What Are the Most Common Concerns about Tracking Time at Work?

However, most teams are not convinced of the importance of tracking time, especially since it does not have a good reputation. Time tracking is a small part of the rigorous employee monitoring methods adopted by many companies that provide workforce management programs and services.

Many people have legitimate concerns about work performance tracking programs in a video published by CNBC under the title, "How Employers Could be Spying on You While Working from Home?"

Here comes our role to help you demolish those fears and doubts by assuring you that using a simple time-tracking program will not affect employee privacy. It can even defend their rights and motivate them to adopt better habits overall.

The Most Common Concerns about Tracking Time at Work

1. Will time-tracking be used to violate my privacy?

First, let's address the most pressing issue on everyone's mind: employee monitoring and the extent to which their privacy is respected. People worry that tracking their time will make it easier for authorities to keep an eye on them and scrutinize them more closely.

In a BBC article that was published in 2018, a number of employees expressed their fears and concerns about employee monitoring. Many of them confirmed that they were asked to use tracking programs under the pretext that they would help enhance overall employee performance, but they did not achieve this.

In the same article, a truck driver also shared how he became so preoccupied with his performance, such as the speed limit, driving score, etc., that he lost focus on actually driving. Excessive levels of stress can definitely cause fatigue and poor performance.

Time-tracking should only be used for legitimate purposes; if it is only used to keep an eye on employees' work, you will inevitably lose more than you gain.

2. Is it expected of me to work eight hours straight at my best?

Even though we live in the twenty-first century, we still aim to accomplish the workflow that was approved in the 19th century. Workers have been expected to put in more than 16 hours a day, six days a week, since the Industrial Revolution.

Nevertheless, this issue was resolved by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, adopting 8 working hours per day, which is equivalent to 40 working hours per week. Why do we still operate in the same manner when the nature of work has changed?

Collective Campus CEO Steve Glaveski explains that modernity, technological advancement, and the Internet have radically changed the way we work compared to the way we worked in 1938. The modern workplace has changed a lot. We cannot expect to achieve maximum levels of concentration and productivity for 8 consecutive hours.

The CEO of the German startup Rheingans Digital Enabler, Lasse Rheingans, conducted an experiment in which he wanted to find out whether his employees could work 5 hours a day instead of 8 hours. He believed that this would enhance their productivity and the quality of their work.

The experiment was a great success and the employees felt the positive results because they did not pressure themselves to try to be more productive throughout their workday. They were less susceptible to working overtime and becoming distracted.

This experiment supports numerous scientific claims that no one can remain productive for 8 hours a day and that CEOs shouldn't expect them to.

Additionally, they should explain to teams that time-tracking is only a tool to help them better prioritize their tasks and identify the hours when they are most active—no one expects them to be at their highest level of productivity all the time. Who knows? As data becomes available and the required adjustments are made, your company might decide to reduce working hours to 5 or 6 hours a day each week without suffering any financial losses.

3. Is time-tracking a punishment for poor performance?

Some workers think that keeping track of their time is just a means of disciplining them for doing poorly at work. Imagine that someone's manager has just informed them that all staff members need to keep track of their time and submit reports. Soon many thoughts will come to them and they will wonder secretly:

• “Am I doing my job wrong?”
• “Has our performance declined?”
• “Don't managers trust us?”
• “Is time-tracking the only way to assess my work?”

It is expected that their initial thoughts will always be negative because, when the manager asks you how much time you spend on each task, you feel that you have to exert your best efforts because, otherwise, you will be penalized, sending you back into a humiliating cycle of stress, tension, and exhaustion.

Make it clear from the beginning that you will not use time-tracking as a tool to impose penalties or as a justification for terminating an employment contract. Explain the real reasons behind this right away, which could include speeding up certain processes, determining where teamwork paces are a little higher or lower, or identifying team members capable of handling more work and those who get overwhelmed and exhausted.

4. Will time-tracking be used to micromanage employees?

Many managers use time-tracking as an excuse to oversee every little detail of their employees' work time. According to Vice President of Vonage, Reggie Scales, "Employees know we're watching them, and that's always a good thing" (CNBC report). His words reflect what many workers envision when a time-tracking policy is implemented.

Every action they make will be monitored and scrutinized. They will receive a lot of feedback and/or their course of action will be corrected. Although some might see this as an opportunity to demonstrate their value, most employees will feel uncomfortable even accomplishing tasks they are good at because they are afraid that the manager might ask them the following questions:

• "Why did it take 15 minutes less than it did yesterday to finish the same task?"
• "Your report was submitted late, while your colleagues completed all of the tasks before the deadline."
• “Why is it taking you longer than usual to complete this task when you have everything you need?”
• “I see you still have plenty of time in your schedule. You can check these emails.”

Each employee's freedom in setting priorities and completing tasks has vanished. Furthermore, we occasionally experience personal issues, have days when we are less productive, assist coworkers at work, or become sidetracked and interrupted, among many other issues.

Now that we've covered every possible concern, how can you lessen the effects on your team of announcing a time-tracking policy? More importantly, how can you remove any doubts about its necessity?

About Expectations for Using Time-tracking

Make sure there are moral and practical justifications for establishing a time-tracking policy. In the previous part of the article, we discussed some of the practices that turn time-tracking into a tool that impedes progress rather than enhancing it. Before you decide to speak with your team, consider the following points. In the end, these ideas will provide you greater confidence when interacting with your team and help you get ready for their inevitable questions.

1. Time-tracking can greatly enhance your time management skill

This doesn't mean that employees will suddenly realize their options and feel better once they see how much time they've been wasting. Try to approach this topic from a self-improvement point of view. Time-tracking can enhance personal time management and reveal a lot about how you arrange your priorities. So, emphasize the following personal benefits to your team when talking to them:

• They will be more organized.
• They will be able to achieve a greater balance between their personal and professional lives.
• They will move away from bad things faster.
• They will learn how to prioritize.

2. Time-tracking is not a temporary solution to poor management or communication

Poor productivity might result from poor management, failure (or misuse) of communication channels, unsatisfactory working conditions, or other reasons. Experts at the PPM Express website receive many inquiries from executives regarding the reasons for the financial losses incurred by their companies. The most common causes include:

• Failure to keep up with the labor market.
• Poor working conditions.
• Lack of emergency plans.
• Disagreements and poor communication.

Many of these executives resort to time-tracking as a simple solution to address these problems, thinking that the company’s losses in time and money might be due to employees’ failure to track their time. Therefore, you must first ensure that all issues related to the company and the work team are running smoothly before implementing a time-tracking policy. Otherwise, these external factors will greatly affect the results.

In Conclusion

In this article, we addressed potential employee concerns about their manager's decision to use time-tracking and outlined its actual purposes.

In the article "How to Explain to Your Team Members the Need to Track Time?" we will review the most crucial strategies for encouraging you to implement time-tracking within your team.