Team TimeBee, Author at blog.timebee.app

Everything About Performance Improvement Plans

Leave a Comment / Productivity, Work Culture / Team TimeBee

When an employee is underperforming, it can be a tricky situation to provide feedback in a way that doesn’t cripple their confidence. Yet, it is a necessary conversation that must be had for the betterment of both the employee and the whole team. Managers must find a balanced way to nudge employees in the right direction and support their growth in the organization. This can be especially awkward if the employees are clueless about their diminishing performance. In such situations, a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) can help logically address the issue. PIPs can help create an individualized, action-oriented roadmap for helping employees who are falling behind their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This article is dedicated to PIPs- how to create and correctly use them to help your struggling employees. What Is A Performance Improvement Plan? A performance improvement plan (PIP) is a document detailing where an employee is falling short and what can be done to improve their performance and stay employed. There may be a lack of job-specific skills or soft skills, such as team spirit and professionalism, that the employee lacks in the PIP. Additionally, a PIP may be carried out to give an extra boost to a talented employee considered suitable for a big promotion. A PIP is usually drafted by the employee’s direct supervisor and reviewed by HR. It outlines clear expectations for improvement with a set timeframe for achieving them. It also details the potential actions that will be taken if the employee fails to meet the established standards. When To Use A Performance Improvement Plan? PIPs are crafted for employees who are operating at a deficit of some form. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not working hard enough. Most of the time, their efforts are not targeted in the right direction, so managers create a PIP to bring them back on track. Hoping for employees to up their game with vague feedback is unrealistic. You need to draft a concrete, step-by-step, and action-oriented plan for them to follow. Later, the same plan can be used to compare their outcomes to measure the success of your program. Before you start creating a PIP, ask yourself these questions: If you can answer these questions positively, it is wise to help your struggling employee with a PIP. A PIP should be tailored to address the specific situation of each employee. In instances where a historically strong performer exhibits a sudden decline in meeting deadlines or appears disinterested, a PIP can serve as a targeted tool for identifying and swiftly addressing the underlying reasons. This approach focuses solely on improving areas needing attention while acknowledging the employee’s past contributions and continued strengths. How To Create A Performance Improvement Plan? Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you draft a PIP: Step 1: Define The Problem At the first step, It’s crucial to gather concrete evidence of specific performance gaps hindering the employee’s productivity. Stating what is the acceptable performance level and sharing what you’re currently seeing leaves no room for ambiguity. Include documented examples of missed deadlines, errors in work, or behavioral issues that are holding the whole team back. Focusing solely on facts ensures a factual basis for calling out employees. A wise idea at this time is to invite your workers for a one-to-one chat and share your concerns before you startle them with a PIP. Collaborating with employees in identifying improvement areas could paint a positive picture of you as a supervisor and the PIP. It could also encourage them to share any issues that are affecting their performance. Through collaboration, you may encourage employees to take accountability for their output and make it a personal mission to improve it. Step 2: Create Measurable Objectives Spell out what the entire PIP aims to achieve, and by when. Share metrics for measuring performance and what is the allowed time frame to achieve them. A great tip is to use the SMART Goals framework. It ensures your PIP is not a time-wasting activity that won’t garner any real results. Precisely, your PIP goals should be: Click here to access our free SMART Goals template and learn how to use it. Step 3: Define The Available Support for Employees Start by guiding the involved employees on precisely what they need to do to nail their PIP. It could be helpful for them to know that you want them to succeed and stay part of the organization. List all the help you’ll extend to help them achieve their goals, including the available resources, coaching, or training. At this point, it is wise to leverage teamwork and collaboration. Encourage your team to help out their teammate in PIP and extend support in all ethical ways. Foster two-way communication to provide timely assistance. Step 4: Draw Up A Schedule For Periodic Check-Ins Don’t wait till the end of the PIP to check results. Rather, schedule interim check-ins to monitor the progress of the employee. Without monitoring progress, a PIP may be a time-wasting exercise. Share the important check-in dates with your employee, and clarify what would be measured, and how. Providing timely feedback on their interim performance could be great in straightening out their long-term output. This could also help employees clarify any doubts or share any difficulties they’re facing. A great way to monitor the performance of PIP employees is by tracking their work. Automated time trackers surveil employees all day and logically distribute their hours between projects and tasks. By setting standards using metrics like quarterly productivity and web & app usage reports, you can share objective observations of employee performance during the PIP phase. Step 5: State The Consequences Of Failure At this point, reiterate the consequences or actions to follow in the event of failure to meet improvement standards. However, a well-structured PIP should prioritize improvement over solely focusing on penalties. Circling back to the desired expectations out of the PIP procedure is a wise way to remind employees to stay on track. Effective performance assessments should

Everything About Performance Improvement Plans Read More »

