Workforce Management: Time Is of the Essence, Time Is a Valuable Thing

By PrismHR

Companies struggle to manage time even though time is of the essence. Always has been, always will be. 

That phrase, “Time is of the essence,” is something you hear occasionally in films and TV shows when things are about to heat up, but it’s also a legal term meaning that one party is contractually obligated to get something done in a certain amount of time. 

In the world of workforce management, time isn’t always on your side if your time-management solution has a hard time keeping up with the times.  

That is the essence of the problems, and those types of frustrations tend to continue to occur time after time. 

Learn about PrismHR Workforce Management by downloading our white paper. 

Employees Get Frustrated, Too

Time is not only an issue for companies. Employees have them, too.

A recent study from Temple University found that workers get frustrated when their time is wasted. Wasted time was defined as whatever interferes with an employee’s ability to obtain goals. And, when one employee is wasting time, chances are it will eventually waste the time of a productive worker waiting on someone who tends to dilly-dally or perhaps spends too much time doing things other than their work duties.

“Your goal may be to have fun and be happy, or to get your work done,” said Brian Holtz, an associate professor in Temple’s Fox School of Business and Management, in a Temple Now interview. “If someone is intruding on your time in a way that prevents you from accomplishing whatever your goal may be in that moment, that is going to be deemed as a waste of time.”

Holtz’s co-researcher, Crystal Harold, who is the associate dean on the program, added in the article that: “We found, probably not surprisingly, that when a person perceives that their time is wasted by others in the workplace—whether those are one’s boss, one’s co-workers, even one’s customers—that is a frustrating experience.”

But there’s frustration to go around.

So Frustrating

Your small and medium-sized business (SMB) clients experience the same types of frustration—but time-wasting also hurts productivity and profitability.

There are so many time-wasters out there, of course, that tempt employees every day, including:

  • Emails
  • Social media
  • Texts
  • Coffee breaks
  • Lunch breaks
  • Gossip breaks
  • Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo Reddit rabbit hole breaks

You name it; the list goes on!

Let us break things down for you: Without an advanced Workforce Management solution in place that can bring your clients robust time management capabilities and advanced scheduling options, your clients might be timed out.

To help limit time-wasting, a state-of-the-art workforce management tool will allow companies to keep track of where their employees are clocking in and out from via geofencing. That helps eliminate so-called “buddy punching” because the employee needs to be where they say they are to punch in. No wasting company time getting breakfast when they are already on the clock.

PrismHR’s Workforce Management solution offers several valuable tools to help keep productivity up and scheduling precise and simple, including these features: 

  • Recommendation Engine: Includes weighted criteria to help make scheduling recommendations easy. 
  • Shift Planner: Offers drag-and-drop functionality to help manage staffing needs. 
  • Conflict Identification: Brings clear visibility to scheduling to help avoid conflicts. 
  • Overtime Manager: Controls overtime costs by helping companies manage their workers’ hours better while saving money. 

Whether it’s the employees’ time or the company’s time, wasting it is never a great strategy. After all, time is of the essence—but time is also a very valuable thing. 

Learn more about PrismHR Workforce Management.