace;
- checks employee reports on completed tasks and their completion time;
- prepares a final report on employee absences and labor efficiency.
Organizing Time Tracking With Projecto
With Calendar Grid View, you can mark important events and tasks by day, week, and month. Different colors highlight events for certain types of user calendars: personal, corporate, and business.
In the mode of viewing tasks for a month, some events have only the name, others — the start time. Already completed events are marked with the status «Passed» and by clicking on the eye icon the user can hide them.
The events of the week can be scheduled by hours and tasks can be clearly planned for several days ahead.
Employees can also synchronize calendar grids and organize joint working time on a project, schedule meetings and set deadlines.
The All Day section displays:
- documents and tasks that have a due date on that day;
- emails that need to be answered or reminded;
- information about reports that need to be submitted on this day.
- In the displayed events, you can track the time spent on their fulfillment. In this way, management can figure out at which points in the project development problems occurred and how to prevent them in the future.
Using all these features of the Projecto system, employees and managers can clearly see their tasks, goals and deadlines, plan their work and leisure time, synchronize activities and measure efficiency.