Project Cost Management Basics

No matter what project you take on, your financial health hinges on effective project management, particularly managing project costs efficiently. In project management, cost control is crucial. Complex projects can rapidly burn through budgets due to unforeseen expenses. Proactive cost management is essential for project managers to ensure budgets stay on track. Inaccurate project cost estimates are a leading culprit in projects exceeding budgets or failing altogether. Tight cost control, analysis, and forecasting are crucial to ensuring successful project completion and preventing these pitfalls. This blog is a comprehensive guide to project cost management. It discusses all the dos and don’ts for securing your desired profit margin. What Is Cost Management? In technical terms, cost management is a branch of management accounting. It’s a set of tactics that help businesses predict project costs with greater accuracy. This approach helps managers to develop realistic budgets and reduce the likelihood of overspending on projects. In managerial terms, cost management is the process of estimating, budgeting, and controlling a project’s costs throughout its lifecycle. The process starts during the planning phase, creating a concise blueprint for how, when, and why the costs will be incurred. Cost management isn’t a one-time event. Throughout the project lifecycle, managers continuously monitor expenditures, analyze data, and make adjustments to stick to the budget. After all, the success and profitability of a project depend on how your ability to confine costs within the budget. What Is Cost Management In Project Management? As a critical aspect of project management, cost management focuses on the ‘why’ aspect of project costs. By understanding cost elements, their relationships, and how they evolve, cost management ensures projects stay within budget. The three key processes driving project cost management are: To understand project cost management, it is essential to familiarize yourself with the definition of a project. Projects are temporary initiatives with a set start and finish to deliver a specific outcome, product, or service. Types Of Costs Project costs could take up many forms and purposes. It’s a great starting point to categorize them logically: Fixed costs are the predictable expenses that remain constant throughout the project, like rent, salaries, or software licenses. Variable costs fluctuate directly with project activity. Examples include hourly wages, materials used, or fuel for equipment. Direct costs can be easily traced back to the project itself. They are billed directly to the project. This includes expenses like team travel to client meetings or wages for project-specific work. Unlike direct costs tied to a single project, indirect costs benefit the entire organization and are allocated proportionally to projects. Examples include building utilities, IT infrastructure upkeep, and administrative staff salaries. Sunk costs are expenses already incurred and cannot be recovered. Because they were fixed in the past, they are irrelevant to future decisions. Consider them like spilled milk. An example of a sunk cost might be money spent on a marketing campaign that didn’t yield the expected results. The money is gone, and focusing on it won’t help you decide how to improve future campaigns. The key is to learn from the experience and move forward with new strategies. Now that we’ve brushed over the basic project costs, let’s see how to create an effective project cost management plan. How To Create A Cost Management Plan Project cost management is a perpetual process. However, these four main elements are part of every organization’s cost management plan: 1. Resource Planning The foundation of effective cost management lies in meticulous resource planning. Project managers need a clear picture of what resources are needed, why, and what are their associated costs. While there are several methods of controlling costs, resource planning is the most effective one. By understanding the value of each resource and how its place in the project, project managers can meticulously allocate resources. Common decisions in the resource planning stage include: Additionally, establish the project’s purpose and scope. This will enable you to keep circling back to the project’s goal while creating a resource plan. 2. Cost Estimation With your resource list in hand, it’s time to price things. The key here is to gather as much data as possible on costs. This intel fuels informed decisions when estimating your project budget. Project managers might tell you cost estimation is the most complex part. Pinpointing the exact cost requires precision, and there are a myriad of factors to consider—fixed costs, variable costs, overhead expenses, inflation, and even changes in the time value of money. There are different ways to estimate costs, each with its pros and cons. But the key is to get as close to the real numbers as possible. This sets the stage for smooth sailing on your project budget. For tangible resources like tools or equipment, get quotes from sellers to make an estimate. When it comes to human resources, multiple quotes from potential contractors will help you understand the true cost of the work. Remember, prices can change between estimating and buying, so factor in a 5-10% buffer to your total estimated cost to account for unforeseen expenses. If you’re new to the project team, see if past cost managers generated budget reports. Analyzing past project costs can be a goldmine of insights to refine your estimates for this project. By looking at how much the final costs deviated from initial estimates, you can set a benchmark for the buffer you need in your report. This historical cost data is your secret weapon for building realistic estimates. As a rule of thumb, the higher the deviation between estimated and actual costs, the higher the chances of failure. 3. Cost Budgeting Creating a budget should become logical after you create a resource rundown and cost estimates. A budget is a detailed roadmap of your project expenses, describing how much you’ll spend and by when. A budget takes your estimated cost and turns it into a clear plan you can track throughout the project. Without a budget, that estimated cost would stay ambiguous, making it impossible to

Project Cost Management Basics Read More »

Team-collaboration-its-importance-and-how-to-foster-it

Team Collaboration: What is it and How to Foster it?

Leave a Comment / Collaboration, Team Management / Team TimeBee

Achieving the level of team collaboration that most managers desire may seem challenging. Nevertheless, it’s a goal worth striving for. With workers sharing strong team values and a will to succeed, businesses can achieve unprecedented success. Every team consists of members with different backgrounds, personalities, and working styles. While this may have synergic benefits, sometimes it can be hard to combine contrasting energies. Unproductive conflicts between team players may hinder goal achievement and company success. That is why it is important to map out strategies to foster team collaboration. What is Team Collaboration? Team collaboration means working together as one cohesive unit to achieve outcomes superior to those achieved individually. It encompasses activities such as brainstorming, fostering creativity, and leveraging diverse skills to strive toward a shared objective. The team may work together or cross-collaborate across different departments or external partners. With the global business landscape opening to hybrid, remote, and freelance workforces, team collaboration has become more vital than ever. Managing teams is already challenging enough; so encouraging teamwork in remote environments is even harder. Why is Team Collaboration Important? To understand why team collaboration is essential for success, you must discover the consequences of having team dysfunction. The best way to visualize a team disarray is to think of a cart dragged by a horse, a lion, a fish, and a sheep. They’re all different animals with their strengths and weaknesses. But more importantly, they’re not meant to work together at all. Team collaboration depends not only on the composition of people but also on how well they work together. When teams are collaborative, individuals come together to generate ideas, tackle challenges, and accomplish tasks. Within such a setting, people can combine their capabilities, sparking inspiration through exchanging fresh ideas. Even better, collaborative teams usually encourage members to be unapologetically themselves. Such comfort may set the stage for maximum team synergy. On that note, let’s check out some benefits of team collaboration. Advantages of Team Collaboration You’re already aware that team collaboration is non-negotiable for success. Still, let’s establish how it can skyrocket your success: Higher Efficiency and Productivity According to Deloitte, workers work 15% faster when they collaborate. This may be because team members regularly communicate, give prompt feedback, and can spot discrepancies sooner rather than later. The study also revealed that when workers work in collaborative teams, they are more engrossed in their tasks and feel invested in project success. Instead of focusing on personal fame, collaborative team members move as a joint force and strengthen each other. As a result, they may work diligently and don’t stop until they achieve their combined goals. Knowledge Sharing Team collaboration fuels knowledge sharing. Since it brings together people from diverse skill sets, knowledge, and experience, it elevates: In an environment conducive to learning, workers grow individually and combine expertise to achieve success. Innovation When team members share ideas and theories based on experience, they may feel safer experimenting and driving innovation. Working jointly gives the mental cushion for taking innovative leaps of faith in business. For example, innovative companies often partner with external parties and customers to create new concepts and products. Effective Problem Solving Instead of being stumped at facing a problem, you can always count on your team members to show you a way out. You may arrange a brainstorming session with your team or ask a colleague to comment on the situation. Either way, you’ll have access to multiple possible solutions recommended by those with firsthand knowledge and experience. Employee Satisfaction Those working in healthy teams often derive greater satisfaction from their jobs. One reason could be that working in teams may feel less isolating, with regular communication among members. When workers share good camaraderie, work may not feel as stressful. Collaboration often looks like sharing coffee breaks, cheerful banter, bouncing ideas, and pulling each other up. All these factors may garner life-long friendships. Good relationships between team members can be a strong motivator for workers to stay with the organization, resulting in higher retention rates. Better Corporate Culture Building a sound reputation for your organization is a tricky and long-term process. One bad incident can knock you off. However, fostering collaboration in teams is a time-tested way to create a great corporate culture. An organization known for satisfied employees, great collaboration between team members, and shared vision sounds like an ideal work environment. If you can flaunt a commendable corporate culture, you will most likely attract new talent, generate market interest, and even hire high-value talent. Such assets may greatly add to your company’s goodwill. How to Build Team Collaboration? Let’s go over some of the tactics you can apply to encourage team collaboration: Establish Goals When goals are set, everyone is informed of expectations and common objectives. Setting goals also facilitates the management of both individual and collective tasks as tracking progress becomes more aligned. In organizations where goals are clear, employees are more likely to monitor their productivity and hold each other accountable. Goals serve as strong motivators by helping team members envision their future. If you make them time-bound and specific, it’s an added bonus. Having concrete goals is always more ideal than providing vague directions. Want to learn the art of goal-setting? Check out our blog on how to set SMART goals. Set Expectations When you set expectations beforehand, you communicate the acceptable level of performance for each team member. This clarity gives employees a clearer understanding of what is required and how to achieve the desired standards. Communicating expectations within various teams is beneficial to ensure consistency in results. Collaborative efforts between department managers serve as a fine example of effective interdepartmental collaboration. Assign Roles When fostering collaboration, consider assigning significant roles among multiple employees to stir active engagement. When delegating roles, assess the distinctive value each team member brings and how they can facilitate collaboration. Assigning roles is an ideal way to establish reporting lines. Additionally, assigning roles enables the provision of mentors to junior employees. When

