How Task Tracking Software Is Hurting Employee Productivity

n combination with all the other apps, programs, and solutions employees need to use every day to complete their work, the addition of task tracking software can hurt productivity. While these tools are designed to enable management to track a team’s workflow and monitor tasks, they can also make the process complicated and cumbersome for employees. Here are some of the reasons task tracking software is hurting employee productivity.

Manual Data Entry Takes Time

Every time an employee has to open a new application and input data, it takes time out of their day that they could be using to complete tasks. Having to manually re-enter data between apps is a glaring weakness within organizations. It’s time-wasting and money-wasting, and your competitors that have figured out ways to overcome this challenge have the upper hand. Manual data entry is vulnerable to manual errors, it’s inefficient, and unnecessary now that we have data integration. With automation processes available, why do many organizations continue to use manual data entry?

For one, a lot of small businesses don’t feel their company is large enough to implement automated processes and that manual data entry is sufficient enough. They don’t think they have a big enough budget to commit to an automated system. Businesses also might feel like manual data entry is safer and preserves sensitive information better when it’s just a couple of people that have access to it. This might make them feel more in control of their data because not relying on a specialized system or internet presence.

All of these reasons are valid in their own right. But successful companies know that this manual data entry process hinders progress and expansion. Let’s start with one of the main challenges—cost. It may seem intuitive to assume automation will cost an organization much more, but that just isn’t the case. Manual data entry not only involves the time it takes for someone to enter the data but a host of other hidden costs. Research has shown that incorrect data input costs businesses over 30% of their revenue. With manual data entry, accurate data and the lack of error correction are impossible to overcome. Humans will inevitably make mistakes no matter how much experience they have.

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Lack of Analytics on Team Performance

Most task tracking software does not provide analytics on team performance, which means management needs to rely on another tool to get reports. However, without analytics on team performance, most organizations manage without it, which can have dangerous consequences.

For example, most modern-day successful businesses rely on analytics to boost morale in the workplace. Without analytics, it’s difficult to know what your team is doing well, and without that information, you can’t showcase their successes. By simply looking at profitable success, you aren’t seeing the more granular picture of how things are going—the small wins people in your organization contribute to the greater outcome. Is a certain employee yielding more value per hour? Are they completing more tasks in a day than others? Is the quality of those completed tasks exceptional? By rewarding or acknowledging individuals based on data, you can help boost morale.

Without analytics, you lack the metrics that give you insights into the snags that are holding up your business. For instance, an analytic report might show that an employee that is supposed to be spending time creating content is spending too much time dealing with requests from other departments. By performing A/B testing, you can try out some alterations to team dynamics for a few weeks and compare the analytics to the previous period to see what works better. You can keep doing this until you figure out an arrangement that works best.

Inaccuracies in Time Tracking

The great thing about task tracking software is it allows employees to organize projects, track their time, and report their work. This is all well and great, but what happens when employees are in charge of tracking their own time on tasks? Inevitably, some employees will round up or down—whichever way makes them look better. For instance, they might round up on how long a task took to complete so that the next time they are assigned a similar task, they’ll be given more time to complete it. On the other hand, they might round down to prove to management how productive they are. This can lead to a missed deadline the next time around because management will think that particular task only takes so long.

Another App to Hamper Production

With task tracking software added to the mix of the long-running line of applications already in use by your employees, you’re making them less productive. Zoom, Slack, Trello, and a host of other applications have helped facilitate working from home, but at what cost? A Workgeist Report 2021 revealed that almost 70% of the employees surveyed said that it was too time-consuming to find information using technology at work. This indicates that businesses are not doing enough to promote the efficient use of resources.

According to the report, employees spend around an hour each day scouring through tools and apps looking for information. This can include searching through project management boards, messaging channels, and cloud storage systems, which is time employees could be spending on designing new products or helping customers. Some respondents said that to find the information they need throughout the day, they often have to reach out to at least 2 people 5 times a day! With the permanent shift to remote work, that means more messaging and more video calls per day—all of which hurts employee productivity.

According to Tariq Rauf, CEO of Qatalog, “We need to press reset on the technology that underpins our working day so it creates focus, not chaos.”

To overcome the challenges of manual data entry, lack of analytics, and too many apps in the workplace, MetaSpark’s AI removes the need for data entry and gives your team more time to do their work. It also allows you to unearth true performance with live dashboards and analytics so you can stop making guesses about performance, and start relying on data. And the best part is you can do it all in one app. It brings every task from every system in your enterprise into one dashboard automatically, and the AI analyzes everyone’s work, reporting on productivity and goal progress in real-time.

So, are you ready for an AI-Driven Workforce Productivity Hub that offers accurate, data-driven insights into productivity across individuals, departments, and the entire organization?