Yes, it’s been a while but now its September, a month where we feel like it’s a fresh start and want to be organised, I felt that it was a good time (pun intended) to upload this post. This is a technical blog post but one that I think is important, particularly as many people are still struggling with enforced working from home whilst others begin to try and find a way to return to their place of work. Although, as Mary Portas says, numeric data does not “take into account the messy thing that is life”, for business time management is a crucial element and that needs attention. This includes the logistics of temporality (time).
So, what is a Timesheet?
The main purpose of a timesheet is rather simple: a document where an employee or a member of a team or a person in general records the number of hours they have worked on a specific task. The tasks are categorised by subject field and the time can be formulated by hour, minute, second and geographical time zone. It acts as a huge piece of data and is an administrative project in itself. They originated in the 19th century as time books, noted by the Scottish botanist, garden designer and author John Claudius Loudon as “an authentic indisputable record of work done”.
Why is a Timesheet useful?
Although usually used by human resources teams or finance teams within a company due to its way of working out pay, the creation of a timesheet document is useful for any type of employee and/or company for managerial accordance purposes. It helps massively if you have deadlines to meet, budgets to maintain or to simply achieve success by showing the skills you have attained and utilised.
Whilst it is a cost-effective method, it is also, when related to project management, it can build personal and/or professional information on how much effort one task takes. The system create time effectiveness and efficiency – tasks become quicker to complete once you’ve done them over and over again and decisions can be made about what tasks should be completed before others. It’s also a great way of comparing plans with reality!
How do I start one?
There are a number of platforms and tools that you can use to keep track of time on work tasks. You could create a spreadsheet by scratch using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets or Apple Numbers or you could find a template for any of these programmes online and use them. If you’d rather use an online portal or application to track time, there are plenty of options available – type in ‘timesheet’ into your search engine or wherever you download your computer/phone apps from to find many websites and apps that will help.
In terms of what you should include in a timesheet, the date and time are the most vital elements but it’s also useful to note the information of what has been done as well. If the sheet is for different projects or about various people, it’s a good idea to categorise parts of the document with specifically written headings. You may also want to break the file into different pages/sheets or have separate files completely for organisation purposes.
How to keep on top of it?
For best results, edit your or the company’s timesheets as much as possible – every day of a working week (Monday-Friday) if it can be done but don’t worry if you can only update it once or twice a week. This may also be easier if it’s only for personal use or is integrated between different devices or can be accessed by others. Make sure that you calculate how much you or your employees have spent working by month and year and keep all the data as organised as possible but also in a way that suits you or the organisation.
Another way to keep on top of time is to create or have in place some form of automation; technology that can produce your timesheet or input time data in automatically without much manual labour needed. This is useful for curation and data input and may be helpful if you want to focus more on the analysis.
Analysing the timesheet periodically is important, particularly if you want to change habits or goals or you want to see how fast or slow you do certain tasks. Ask yourself questions and be honest with your answers. This will indicate whether you are mismanaging time and whether there are any problems that need correcting, either in relation to the data being inputted or behaviourally in one’s self.
Is there anything that can be used alongside it?
Calendars and lists can be really helpful, whether physical or digital. There are also some really good apps out there for scheduling and keeping on track of work. Being able to prioritise and not waste time by going off track are skills that everyone in the working world should have. You can find other tips that I gave in relation to time in my blog post on remote work/working from home which you can read here.
Any dangers?
Whilst timesheets are all well and good, there are the issues of procrastination and presenteeism. The first is something I do particularly with chores or things that I need to do appointment wise that I really do need to get better at. It’s also something that you’re likely to do if you feel failure when wanting to do it thanks to being a perfectionist. The latter is the problem of trying to be present when you’re burnt out or have worked too much. However, this is something which is beginning to change thanks to Covid – employers now trust their employees a lot more and its not unlikely that asynchronous working patterns may now be the norm.
Hope you’ve enjoyed reading this blog post all about timesheets. Let me know if you or your company use them and how or if you haven’t but are thinking about starting to. Hopefully it won’t be too long a wait before I upload another post!
Beth x