Team Collaboration: What is it and How to Foster it? Read More »

Managing-freelancers-8-steps-for-streamlining-freelance-workforce

Managing Freelancers: 8 Steps to Streamline Freelance Workforce

Leave a Comment / Employee Productivity, Remote Work / Team TimeBee

The freelance workforce has reserved a permanent seat for itself in the global labor market. Freelancing has revolutionized traditional business models and human resource management. How you manage your freelance workforce can make or break your business in the modern age. While freelancers can give a huge boost to your business, they can be challenging to manage. Many say that managing freelancers is like herding cows or even tougher. For starters, you haven’t met these people face-to-face, so there’s not much you know about them. Managing a group of workers with different personalities, work styles, and schedules, all from a distance, sure seems like a migraine-inducing chore. Beyond that, ensuring their productivity and work quality is an added catch. All these factors indicate that managing a freelance workforce can be a 24/7 job. But no matter how hard it gets, companies must streamline their freelance management to optimize their usage. Let’s see how you can do it through our tried and tested 8-step process: 1. Assess Your Needs Before jumping at hiring, sit down and assess your business needs. Why do you need a freelancer? What circumstances necessitate adding freelancers to your team? Perhaps a client pushed back the deadline, requiring more hands on the deck. Or maybe you accepted a job that you’re a novice in, pushing you to hire a subject matter expert. Other than the obvious ones, consider the less prominent aspects. The size of your existing workforce, client demands, your current team’s capacity etc., everything needs to be kept in mind before you decide on hiring freelancers. If you think any of these spheres need a fresh perspective or expert knowledge and experience, hire freelancers. 2. Set a Freelancer Budget Like all other business expenses, you must set aside a budget for freelancers. This step should ideally be incorporated when preparing the annual budget so that you don’t spring for unexpected expenses. Also, having an allocated figure could help make hiring decisions. Depending on your budget, you could decide which markets to search in or if you can afford to add more freelancers to your team. 3. Set up a Standard Payment Method Since freelancers aren’t on a fixed salary or hourly rate, compensation must be based on individual projects. Although managing freelancer payments can be challenging, it’s doable with careful planning and the right tools. Careful planning can help establish a payment schedule that satisfies both parties involved. Moreover, you might find that minimal effort is required on your part to guarantee accurate and timely payments to your freelancers. Once you’ve established a budget for freelancers, you can utilize various platforms to transfer the agreed-upon compensation. Exploring online services can help streamline and ensure the accuracy of payments. This approach enables you to stick to the determined payment timelines, which is particularly important as many freelancers and gig workers prefer prompt payment without unnecessary delays. Some other considerations when paying freelancers are: 4. Hire the ‘Right’ Freelancers Hiring freelancers can be trickier than it seems. Being remote sure has its disadvantages when vetting candidates. While a freelancer might appear impressive on paper, it’s essential to extensively evaluate them before making a decision. Hiring for skills and experience sure sounds great, but prioritize hiring freelancers who also demonstrate professionalism, trustworthiness, strong communication skills, and openness to feedback. A freelancer may deliver output according to your criteria, but if they go over the deadline, keep ghosting you, or demand more money, you probably won’t call it a ‘good experience’. Here are a few tips to guide you in choosing the right freelancers: Make sure their education, experience, and other credentials match what they shared in the CV. This can help you discern if they’ve handled similar projects in the past or if they have the necessary knowledge. For some domains, having the necessary education level is imperative, e.g., backend development or accounting. Once you’re happy with the prerequisites, ask candidates to produce samples. This is the best way to make sure they’re being honest, and their work matches their vibe. Although not necessary, for sensitive-nature projects, you can check the freelancer’s social media accounts—Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook—to make sure they’re who they claim to be. Exploring the personal side of prospective workers can be a great way to determine if they’ll be reliable workers. That being said, don’t overstep any ethical or legal boundaries by using personal information against them. If you’re hiring someone from a freelancing platform, chances are you’ll find reviews and testimonials from past clients. If the majority of the reviews seem positive, hire them. 5. Define Project Details and Expectations After hiring the appropriate freelancers, it’s crucial to ensure they understand the reasons behind their hiring and the work expected out of them. For this, provide thorough project details, listing requirements, expectations, deadlines, meeting agendas, and the designated individuals for reporting purposes. Since freelancers don’t go through the usual onboarding process, make sure you give all the essentials they require to work effectively. How to Define Project Details? Here’s all you need to communicate to newly hired freelancers: Freelancers with a clear picture of the project will likely deliver successfully. You must spell out the project’s goals, specified outcomes, and scope. Precisely outlined project requirements can prevent the waste of time and resources, resulting in cost reduction. There is also improved communication, where both parties can exchange ideas or clarify confusion. A smooth sailing from the start may predict a successful voyage. Once your clients communicate their requirements, make sure you share them precisely with the freelancer managing the project. Expectations could include precise outcomes, measures of success, ways to track progress, project budget, and any project scope or deadlines changes. Failure to produce expected deliverables may impair your client relationship and waste valuable resources and time. Before a freelancer starts working, make sure you handover all the necessary documents, hardware, software tools that they’ll require in the project. Additionally, any extra help or resources must be readily available. Reporting details are

