9 Ways Time Tracking Can Help You Find Work Life Balance

Alla Chernets -

With the current trends shaping the workforce that include work from home due to the impact of the pandemic employees highly prioritize work life balance showing a preference for the employers who initiate employee wellbeing policies and take actionable steps in promoting them at work.

Companies Rethink Work From Home  

It explains why 72% of people consider work-life balance when job-searching.

What are the tools/technologies out there that facilitate and maintain work life harmony?

To achieve work life balance, businesses launch wellbeing programs, turn to 4-day workweek experiments and explore new ways of preventing employee burnout, in particular, the application of time trackers.

Time tracking can herald improved productivity, provide better insights into both macro and micro-level issues within the workplace and bring solutions to the management of employees. But it is also an important aspect of work life balance.

Employers have already begun seeing the benefits of this method, especially for those who work from home, so it's not too early to consider the idea.

How does time tracking facilitate work processes and contribute to maintaining a better work life blend, especially in an environment that implies co-existing of work from home and work from the office?

Find 9 ways time tracking is unbeatable when it comes to building a healthy work environment and promoting work life balance.

Delivering Flexibility

You might think that time tracking is only for employers, but if you really want to be successful in finding a job that allows flexibility, then you'll need to employ it too. In actuality, time tracking isn't just so employers can get more out of their workforce.

It's a way to get accurate calculations on your work time and keep data stored across any device so that you could keep your own life balanced and productive. Automated time tracking delivers flexibility in:

  • scheduling your own break time
  • scheduling meetings  
  • choosing the time to start and finish your workday.

Bottom Line⌚: You'll surely enjoy your work more if it allows 100% flexible schedule with unlimited breaks and freedom of team and project management, which time tracking provides for.

Perfecting Time Management  

Being capable to manage time roots in the power of everyday routine. At the beginning of the pandemic, researchers underlined the importance of developing healthy daily routines for the purpose of mental health improvement.

The traditional perception of time tracking software is that it simply records in and out times. Meantime, it is a powerful tool for analytics and getting a comprehensive view of processes beyond work.

Time tracking used at work can considerably contribute to perfecting the habit of getting things done:

  • by giving you a baseline metric of work life balance evaluation
  • by allowing you to figure out where you may need to make changes.

Bottom Line⌚: Time tracking gives you actionable insights into how much time you actually spend on tasks and what you can improve.

Removing the Burden of Admin Work

Beefing up the numbers, even older research shows that using tech solutions for employees translates into an increase in productivity by 25%.

Rapid digitalization of businesses invites us to choose the tools that would remove the burden and unjustified costs of spending time on performing recurring tasks and admin work.

Time tracking software that integrates services popular among the knowledge workers will bring the perfect solution to work-related issues associated with admin activities resulting in less boring and frustrating work.

Bottom Line⌚: Thus, applying time tracking in everyday work with its functionality for recognizing recurring tasks, tagging projects, and automatic logging in work hours will reduce stress and allow employees to focus on work that demands creativity.

Improving Communication

Increased job satisfaction is the foundation for building work life synergy.

One of the touchpoints in bringing job satisfaction to a new level is providing means for effective communication. Getting control over time consumed by communication is important not only for completing the project on time but for preventing information overload.

When you have a better understanding of the time you allocate for communication, the quality of teamwork improves considerably.

Bottom Line⌚: Purposeful time tracking can provide managers with data on where time is spent by organizations, giving insights into the workflow, helping to build productive channels within teams' collaboration, and improving the communication process if needed.

Boosting Work Engagement

A lack of balance can make a negative impact on the quality of work and the level of employee engagement. To boost motivation and overcome low morale, the following time tracking features can come in handy:

  • identifying the most productive work hours (by monitoring activity level on a timeline)
  • generating reports upon project completion for further analysis of time consumption and optimizing it for the next projects.

Bottom Line⌚: Time tracking software is an innovative tool for balancing work and personal life by allowing deeper employee engagement and unlocking meaningful work.

Setting Boundaries on Work

We all need to work, but we also all need free time to enjoy life. Not tracking work times can lead to problems with work life balance, like feeling too much stress. A good way to balance these two things out is to have a tool that:

  • tracks how much time you spend working
  • features an option for requesting time off instantly for planning work and free time.

Bottom Line⌚: If you don't keep track of your time, it's like you never left work. By applying time tracking software that automates work time calculations, there is no need to stretch yourself thin and work at the expense of life.

Planning Time Off with a Click

As mentioned above, time tracking has proven to be an effective way of achieving work life balance. This is because employees get a glimpse of how their time is being spent at work and may re-prioritize their activities to match time-based needs. Furthermore, time tracking can be also applied for prioritizing time off as well.

With a time tracker that has Time Off Module, employees can easily request time off, facilitate communication regarding the management of PTO and plan their free time with the support of a reliable time tracking assistant.  

Bottom Line⌚:  This results not only in more productive workers but in happier employees that have more time and energy left for family, friends, and hobbies outside of work.

Giving a Perfect Remote Work Solution

According to surveys, 74% of top executives consider the idea of shifting their workforce to remote employment on a permanent basis.

Hence, being equipped for the remote first world makes businesses future-proof. Advanced time tracking systems provide the best remote work solutions:

  • by automating time calculations
  • by allowing us to overcome hurdles for remote workspaces.

Bottom Line⌚: Remote work environment is most likely to benefit from time tracking solutions as it brings accurate work time data and, most importantly for the purpose of work life balance

  • eliminates micromanagement
  • saves time and resources
  • promotes the idea of trust and effectiveness of remote collaboration.

Streamlining Payroll

If your work is paid with the set hourly rates, time tracking brings clarity to any money-related issues. The precision of work time calculations is a guarantee that employees and contractors are paid timely and without fail.

Having employee time tracking data easily accessible for both HR and payroll teams, especially when employees work billable or flexible hours can greatly assist in operational efficiency while processing payroll.

Botton Line⌚: The benefits of time tracking for streamlined payrolls are evident, time tracking creates more transparency in finance-related operations and sets grounds not only for efficient work of finance and HR departments but for less stressful work and a more balanced life.

Conclusion

Time tracking is essential not only for work but for the maintenance of work life balance as well. Its functionality is diverse and interlinks work and life.

A variety of uses are, for example:

  • increasing productivity
  • reducing or eliminating the need for paperwork
  • allowing businesses to focus on their core work
  • enhancing workplace communications
  • policing work habits
  • assisting in team and project management.

It enables workers to manage their own schedules more effectively, which definitely impacts work life balance in a positive way.

If you feel that your business needs to modernize time tracking and get a reliable assisting tool for maintenance of employees' work life balance, install TMetric today.

Why TMetric? Do more, accomplish more. Setup unlimited recurring tasks for clients, meetings, and events. Keep tabs on all your projects from the dashboard. Track your time with precision. Set boundaries on work and enjoy a balanced life.