Did you know that “workers are bad at filling out timesheets and it costs billions a day”?
Yep, that’s what the Harvard Business Review asked in 2015, when they reported on the results of a 500-worker study and subsequent White Paper, Time is Money.
The study found that “almost 40% of respondents reported never tracking time spent reading and answering email”. For a service-based business, you can imagine that this starts to add up when an employer bills purely based on timesheets and their entire business profitability depends on efficient timesheet tracking.
Think your agency or consultancy is too small to warrant a time tracker solution?
Think again. It doesn’t matter if you’re large or small: if you’re overservicing clients and losing money, wouldn’t you rather discover this sooner rather than later?
If you need more convincing, here are six Dilbert videos by the legendary Scott Adams to help prove why your business needs time tracking:
1. Dilbert: Test results
If your business depends on client billing, a reliable time tracking system such as Trigger is essential for team members to accurately record the time they spend on every task for every client.
If you don’t provide your team with an easy-to-use tool to track their time, they’re unlikely to track their time accurately and will feel forced to forge their time results - which is potentially worse than not tracking time in the first place.
2. Dilbert: Hallucinated assumptions
You’re unlikely to ever get an accurate estimation for how much money it costs for your business to complete a task or project, if your business doesn’t encourage team members to track time - and track time accurately.
This means that your client estimations will nearly always be wrong, which effectively renders your client estimations (and claims of client transparency) useless.
3. Dilbert: Brilliant suggestion
A time tracker can keep everyone in the team accountable. The idea of time tracking might sound counter-intuitive to team harmony, but it’s actually the opposite. Most team members appreciate the ability to track time and be recognised for their efforts. Plus, nothing breaks team harmony than when a sneaky team member reports they did more on a project than they actually did.
A time tracking tool encourages honesty within the team and saves timesheets from inexplicable bloat.
4. Dilbert: Best use of time
Just because someone is typing at their laptop furiously, doesn’t mean they’re being productive and/or working on the team’s most urgent priorities.
Time tracking against real tasks (not purely time tracking into a dummy time bucket, like some of Trigger’s competitors) helps to encourage team members to devote their hours to the best use of time possible.
5. Dilbert: Time management
Once your team starts to track their time, it’s easier for all of you to see (and monitor) what (and who) is wasting their time.
Are you having too many brainstorming meetings?
Are you meeting in person when you could be communicating more quickly on Slack or Trigger instead?
Are you sending a task to multiple people for review, when in reality, you only need one person to review and approve your work?
6. Dilbert: Random reorganisation
Finally, if you’re not tracking time, you run the risk of guesstimating why things are not working in your business and then reorganising for the sake of reorganising - which is never a smart way to grow and scale a business.
Want more Dilbert?
If you enjoyed these Dilbert videos, head over to our first instalment, 7 Dilbert Videos that Prove You Need Project Management.
If you still find yourself craving more, there’s a treasure trove of Dilbert workplace videos on the Dilbert YouTube channel here.
Enjoy!