Managing Freelancers: 8 Steps to Streamline Freelance Workforce Read More »

A Definitive Guide To Time Management

Leave a Comment / Time Management, Time-tracking / Team TimeBee

In the contemporary world, time is invaluable. Whether in personal goals or professional endeavors, it’s a critical skill for attaining objectives and maintaining a harmonious life-work balance. By definition, time management is the process of strategically planning your whole day to optimize every minute of it. You analyze your deliverables, break them into smaller goals and allocate time to each of these. It’s a systematic approach to handling your time so that your end goals are met successfully. Time management is a skill that recruiters often look for when hiring for important position. That is because strong time management skills often indicate maturity and stability in professional and professional life. Since time management is a number one essential skill, businesses cannot do without it. Let’s discover why. Importance of Time Management for Businesses Businesses of all natures and sizes depend on clever time management for success. For small businesses and solopreneurs, managing tasks within a given time frame could prove their talent and potential. To attract clientele, you need to prove you’re capable of delivering results every time. For large corporations, time management revolves around every aspect of day-to-day operations. From chasing leads to after-sales services, everything is evaluated in terms of how efficiently you did it. Since large businesses have hundreds of chainlinks interconnected, they cannot afford even one of them to be tardy or inefficient. Developing strong time management skills takes time and patience. But you’ll notice that as soon as you start practicing these skills, your days become smoother and more manageable. It may take less amount of time to achieve the same results, saving you time. The result? You’ll be stress-free, with higher energy levels and a happier mind. Let’s explore some more benefits of managing your time effectively. 10 Most Important Benefits of Managing Your Time In easy terms, having good time management means you’re able to complete tasks with some time still remaining. But it’s not only about having free time. Good time management has far-reaching effects on your mental health and professional standing. Here are the top ten benefits of effective time management: 1. Less Stress and Fatigue Effective time management means allocating sufficient time for each task, reducing the chance of working at an uncomfortable pace. Skillful time allocation helps you complete tasks promptly, preventing work from piling on. Since you’ll have planned everything out, you will spend less time in the office overall and more time relaxing. Adopting good time management practices minimizes overtime hours to chase goals. This also means you won’t be anxious around deadlines or stress about how you’ll manage— because you already have it all figured out. 2. Improved Productivity Smart time management teaches you to work smarter, not harder. It trains you to get more work done in less time. By planning your day carefully, you can become an expert at identifying priority tasks and understand how they’re linked to each other. By concentrating on high-priority activities, individuals can: With a razor-sharp focus, you may be able to crush your daily targets and take on some more since you’ll have extra time at hand. 3. Improved Work Quality Time management is not just about speed; it is also about getting more done with enhanced quality. By employing time management skills, you can have your agenda and workflow spelled out for you before you commence work. This way, you’ll be able to fully concentrate on the tasks on hand, minimizing any errors that usually result from rushing work or multitasking. 4. Greater Focus Effective time management enhances focus and concentration, enabling you to dedicate more attention and time to essential projects and goals. Good time management isn’t about expanding your to-do list, rather, it involves getting more done in less time, with higher quality. When time is managed effectively, focus is directed towards the most productive activities. This may help you in developing positive habits and seize unproductive ones. 5. Enhanced Goal Achievement Nothing boosts motivation quite like crushing your goals. Through strategic time planning, you can efficiently do this time and again. Breaking down larger objectives into smaller, manageable tasks and scheduling them eases the process of goal attainment. 6. Improved Self-Discipline Time management practices instill structure and logic in your day, making you extra aware and conscious of how you spend your time. Creating and following daily rituals and routines can contribute to making you better accountable for your day. Time management cultivates habits that enhance goal achievement. It may help minimize procrastination and disruptions that may be responsible for slowing you down. When you can control your day, you may feel motivated and responsible to perform above expectations and make substantial contributions to the organization’s success. 7. Better Work-Life Balance One great advantage of carefully managing your time is an improved work-life balance. Prolonged work hours elevate the risk of burnout and impair your social life. Planning your schedule ahead of time can save you from work chaos. Once you effectively manage your planned tasks, you’re likely to be left with some free time to relax and declutter your mind. Such free time can make a great difference in your mental health. Spending time on personal pursuits and socializing regularly with loved ones can leave you feeling satisfied with life. 8. Improved Professional Image Good time management and punctuality are ideal traits in both personal and professional spheres. When you’re able to deliver results on promised times, particularly in the services industry, you can create life-long customers. This may be because trust is a rare commodity. By honing your ability to fulfill commitments on time, you can earn a reliable reputation at work and in your personal life. 9. Boosts Your Confidence Managing your time effectively while delivering quality output can be great in boosting your confidence. Attaining even the smallest of goals, such as checking off tasks from your to-do list, gradually builds your confidence. Consequently, you become more self-assured in undertaking larger, more complex projects and assuming greater responsibilities. Such a

A Definitive Guide To Time Management Read More »

