What to do if a time tracking and employee monitoring software was deployed in a company, but some employees still often get distracted, even if they have assignments? Procrastination may be the reason of such behavior.
First, you need to identify the causes of idleness. The time tracker is able to reveal problems at any organization level, which means that it will be useful to solve problems of different employees, and departments. These are few tips to take hold of the situation and get rid of procrastination:
- Have subordinates show intermediate results to be able to timely track the progress of the work and adjust the process and give feedback to the employee.
- Start a working day with the most difficult and unpleasant task. Its completion will give a positive charge for other tasks. This can be recommended to all without exception.
- Alternate difficult and unpleasant tasks with easy and interesting to make a work day more varied.
- One should not identify their identity with their work and position in the company. It happens that the criticism of the work of the employee is perceived as a personal insult, and negative emotions and procrastination become resistance to such an “unjust” assessment. After a difficult conversation and discussion of his tasks, a manager should pay closer attention to reports of time tracking software on a particular employee.
- Make planning a habit. Daily to-do lists, prioritizing, time management will help employees with their tasks. At the end of the day you can check the dynamics of the work in reports of the time tracker to see where the time was spent on distractions, and when the work went smoothly.
- It is often said that the best time distribution during the workday is when 40 minutes of routine work are alternated with 15-minute break. Most important is not to forget that in 15 minutes you should get back to work. If the time tracker records longer or more frequent breaks and distraction, it’s worth a talk with the employee in question.
- The norm of unproductive time in the time tracker is typically set at 10%, this time on average employees spend on communicating in social networks. But if social networks become a serious hindrance to work, it makes sense to impose restrictions on the use of this channel for communication.
- To teach saying “no!” to a waste of time, of course, is not a task of a manager. But it is the management who set the communication style adopted in the company: how much time to devote to meetings, how to build communication with colleagues, etc. This affects employees’ attitudes toward their interactions and breaks.
- Let employees to have free time and holidays. If a specialist takes work home, works during vacations and constantly stays overtime then, eventually, he will begin to compensate for the missing rest. The manager, of course, will be able to keep track of this using the time tracker, but it is better not to bring the situation to the critical point.
- There is no need to overload the employees. A large number of overdue tasks demotivates employees and their productivity falls. The unbearable amount of work drives employees to procrastination. A growing number of unproductive time in reports of time tracker will be noticed by the manager.
These ten simple tips will help you cope with procrastination of your employees, and the time tracker will help to quickly notice the problem.