Could Your Company and Your Employees Benefit from a Performance Tracker

Some years ago, whilst sat in an office with my accountant, I discovered that the company liked to use spreadsheets to track the performance of its employees. Whilst I initially thought this seemed a bit over the top, and more production work line than office management, when I realised this tracker helped both employee and company, I wanted to find out more.

How Do Performance Trackers Work?

This performance tracker, which has become wide spread in recent years, worked by each employee filling in where they spent all their time during the working day. Perfect for office based workers, it can be left open on their screen and each time they begin a new contract, project or task, they make sure to note this on that day’s section.

What Performance Trackers Do for A Company

I soon realised that what such a tracker enabled the business to do was to see where employees were spending most of their time, and pick out any extensive contacts or projects that seemed to be taking up most of their attention. The director could then check that the time taken on such a project was justified – which meant he would need to reflect this on the customers invoice. If it was found that the job shouldn’t have been taking that length of time, he could talk further to the employee about his concerns and, if need be, pass the job to another employee and arrange for a different job to be allocated to them.

Trackers Should Not Pressurise Employees

I was keen to find out what this meant for the employee who had his project taken off him, but on this occasion, I was reassured. The job in question required a higher level of skill that the employee in question hadn’t quite reached yet, so it was a more senior job, which should have initially been allocated to someone higher-up in the company. No harm done there then!

However, the director was quick to point out that the system only worked because all employees got involved in the tracker, and were honest about their timings. What he didn’t want to happen was employees becoming disgruntled with having to clock their every working hour. However, this was an accountancy firm where time literally is money!

Over the years, I have created my own performance tracker. This is merely to see for myself where the bulk of my working day is spent. Though not as elaborate as my accountancy firm’s trackers, it is certainly a great tool when trying to work out exactly what you have achieved each working day!