How to Say ‘No’ at Work and Save Time for Priority Tasks

Leave a Comment / Self-improvement, Work-life Balance / Team TimeBee

A vast majority of us were raised with the belief that good people self-sacrifice to help others. We feel obligated to say ‘yes’ to others despite personal chaos. In the mix of things, hustle culture is a common, modern workplace practice that is finally showing its negative impact. The hustle culture phenomenon can be best visualized as hard work on steroids. The thought that you should take ice-cold showers at 5 AM, have multiple side gigs, and work over 12 hours daily may sound a bit much. It’s the belief that one cannot achieve success without sacrificing personal comfort and happiness. In reality, setting boundaries on how much you work is critical for your own sanity. And yes, you can become a successful professional with your personal boundaries in place. But let’s first establish the reasons for saying ‘No’ at work more often. Why is it Important to have Boundaries at Work? While you don’t necessarily need to explain yourself for saying no to more work, here are some solid arguments for your own awareness: Lower the Risk of Burnout Most of us struggle when approached by managers or coworkers to accept more responsibility and achieve work-life balance. Whether or not to say yes creates a stressful dilemma because you don’t want to appear lazy or a non-team player. However, accepting work when you do not have the capacity can lead to higher chances of burnout. According to the Work in America Survey of 2023, 19% of workers confessed their workplace is somewhat toxic, and 22% believed their work has harmed their mental health. If you want to read more about career burnout, read our article Career burnout and its effects on health: how to prevent it. By saying no to work outside your capacity or scope, you can reduce work-related stress and stay healthy. Improve Productivity Prioritization is the first step in successfully achieving your goals. By properly choosing what you’ll channel your efforts into, you’re likely to make progress toward completing the essential tasks. With focused work, you’ll also be able to deliver error-free, high-quality work that you can be proud of. Avoid Anxiety You’re being unfair to yourself by adding more work to a full schedule. You eventually take work to home to meet the deadlines. With pending tasks glaring at you, you may fall into time anxiety, a serious anxiety loop that affects your health and productivity. If you want to learn more about time anxiety and how to deal with it, check out our article Time Anxiety: what it is and how you can deal with it Being selective and prioritizing your work is a great way to ensure you’re effectively managing your time rather than falling behind daily targets. How to Say ‘No’ at Work Understand Your Workload Start with analyzing your current job descriptions. What are you required to do each day, and what’s the importance assigned to each task? Are you successfully able to fulfill your key deliverables each day? Understanding the components of your workload is crucial, as is assessing your manageable work volume. Since you’re the best judge of your ability to work under pressure, these thresholds should come directly from you. Get a Time-Tracker A great way to study your daily schedule is to time your tasks and track yourself the whole day. Invest in an automated time-tracker that does the job for you. All you have to do is initiate it when you start working, stopping when you’re done. Go on and do the same for all your projects and subtasks. You’ll end up with a detailed map of what you do all day, and how much time is spent on which part of your day. Having real-time data to analyze your daily schedule offers several benefits: For example, spending 45 minutes to help with interviews will delay your client meetings for the next day. So you may have to delay your client meetings until after 2 days, should you choose to take up extra work. This may encourage you to reevaluate and stick with your priorities. If you detect any time–robbing activities, you may work to eliminate them. Similarly, if you see yourself constantly working beyond your daily hours, you can negotiate for better overtime or ask management to keep rotating shifts for better allocation. Be Assertive It’s not what you say but how you say it. Establishing boundaries will not yield results unless you follow up with assertiveness. Set your limits and stay firm on them. If you find yourself making exceptions too often, you have boundary issues. If you’re loose with your boundaries, others will go a step further and exploit them. When you’re too passive, you’re considered a doormat and open to exploitation. To avoid this, be clear and concise when setting your boundaries to show you’re serious about them. Find your voice and carefully choose your words. Don’t be afraid to openly communicate and answer questions regarding your boundaries. Be your own advocate; this means speaking up when overwhelmed. Adopt a tone that’s honest, to-the-point and sure, giving others minimal margin to negotiate. In practical terms, this could mean signing out of work as soon as it’s 6 P.M or not responding to work emails during after-hours. Communicate Often If you feel like your opinions are often ignored and people don’t take your boundaries seriously, now’s the time to communicate more. People who are introverts and sulk in silence instead of communicating their limits to their managers are frequently victims of work overload. Enhancing your communication skills is key to articulating your thoughts effectively and establishing clear boundaries. Being open to talk about your boundaries indicates their importance to you. Effective and frequent communication can resolve underlying issues necessitating boundaries. Additionally, leading your interactions with clarity and respect can help you create a good rapport with your colleagues and managers. Delegate There is no bravery in taking on piles of work that you can’t handle. Instead, foster a culture of delegating work

How to Say ‘No’ at Work and Save Time for Priority Tasks Read More »

