Top 5 Workday Insights for employees to improve work performance

Time Doctor is known for providing valuable workday insights for managers and executives. Our thousands of happy customers – almost 10,000 worldwide – have taught us that our tools help employees, too.

Employees can use our productivity tools to win trust and earn more flexibility at work.

A core focus for Time Doctor is to support and empower employees with the tools and data they need to become more self-directed, accountable, and productive. We want employees to take control of their own performance so that they gain more freedom to work autonomously, leading to more flexibility.

By analyzing and measuring how time is spent, employees receive insights that provide clear direction on how to improve their own performance. In turn, managers get a greater understanding of what works best for each employee and data-backed proof of the effort they are putting in each day.

We’ve compiled a list of the top five Workday Insights for Employees and how they can use these to increase their own performance.

Insight #1: Identify distractions and time-wasters

One of the easiest ways for employees to improve their performance is to identify their biggest distractions and make changes to reduce or eliminate them. Time Doctor’s Web & App Usage report tracks the total time spent on websites and applications for each user, giving employees insights into where the majority of their time is spent each day.

How employees can use this to improve performance:

Quickly identify time-waster websites and set a new goal to only spend a certain amount of time each day or week on these sites.
Analyze the applications that are used the most and compare the amount of time spent in them against your task list to see if they are actually helping you reach your goals. For example, Slack and Gmail are work-related applications and very important to your job, but they aren’t helpful in completing research projects.
Understand what applications or websites your top performing teammates use the most to help identify areas for process improvements.

Insight #2: Understand when and where you are the most productive

Understanding your own work patterns can help provide clear direction on how to improve your performance. Time Doctor’s User Dashboard is one of the quickest and easiest ways for employees to identify when they are the most productive to help them better manage their time and ensure maximum efficiency. On the User Dashboard, the Timeline breakdowns will give insights into what time of day employees are at their peak performance. The Hours Tracked and Productivity Widgets help employees quickly see what days of the week they are the most productive.

How employees can use this to improve performance:

Plan deadlines for the most productive days of your week. This will help ensure that priority projects and tasks get completed on time.
If you are in a hybrid work model, use this data to identify what days of the week are better for working in-office or working from home. If you have been working from home on Wednesdays and the historical data shows that is your most productive day, then you can continue working from home as opposed to spending Wednesdays in-office where there can be more distractions.
Use the timeline breakdown to identify the best schedule for yourself. Maybe you don’t need a 9am-5pm schedule when you are more productive from 12pm-8pm.

Insight #3: Prevent burnout and identify poor work-life balance

To be at peak performance, employees need to have a healthy work-life balance and feel engaged with their teams and the company as a whole. The Timeline report and the new Attendance report will breakdown the daily activities and create more visibility into their own work patterns and behaviors to help prevent burnout and disengagement.

How employees can use this to improve performance:

Easily see how many hours you work for the day or week and how much of this is spent working late or outside of your normal schedule. Overworking yourself can lead to high stress and even physical and mental health issues.
Track how much time is spent working on the weekends and reduce or eliminate this habit. Part of a healthy work-life balance is taking time for yourself and focusing on what you care about the most.
Review your daily timeline breakdown and make sure you are taking enough breaks during the day. Not taking enough breaks can cause you to feel overwhelmed and quickly lead to burnout.

Insight #4: Identify time management opportunities

Good time management plays a major role in improving performance. The key to improving time management is knowing where your time is spent and how much time it takes you to complete tasks and projects. By utilizing our reports, user dashboard and desktop application, employees can get a deeper look into their daily work patterns and see where they can improve efficiency.

How employees can use this to improve performance:

Check the Timeline report breakdown to see how often you are switching between tasks. If you find that you are moving erratically from task to task or moving on before completing projects, block out time each day as focus time. Limit multitasking to help you increase productivity and reduce stress by allowing you to fully complete more projects.
Correctly prioritizing tasks and projects is crucial for good time management. Time Doctor’s desktop application allows you to view all projects and associated tasks in one centralized place, where you can decide which are the most important and urgent to complete. With our 60+ integration options, you will also save time by not having to go into different apps to track your work.
The Project and Tasks report along with the top projects and tasks section on the user dashboard, give you more visibility into what you work on each day. Review these activities to identify the non-essential tasks that don’t help you reach your goals and try to eliminate them from your work pattern. This will free up more time to work on the projects that do impact your goals.

The Timeline report can help employees uncover training opportunities and better understand their work patterns.

Insight #5: Benchmarking and training opportunities

For companies that grant access to share Time Doctor data across teams, employees can evaluate themselves versus other employees in similar roles to see where they can improve performance. By understanding how the top performers work, they can uncover new processes to make them more efficient while also identifying areas for training.

How employees can use this to improve performance:

Use the Web & App Usage report to drill down into what applications are being used by the top performers on your team the most. Look at how much time they spend in these apps and what tasks or activities they use this for. For example, if you are in sales and you see that other top performing sales reps are spending a larger percentage of time in the CRM, you can drill down to see what they are doing in the CRM that you may want to replicate. Or perhaps you are struggling to meet your numbers this month, you can look at how you are spending your time. You might discover that you have a higher percentage of unproductive time this month when compared to other team members. By avoiding time wasters, you may be able to turn your performance around.
Benchmarking can also help you get that promotion you’ve been wanting. Using the Web & App Usage report, you could focus on those colleagues who are at a higher level and analyze how they spend their work day, including their most common applications and activities. If you see that team leaders spend more time on client research, you could introduce that to your weekly process to prove to leadership that you are focused on strategic opportunities and may be ready to take on more responsibilities.
Identify what tasks are slowing you down with the Project and Task report. For example, if you see that you have been actually working on one task repeatedly for longer than you expect, this may indicate a need for additional training opportunities. Identify where you need more help and make the necessary changes to increase your efficiency.

We have only scratched the surface on how Time Doctor can help employees take action and improve their own performance. For more information on the benefits of Time Doctor to employees or to see it for yourself request a personalized demo today!