Teams which don’t use timesheets are normally resistant to the concept of using timesheets. Today, time tracking hardware and software make it easy to connect the jobs you work on to the time you record.
Getting started using timesheets in your project is genuinely straightforward. Here is a simple approach to introducing timesheets to your group. There are plenty of advantages of time recording. Some or all of these might apply to your company:
- Better information about how long tasks take so that you can use this to gauge more efficiently in the future.
- Better awareness of who’s busy and who may take on more jobs.
- Timesheets aren’t a way to micromanage your staff or to beat them up about not doing enough hours.
- Timesheets work best in environments where you measure success by results rather than the number of time people sit in their desks. Explain why there’s a company value in using them and answer any queries they might have.
Let us take a step back -do not even try to rollout an electronic time clock in case you do not have the option set up and record time. You can not expect to become accurate or see results if you would like your team to note their hours down on paper or a spreadsheet. So make it easy before you show them how simple it is. 
The ideal way to present your team to timesheets would be to maintain a brief demo. Get a person to walk through the process of developing a timesheet and submitting it. Make it realistic but exercise ahead of time. Like you would ensure your presentation was working before you chose a prototype to a client, give this the same due diligence.
Request their queries (again) and answer them. Be clear about whether this will be a trial to see how it goes or if timesheets are here to remain.
Train and Support
If you’re using a project management program which has a timesheet attribute, like our instrument, you might realise that the training to utilise the actual tool is simple. That’s if you will need to do any at all. Intuitive programs are simple for people to pick up, mainly if it’s in the context of an internet software package which they use daily anyhow.
Support your team through their first week with timesheets by:
- Sending reminders they have to fill in their timesheets.
- Telling them, you’re about to help them work out how to do it if they can not remember.
- Offering to review their timesheets prior entry.
- Reiterating it isn’t about tracking their hours.
Share the Results
Aggregate the results from the timesheets and discuss the results with the group. One firm that did so realised that a whole lot of the project supervisors were travelling extensively and not functioning while they were on the move (since it was not safe to do so). They clocked up a lot of hours of non-productive work. The business shifted its approach to virtual working soon after.
Help your team know what the information in timesheets is excellent for. That may be in promoting virtual functioning and decreasing travel time or obtaining better job estimates.
Talking openly about the way the timesheet information is being used helps tackle fears that the data will be used to chase them up or make them perform more hours. Individuals gain confidence from seeing the data is being utilised in practical ways.
Getting started is one thing, but maintaining the momentum going is something else. When the novelty has worn off but until it becomes a habit – that is the gap you need to plug with monitoring and support and a little bit of chasing for people who are, let us say, less enthused about this extra task.
Continue to explain what you’re doing with the information from the clock in and out software. Every time it is possible to connect timesheet information to a project achievement, for example, improved job estimates or amending the program based on last week’s action, call it out.
Time recording boosts productivity as even after you eliminate the time necessary to enter the information you gain in the ability to allocate resources and estimate function better. The information helps you be more proactive so that your projects are more effective and less insecure consequently. Along with the transition to using timesheets can be quite simple if you use the tools already embedded in enterprise-grade project management program.