10 Most Common Challenges Your Remote Workers Face

Leave a Comment / Remote Work, Work-life Balance / Team TimeBee

As remote teams continue to thrive, managers are appreciating the benefits of having flexible work arrangements. Indeed’s Future Workforce Pulse Report shows that managers experienced a surge in total productivity after employing remote workers. Because of this success, the global remote workforce is expected to reach 36.2 million by 2025. For the American economy, this translates into 22% of the total workforce going remote. Speaking of remote workers, they appear to be happier, healthier, and more productive—thanks to their flexible schedules. But that’s just one side of the picture. Like everything else, some challenges accompany them. Whatever they may be, it becomes management’s responsibility to resolve them. Pragmatic management would dissect these issues before working toward a resolution. Let’s talk about some of the commonly observed struggles of remote workers and how you can play your part in overcoming them: 1. Overworking Pre-pandemic, managers couldn’t imagine employing large remote teams. Yet, post-pandemic research has proved that remote workers work more than on-site workers. That’s because since your home life and office life are under the same roof, it can be difficult to switch off. There is no commute time to get out of the ‘work zone’, nor is there a ‘getting ready for work’ window to provide you with some time to arrange your thoughts before you commence work. With the 9-5 boundaries blurred, remote workers usually work beyond office hours and report staggering amounts of unpaid overtime. While this may be great news for businesses, it can have devastating effects on workers. Workers may complain of lacking work-life balance and risk burning out. Such toxic productivity is bound to catch up with your organization in the long term. Solution Even the most talented of workers are only useful in their prime. Since remote workers are at a higher risk of burning out, here are some ways you can mitigate it: 2. Constant Distractions Whether it’s a parcel delivery, changing baby diapers, pets running around, or attending uninvited guests, remote workers may find themselves engulfed by unavoidable distractions. Distractions at work can reduce time and productivity. Workers may struggle with time management and rush through tasks to get things done. This may compromise the quality of work, as workers feel frustrated by interruptions. Solution Remote workers must learn to be accountable for their time to overcome distractions. Here are a few things that may help: 3. Time Mismanagement Remote workers must learn to be experts at time management since they don’t have supervisors to oversee their progress and guide them in the right direction. It is hard enough to avoid distractions at home, let alone stay on top of designated tasks. When working from home, you require self-discipline to stay motivated all day. Without coworkers or managers to lay out a proper workflow, remote workers may struggle to decide what tasks are most critical. A lack of discipline and supervision may lead to delays in completion and haphazard performance by remote workers. Solution Not all is doom and gloom; we have some tricks up our sleeves to help you resolve time management and productivity issues faced by remote workers: By keeping track of their time on timesheets, you can see what task or project took what time. This may enable you to establish benchmarks for maintaining and enhancing turnaround times. Additionally, it helps identify any obstacles hindering productivity so that you can take prompt corrective measures. You can also discover which remote workers are most time-efficient or productive, allowing you to assign tasks to the best-suited person. Using productivity and activity reports, you can share meaningful insights about their work patterns with workers to help them spot clumsiness. When workers work on improving their performance, they are more motivated to outdo themselves. 4. Alienation & Loneliness One of the main challenges of working remotely is feeling alienated from your team. Being away from the physical office setting means you’ll miss out on spontaneous lunches, coffee breaks, or unplanned conversations with colleagues. This absence makes it more difficult to establish deeper and meaningful bonds with coworkers and feel fully integrated into the team. Alienation could be a bigger issue in hybrid settings where some people work from home while the rest regularly work from the office. Working in isolation can be incredibly counterproductive for extroverts who feed off the energy of colleagues, tipping them off their game. Prolonged isolation, blurred work hours boundaries, and difficulty in maintaining work-life balance can take a serious toll on mental health. Those suffering from poor mental health can struggle in both their professional and personal lives. Solution As a manager, it is essential to facilitate opportunities for your employees to connect and build relationships. Here are some tips: 5. Weak Communication & Collaboration Solid communication is the foundation for seamless teamwork. For remote teams, ensuring communication without a hitch can be integral to the team’s effectiveness. In their book Remote: Office Not Required, authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeier discuss how basing communication solely on meetings and emails can be unwise. They explain how discussions could be taken out of context, creating confusion among team members. Rather than collaborating on collective goals, team members would be involved in petty drama, impacting team spirit and productivity. Another downside of weak communication could be a lack of prompt feedback. Working away from supervision and guidance could mean workers continue working on false assumptions, inaccurate data, or in the wrong flow. This means you can expect hours of wasted time, energy, and other resources and lag in project milestones. Solution The good news is that there are a lot of communication tools available to remove communication barriers. 6. Different Time Zones Leveraging on the above point, poor communication could also result from team workers situated in different time zones. When this happens, coordination between team members suffers. For example, one worker may be waking up when another team member is fast asleep in another part of the world. This means remote workers in different time zones cannot

10 Most Common Challenges Your Remote Workers Face Read More »

How to Create Transparent and Accountable Teams With TimeBee

Leave a Comment / Leading Teams, Team Management / Team TimeBee

Transparency and accountability are key to running successful work teams. According to the University of Berkeley, team transparency is a phenomenon where information is shared openly, with everyone being honest about their milestones and challenges. Fostering an inclusive team atmosphere is vital for nurturing trust and unity among team members. Emphasizing team transparency means facilitating a system of open communication. This entails sharing relevant information, feedback, and expectations. At the same time, this flow must be two-way, welcoming and valuing various ideas and viewpoints. While teams are part of every business setup, establishing trust and accountability may not be easy. Here’s how you can make your work teams more transparent and accountable: Set Clear Goals It’s always a good policy to start by spelling out the specifics of a team venture. When a team is set up, communicate the purpose and desired outcomes, as well as the expected level of performance by each team member. This can help them perform accordingly and align their expectations with yours rather than walking around on eggshells. Describe Transparency & Accountability For many workers, words like transparency and accountability may carry stress-inducing connotations. When you communicate, you will keep things transparent and explain what you mean in practical terms. This means communicating what transparency practices you’ll implement and what benefits you want. At the same time, make sure you ask team members what transparency measures are the best. A great idea is to sit team members down for a discussion before a project starts. Ask them to share ideas on how they’ll hold each other accountable at various steps of the project. This way, they’ll be more at ease with being held accountable since they’re devising them. Provide Essential Information & Resources Holding teams accountable shouldn’t mean you’re micromanaging their decisions. Rather, you should trust their talent and experience and encourage them to use both to realize organizational goals. Keeping team members guessing about important information is the opposite of transparency. When you create teams, make sure you share all essential information with them. Also, they should be empowered to use any required resources and make decisions regarding them. Knowing they’ll be held answerable for their use, workers are likely to be super-conscious of how they handle company resources and maximize their use of them. Model Transparency You can model transparency by being candid and authentic about your challenges and struggles. Make sure your productivity dashboard and timesheets are visible to your team members, too. Admit your mistakes, and ask for suggestions to improve your personal performance. Welcoming feedback for improvements can be insightful. If you’re a team leader, your attitude can determine that of your team members. Vulnerability and modesty can earn the trust of your coworkers and encourage them to reciprocate. Celebrate Success and Learn from Failures Acknowledge the accomplishments and contributions made by your team members, whether on an individual or collective basis. Show your gratitude and appreciation for their dedication and success. You may use monetary or non-monetary rewards to motivate your team. Additionally, study the team’s failures to extract valuable lessons. Engage in discussions to analyze what went wrong or could have been handled better. Finally, devise strategies with workers’ feedback to handle similar challenges in the future. Use a Time Tracker Your team’s transparency depends on how you’re going to monitor their work. Using an automated time tracker can offer numerous advantages. It effortlessly records the time of each worker without manual input. On top of it, the real-time data from tracking time offers valuable insights. As a best practice, we advise using an organizational dashboard that shows who is working on what and for how long at any given time. With such information, you uphold both accountability and transparency within the project. By tracking your time, you’ll be able to: There are countless time-tracking tools available today. Let’s discuss some of the standout features of TimeBee for better understanding. Designed for Remote & On-site Teams A smart time-tracking app must be designed with all kinds of team arrangements in mind. Team members must be able to track their time at home or in the office. Additionally, they can easily collaborate on projects and tasks by viewing project progress. Accurate Time Tracking Automated timesheets should be initiated and stopped by users themselves. Having access to their daily and weekly productivity, team members may feel obliged to perform better against their previous stats. Activity Reports Viewing how individual workers spend their time gives you a transparent view of your team’s productivity. Sophisticated time trackers go one step further and classify time between productive and unproductive activities Looking to Enhance Accountability and Transparency? Try 0ut TimeBee By knowing which workers need a gentle nudge in the right direction (maybe they need a break), you can help your team members snap out of productivity. Web & App Monitoring If you’re a team lead, nothing would give you better access to your team members’ work day than their web & app usage reports. TimeBee categorizes workers’ time at work in terms of hours spent between apps and web pages. You can tell straight away how dedicated they are to work or if they’re trying to commit time theft. Email Updates & Reports As a team admin, you can receive regular reports on project progress and individual team member’s productivity through email updates. So, even if you’re off-site, you can monitor productivity and give timely feedback to team members. Spontaneous Employee Screenshots Workers being aware that their timesheets may be tallied with periodic screenshots can be a powerful way of ensuring they’re not messing around at work. In addition, screenshots of employees’ devices provide proof of work and project progress, which can be presented to clients and during discussions of performance appraisal. Offline Tracking Advanced tracking apps offer an offline tracking facility. So even if a team member loses internet connection, they can still record their progress through the tracker. If you have a hybrid team, you can keep track of a

