Distributed work is growingly being adopted by organizations today, and with that are growing the remote teams. It has made accessing global talents and working with them easier. The demand for freelancers and contract teams has been on the rise in recent years as they better meet the diverse skill needs of businesses arising out of time-sensitive expertise-based projects. Here comes the challenge of knowing how freelancing teams work in remote environments and what are their active hours for billing. Utilization of employee time tracking software helps you keep in sync with freelancing teams’ work patterns and extract exact productive hours.
Why there is a need for a freelancer time tracker
Contract teams are aligned to a project to meet the skill demand and are expected to deliver defined productivity every working hour. Organizations with no time tracking in place often struggle to keep track of how remotely working contract employees perform and what employee productive hours are.
The absence of a time tracker for freelancers can cost organizations revenue and productive hour loss.
- Around 31% of employers stay concerned about productive and unproductive hours of their workforce
- About $11bn revenue loss businesses have to suffer due to employee time theft at work
- Close to $8bn lost per day due to inefficient employee activities
- Approximately 44% of freelancer activity rates dip down between 3 pm to 6 pm
- About 49% of employees consider switching the job against payroll issues
The case of time tracking for freelancers
Businesses look forward to capitalizing on the diversely skilled freelancing teams but the opportunity comes with a catch as unmonitored and remote working freelancing teams can delay the daily tasks to impact productivity and billing.
Control productive hours at work
By implementing employee time tracking software with screenshots, you can get proof of work against when they do what. Teams knowing they’re being monitored perform more productive work. It helps negate the scope of slacking and keeps your contract workforce centered on the assigned tasks.
Avoid guesswork in calculating billing
With time management software, not only you can identify and improve inefficiency at work but can also avoid paying for non-productive work hours. It keeps you aware of the exact hours freelancing teams perform and you can better avoid the guesswork in calculating their productive efforts for accurate billing.
Manage project budget and timeline
Identify potential causes of time theft at work with time keeping software to counter the factors disrupting employee performance per hour. Project time tracking enables you to know the progress made and the tasks remaining to measure if contract employees are aligned with the timeline. Ensure hourly targets are achieved to negate work delays resulting in growing project costs.
Impact of employee time tracking
A study reveals about 58% of employers feel their remote teams need to be more efficient and productive. Another study states around 15% of organizations have increased spending on time management apps. These two facts indicate the evolving need to meet future workplace standards where employee tracking software is in focus.
Regain lost employee time
Time theft is an increasing issue in remote work and affects around 76% of businesses with lost employee hours per workday. Having an employee time tracking app in place, organizations can detect and counter the factors that lead to employee unproductive hours. Businesses can better control operational efficiency and costs with more productive teams.
Avoid distraction at work
The flexible remote work environment may feel inviting to sidetrack the assigned tasks and spend more time on unproductive websites. The stat supports the fact by concluding close to 67% of employers have similar concerns, while another study says around 61% of employers feel their teams need to be more disciplined at work. The time tracker app enables you to capture what websites consume most of the employees' time to curb employees’ inefficient work habits.
Align teams to business goals
Time tracking app with timesheets eliminates the limitation of not knowing how your remote teams are doing and what their productive and unproductive hours are. You get automated timesheets revealing what active, idle, break, and total work time your contract workforces spend. Find accurate estimation of their billing and avoid any workhour conflicts.
Implementing freelancer time tracking
As is always a good practice to communicate with your team about new developments, practice the same in implementing the time tracker on your contract teams. It helps avoid any confusion or fear and keeps both parties in trust with positive outcomes beneficial for team and business growth.
Talk about the advantages
Tell them your purpose behind the contract team time tracking and there is nothing like spying or mistrust. Take them into confidence that the time management app can help capture what their productive hours are, when they get distracted, and what needs to be improved. Show them how this purpose-driven data can help better employee performance at work - that will benefit both the company and the employee.
Ensure teams of privacy
Clear any fear of spying or privacy breaches by precisely quoting time tracking only for defined work hours. It helps attract more support from team members and aligns their efforts to realize the motive of employee time tracking. When teams’ concerns are resolved, they show more faith in business decisions and work to achieve common objectives.
Share performance data with teams
Once implemented, the contract team time tracker detects every hour worked and counts each of their productive efforts in billing. Share the work data with your freelancing teams to show them how efficient they have been. It helps teams identify the improvements and elevate performance.
(You can also save from spending on non-freelancing work hours to stay within the budget.)
Improve productivity with a smart time tracker
Time tracking empowers you with granular data about how your freelance teams do in distributed environments. It helps in fair billable hour estimation and eliminates any work hour distrust. Also, you can keep the project timeline and cost in control. To get a firsthand experience, start a free trial today to see what effect smart time tracking can bring to your remote teams and the future of work.