When people think about productivity, they usually look at it as this abstract thing that can’t be measured on it’s own, but it’s rather tied to other, more tangible activities or results. However, it’s becoming clear that productivity tracking software helps businesses view productivity in a completely different way.
Tools like these have become extremely useful, especially since the pandemic started, as everyone moved to working from home. If you still haven’t come onboard of this “trend”, you should carefully read this article to find out more about what this software is, and what is the best way to use it.
What is Productivity Tracking Software?
Employee productivity software is an app you install on your employees computers, it tracks their activities (which apps and websites they use), and it helps you quantify everyone’s productivity. It does this by giving you an option to label all the apps and websites as productive, unproductive or neutral, then based on the time your employees spend using them during working hours it calculates their productivity.
It can calculate productivity on an individual or team level, and you can use the analytics you receive to find gaps in the workflow, identify bottlenecks in your processes, or simply find out if any of your employees need additional training to perform better. All of these shouldn’t be determined exclusively by the data you’re seeing from a software, you should talk to your team and include their opinions, but we’ll talk about that in a minute.
Dos and Don’ts of Productivity Tracking
A productivity tracking software is simply a tool that can help your team perform better, and that’s the way you should use it. Don’t rely exclusively on it to make important decisions, but use it as a basis to have constructive conversations about downfalls and improvements in your organization.
These tools are meant to bring more transparency to your team, so make sure that all of the employees can see their individual data. They’ll feel a lot easier about it once they see what you’re seeing.
Don’t nitpick. The fact that someone spends a few minutes of their day on non-work related activities isn’t a sign to sound the alarm. But, if you notice that this behaviour is getting worse, and that work suffers because of that, you should invite the employee in question for a meeting to discuss what’s happening openly. It’s possible that there are some underlying issues you aren’t aware of, which are affecting their work.
Analyze the data you receive on a weekly or monthly basis. There’s no need to spend hours everyday checking on what your employees are doing. Give yourself 5-10 minutes at the end of each day to review and label new websites and apps your team used during the day, and that’s it.
Track only what you need. Most productivity monitoring software options come with a set of many different features, which help you track various things. So, make sure you only focus your time on the data which will actually help you reach your business goals.
Keep in mind that no one is 100% productive every single day. So if you see that your team’s productivity is at around 80% don’t feel bad, don’t go around making sure that everyone is working. Everyone has good and bad days, and as long as the bad days aren’t outweighing the good ones, you should be happy and proud of the work your team is doing.
Wrap Up
That’s about it – everything you need to know about productivity tracking. There might be some other small details that we missed, but we’re sure you’ll catch a grip on them as soon as you start using this software.