How to Create Transparent and Accountable Teams With TimeBee Read More »

7 Reasons Why Your Creative Agency Should Start Tracking Time

Leave a Comment / Time Management, Time-tracking / Team TimeBee

It’s no secret that successful brands partner with creative agencies to become their best selves. Since creative flair may not be their forte, it is only practical to hire agencies specialized in this field to take over the creative reins of a business. However, balancing administrative responsibilities with creative demands can be draining. In an overly competitive landscape, ignoring the administrative side of your business may equal suicide. Creative minds need artistic expression and out-of-the-box thinking, but they also require excellent resource management skills to deliver expected results. Why is Time-Tracking Important for Creative Agencies? In the fast-paced world of creative agencies, efficient time management isn’t just useful; it’s essential. Creative experts juggle a multitude of tasks, demanding ingenuity and analytical expertise. Throw in the pressing deadlines, and you have yourself a pressure cooker. Keeping track of your time in such a swirl of activity may seem impossible. You may end up spending each day wondering, ‘Gee! Where did the time go?’ That’s where this blog comes into play: realizing the importance of time-tracking for a creative agency. We will also discuss how you can leverage it to polish your creative potential. Here are 7 reasons why your creative agency should start tracking time ASAP: 1. Get Actionable Data The most important reason for time tracking is to gain insight into task durations. This knowledge allows you to make data-driven business decisions rather than guesswork. For example, using timesheets, you can learn which tasks consume more time than others. Similarly, you can identify how the projects you’re doing consume your resources. Using this data, you can negotiate with clients for additional time or funds with actionable insights to back up your claims. Simultaneously, you may rework the resource allocation planning for your creative team. 2. Enhanced Productivity Time tracking enables you to gain insights into how and where you spend the day. For example, employee productivity reports may reveal that your workers are spending more time on administrative tasks rather than work. Being accountable for your productivity can be a powerful weapon. Workers may be surprised to see the amount of time-robbing activities and unproductive work patterns they’re involved in half of the day. This can help them to refocus their time and prioritize critical tasks, such as content creation and research. For Better Project Visibility, Accurate Data, Time Tracking Get TimeBee Today Additionally, using distraction alerts can zap creatives out of snoozefest and bring their attention back to the tasks at hand. The result? An instant boost of productivity in the right direction. 3. Accurate Estimation of Project Timelines An accurate project timeline estimate is crucial for you and your clients. A time-tracking mechanism will provide a practical time frame for planning projects. This may allow you to allocate time and other resources adequately for each step of the process. Starting a project with unrealistic optimism about time management may lead to dire situations. In addition to avoiding embarrassment, using real-time data can help you set realistic project expectations from start to end. Also, time tracking can help you establish client trust by sharing real-time project progress and data that gives them a transparent view of deliverables. 4. Seamless Payroll Management Data from automated timesheets can provide everything needed to calculate accurate payrolls. Using the total hours tracked and per-hour rate, you can deduce the payroll for each employee. Transparent payroll data can be shared with employees to show how their productivity is linked to their compensation, resolving any possible trust issues. 5. Precise Job Costing Time tracking enables you to estimate precise labor costs. If you’ve established total billable hours for projects before, you can refer to similar past projects to deduce the exact man-hours and workers required for completion. As a bonus, the project costing can give you a detailed breakdown of the billable hours spent. From sessions of ideation, creative exploration, testing, adjustments, researching, and ultimately, the actual time spent completing the project, you have everything to make future project estimations. 6. Accurate Billing In continuation to the above point, data from time tracking can help you bill clients accurately. With a comprehensive breakdown of the total billable hours incurred during a project, you have ample proof to create and back client invoices. With clear invoices, there may be fewer chances for payments to get stalled. Smart tracking tools also offer automatic screen captures, which are periodic screenshot proofs of activity. For clients with sour experiences with clumsy agencies, sharing screenshots of project progress at random steps can be a game-changer. Such transparency can build client trust and a long-lasting reputation for your creative agency. 7. Enables Delegation and Resource Optimization Automated time tracking is an asset for agile and proactive management. With access to real-time dashboards, you’ll be able to see which employee or team is in the capacity to work more and who risks getting burned out. You can then use these insights to reassign or delegate tasks accordingly. Delegation can free up time for tasks that need your critical attention. Best Practices for Implementing Time Tracking at Your Creative Agency Even with an elaborate list of reasons and benefits for adopting time tracking, your team members may not be too happy about it. This is because of the inherent nature of corporate surveillance. Here are some tips that can guide you on successfully rolling out time tracking at your creative agency. Communicating your expectations from incorporating time tracking in your agency is a great way to start. Spell out what needs to be achieved, what areas you want to improve, how everyone will benefit from it, and why people should comply with it. Setting clear expectations will help bring everyone on board and communicate your rationale for adopting time-tracking practices. When rolling time-tracking, make sure you maximize its benefits for employees. Talk about how accurate time tracking will lead to smoother payroll calculation. Emphasize how team dashboards can highlight the white knights of your team so they can be rewarded. Also, touch base about

