How to understand whether your company needs a time tracker? The founder of modern management Peter Drucker, author of the book “The Effective Executive”, once was asked this question. There are situations which directly show that the company in question needs a time tracker system.
Peter Drucker described 3 business situations when a company must immediately proceed to implementation of a time tracker:
1. Situations of rush jobs and crises are not unusual for the organization. The causes of rush jobs repeat with enviable regularity
Sometimes it is difficult for an executive to understand true reasons for disruption of deadlines. Is it overburdened employees? Insufficient staff? Or is it irresponsibility of employees delaying their job until the last moment? An automated time tracker can resolve doubts of a manager: how employees work on the ground, how loaded their day is and how much time is spent on a particular activity.
2. The CEO is busy 100% of the time
Most of the papers on leadership, management and time tracking suggest that managers should think about strategic objectives, rather than current events. If an executive of a company is busy with time tracking and attendance, but has no time to think about strategic objectives, the company works inefficiently. A time tracker will help to understand how the time of the executive is spent. With all this knowledge at his hands, the executive can make an informed decision. If the stats of the time tracker show that the lion’s share of working hours is spent on parsing correspondence, delegate this to a secretary, who is able to separate important correspondence from non-essential and save your time. If the time tracker found significant losses due to spontaneous and lengthy meetings, plan a scheduled time for such matters and follow the schedule.
3. Divisions and offices meetings became systemic, senseless and excessively long
During such meetings time literally slips through your fingers. All because usually there are only two persons discussing, and many more simply present. The company’s loss because of negotiations and meetings can be shown by the time tracker. Use modern tools for cooperative work, e.g. project management systems. It saves time, enables effective communication within teams and shows what and when each team member does. The situations described by Peter Drucker are frequent for many companies. If it is true for your organization, do not delay the introduction of the time tracker!