Three benefits of tracking employee data for your business

Analytics   |   
Published May 15, 2017   |   

Employee data tracking—sounds like a lot of extra work, right? How do you keep tabs on employee data for more productivity, better bookkeeping, and safer employees?
Your employees generate a lot of data and using data tools for your business just makes sense. There are multiple ways you can do this.

Track Employee Time

Tracking time with cloud-based software is perhaps one of the simplest things you could do to increase productivity, particularly because it facilitates remote work. Telecommuting is where the world of work is headed. Not only can it increase productivity, but it can also save money.
About40 percent of workers telecommute consistently.

  • A company with 100 employees who telecommute can save $1 million a year on various office-related expenses
  • Telecommuters work five to seven more hours per week than office workers
  • A Stanford University study showed that full-time telecommuters are 13% more productive than office workers

Cloud-based time tracking software facilitates telecommuting so that workers can clock in and out from their computers from home and other locations.
In and out of the office, a cloud-based time-tracking tool lets you get accurate data on how much time employees are spending taking breaks, working on projects, eating lunch, going to meetings, or on any other work-related activity. It also lets you integrate employee time data with payroll software so that your controller can easily save time processing payroll.
Another bonus is increased employee safety. According to Quentin Miller, co-founder of time tracking software Vericlock, the software tells you employee location. He says, “Knowing where an employee is during the workday is potentially the greatest addition to employee safety offered by the system, especially in high-risk industries or employment in remote locations. Knowing the ‘last known’ location of an employee can be critical in emergency situations.”
Over time, you can use the data from years of time tracking to measure productivity trends and to streamline processes. The software lets you be very specific in terms of what your employees are working on, and when you note that it takes more time to complete certain types of projects, you can troubleshoot them to increase efficiency.

Track Employee Miles

Do you have company vehicles? Do you have multiple offices, and do you and your employees zip from office to office in company cars? Do you have to drive your own car to various locations while you’re working to meet clients and attend to other tasks? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then mileage tracking is a fantastic option.
You can claim a 53.5 cent deduction for every business mile you and your employees travel in 2017. Business mileage includes any business-related driving you do after you get to work, but doesn’t include your commute to work. The simplest and most effective way to go about this is to get an app that keeps track of mileage data. You and your employees only need to install the app on your phones and let it guide you through the rest.
The big advantage here is that you pay employees for their time driving, but mileage tracking will help you get some of that money back on your taxes.

Track Employee Behavior in the Office

Sounds like spying or snooping, right? Not if you explain what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, and your employees agree. You’re tracking behavior to improve things for them and, ultimately, for your business. If you’ve already built trust, this should be no problem.
Companies such as Bank of America are using sensors to monitor employee behavior. Bank of America placed sensors on employee badges in their call center and used Sociometric Analytics to analyze the comings and goings of employees, including their social habits and tone of voice. They found out that employees who took breaks together are more productive and happier on the job, so they made group breaks part of the routine. This helped increase productivity by 15 to 20 percent.
With sensors generating big data in the workplace, you can do the following:

  • Figure out which employee groupings work best for productivity
  • Measure biometrics to figure out what type of environmental conditions are best for employee health, satisfaction, and productivity
  • Link sensors with a smart building that can adjust conditions based on employee input
  • Determine how many breaks and how much movement is optimal for employees

For example, employees at London media agency Mindshare were asked to wear activity trackers during work. They could choose between an accelerometer wristband, a portable brainwave monitor, or a posture coach. This improved productivity by 8.5 percent and satisfaction by 3.5 percent.

Why Employee Data?

Why track employee data when you could simply run things the old-fashioned way? Well, with your business, running things the old-fashioned way is like not getting rid of asbestos in your building. Asbestos was an old-school way to insulate buildings. Exposure to asbestos causes mesothelioma, a deadly form of cancer. Because asbestos in old buildings has been such a catastrophic liability risk, organizations are using big data analytics to do casualty catastrophe modeling—to look for things that could be the next liability risk. Big data is helping ensure employee satisfaction and safety in the future.
If you don’t update your building by removing asbestos, you and your employees could suffer. Likewise, if you don’t update your processes with employee data, your business could suffer and fall behind the competition.