7 Reasons Why Your Creative Agency Should Start Tracking Time Read More »

25 Ways to Improve Productivity

Leave a Comment / Productivity, Work-life Balance / Team TimeBee

You’re nearing the end of the day, glancing down at your to-do list before signing out. You’re immediately taken aback by the fact that you’ve only managed to do about half of the tasks for today. You experience intense frustration for not being as productive as you had planned. Feeling disappointed? You’re not alone. According to Voucher Cloud’s research, an average office worker is only productive for 2 hours and 23 minutes per day. Also, workers across all professions reportedly maintain an average of 60% productivity throughout the day. It is common to struggle with your productivity from time to time. Every day is different. It is only natural to experience spikes in productivity, followed by lulls that could last a few days. Maintaining a steady workflow is not intuitive or easy. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to reverse the situation. We have crafted a list of the best tips experts share for conquering unproductivity. Let’s dive right into them: 1. Get Proper Sleep Let’s start with the basics: Get six to eight hours of sleep every night uninterrupted. Maintaining a healthy sleeping routine is linked to improved productivity and elevated mood throughout the day. On the other end, having insufficient sleep affects the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for logical thinking and problem-solving. Safe to say, lack of sleep can strongly affect your productivity and leave you feeling grouchy all day. We understand why it could seem difficult to get good sleep each day. Early-morning commutes, long working hours, and overhanging personal responsibilities may contribute to an increasingly insomniac workforce. But if you think you’re doing yourself a favor by surviving on 4 hours of sleep each day, you could be pursuing what’s called toxic productivity. 2. Maintain a Healthy Diet You are what you eat, and rightly so. A healthy body and mind go hand-in-hand to keep your productivity kicking. If you’re serious about giving your best at work, you must make intelligent food choices. For example, snacking on a handful of sugary snacks will spike your blood sugar and eventually crash it. This translates into low energy and low productivity afterward. The Productive Diet infographic lists a comprehensive list of superfoods for your brain, backed by CEOs and high achievers. Remember to include these nutrition-dense foods in your diet. 3. Exercise Regularly Your productivity isn’t solely influenced by what you accomplish during the workday; your activities outside of work also play a significant role. Feeling unhealthy and lazy may directly affect your work performance. It may seem challenging to squeeze out time for physical activity, but it is imperative for your well-being. Even brief periods of exercise can profoundly affect your energy levels, concentration, and overall mood. 4. Try Napping If you have the chance to take power naps during work, don’t pass them up. Power naps of just 20 minutes can elevate your mood, re-energize you, and boost your productivity. Additionally, 40 minutes of recovery naps are proven to improve cognitive abilities, memory retention, and speed at performing everyday tasks. 5. Listen to Music Popping in your headphones can tune out distractions and make your focus razor-sharp. When working, listening to your favorite tunes in the background can elevate your mood, helping you knock out that to-do list. 6. Plan Ahead To improve productivity, it’s essential to plan ahead. Prioritizing tasks is a great start to determining what must be done and when. Figuring out which tasks demand the most of your time and attention can be great to logically allocate your efforts. For prioritizing work, we suggest using Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix. This model categorizes tasks based on their urgency and importance. By utilizing this framework, you can determine the most effective approach and timing for addressing each task. Check out our blog on managing time anxiety to learn more about this technique. 7. Set Realistic Goals Strive to set goals logically, keeping your resources in mind. A good resource for setting actionable goals is to use the S.M.A.R.T framework. This helps you make sure your goals are relevant to you, specified in measurable terms, possible to attain, realistic and practical in nature, and time-bound. Logical goal-setting can help you organize and prioritize your work, ultimately boosting your productivity in achieving your goals. If you want to check out our free S.M.A.R.T goals template, Click here! 8. Set Smaller Goals At times, confronting our goals can be daunting. Viewing several major projects on our calendar can be stressful. However, accomplishing small, quick wins can be extremely motivating. By breaking your goals into smaller tasks, you can regain a sense of control and significantly enhance productivity. Instead of writing down the whole project, break it down into subtasks and approach it step-by-step. This approach will help you stay focused on your daily activities and alleviate the overwhelming feeling associated with larger projects. 9. Take Regular Breaks The notion that spending more time glued to your desk leads to increased output sounds promising at first. However, research indicates that incorporating regular breaks can enhance your efficiency. Time management approaches such as the Pomodoro Technique can help ensure you allocate five-minute breaks for every 25 minutes of work. This helps you find the perfect balance between work and break, resulting in maximized productivity. If you want to optimize your short breaks, simply step outside for some fresh air. Studies suggest that immersing oneself in nature can instantly alleviate mental fatigue. 10. Get Organized Many of us are charged with multiple responsibilities each day. Wearing multiple hats is not for the weak-hearted. Organizing your time and efforts is a great way to prevent yourself from going crazy. Daily planners, checklists, and timesheets are essential tools for successfully organizing your day. Preparing your schedule in advance can prevent unpleasant surprises. Moreover, by establishing productivity patterns, you can accurately assess your performance and tweak your schedule for improvements. Additionally, make sure you have everything you need when you sit down to

25 Ways to Improve Productivity Read More »

Own Your Time: Powerful Time Tracking & Productivity Hacks

Learn to expand your success and impact through TimeBee’s weekly articles

Team TimeBee

Everything About Performance Improvement Plans

Project Cost Management Basics

Team Collaboration: What is it and How to Foster it?

Managing Freelancers: 8 Steps to Streamline Freelance Workforce

A Definitive Guide To Time Management

How to Say ‘No’ at Work and Save Time for Priority Tasks

10 Most Common Challenges Your Remote Workers Face

How to Create Transparent and Accountable Teams With TimeBee

7 Reasons Why Your Creative Agency Should Start Tracking Time

25 Ways to Improve Productivity

Features

Solutions

Industries

General

Contact