Free Employee Productivity Tracker Template in Excel & Google Sheets

No matter where your workplace is situated, under the oceans, or above the clouds, whenever your employers will reimburse you for your work or appraise you for your efforts, ‘productivity’ will have its say in any aspect whatsoever.

In fact, it is one of those core elements of an employee’s unseen curriculum vitae that can impact his own professional life and the company’s long-term benefits significantly.

This article will let you know how individual-level productivity can help the organization get the most out of its invested sum, why individual productivity is essential and what alternative you might go for in place of the productivity report template given in the article.

So, stay with us to learn the best alternative to employee productivity tracker template- Apploye, unknown truth about productivity, and the strategic ways through which you can scale up the companywide productivity.

Individual productivity and its measurement

Productivity refers to human collaboration and operation at different levels. Individual-level Productivity defines an individual's efficiency. From personal life activities to professional life binding, Productivity is a crucial issue.

Put simply, Individual Productivity is the amount of work done in a given time. It involves completing a person's to-do list or responsibilities set by others in the organization.

Measuring individual Productivity can be challenging, despite the definition's simplicity and availability of different Employee daily productivity tracker templates online.

To measure employee productivity, follow these procedures.

1. Setting standards for the employees when you are eager to learn how productive the employee is.
2. Setting a measurement of the completion of tasks. It could be by the hour, by task, or maybe by day or even by the week.
3. Some Workplace distractions and productivity killers are unavoidable for employees. You hire a social media expert who must often check the company's social platforms. It's a trap for anyone as social media is a massive reservoir of distracting elements. So, you have to consider these facts as well
4. Identifying the benchmarks and the targets you set for the employees is another critical task while measuring Productivity. You can instruct your employee to close ten deals per day. Maybe he might close five contracts worth more than ten small deals. So, set steps for it as per necessity.
5. Tracking the progress and getting the regular update is also an essential task. Only continuous monitoring can help keep your employees on the right track for most of their office hours.

Grass Root Level Productivity vs Company-wide Productivity

While individual Productivity is for the personal gain and growth of a particular employee, it's also beneficial for the company investing in that employee.

Organizations value a productive employee more than anything because Productivity can beat the skills if skill sits idle. But again, Productivity doesn't mean constant hustling; it is the planned way of work where quality is maintained and quantity obliged to the requirements.

While individual Productivity is an intrinsic motivation of an employee, company-wide or enterprise-level productivity indicates a combined approach that is more complicated and tougher to deal with.

Organizational or companywide Productivity requires a robust corporate culture and mindset that can ignite the productivity flame. Effective communication is necessary to implement the essential tools to help employees avoid menial tasks.

Companywide Productivity enhances whenever the company can motivate the employees to be more productive in their sphere. The other things mentioned above are just some actions that can bring the utmost Productivity for the company they desire in any operational activities they role in.

Why does Productivity calculation matter?

This question arises every now and then when we find it difficult to track the progress of the tasks and have a hard time calculating the Productivity of the employees.

But no matter how elusive the term ‘Productivity’ is, it always matters!

Here are the reasons why-

1. Better Financial state

Suppose you’re unsure how to calculate your employees’ Productivity during office hours, thus, allowing them to go unproductive and waste time in different aspects. In that case, the business overhead cost will undoubtedly go up. If you are a large company maintaining huge premises with many electronic facilities’, the price might go beyond your control. So, calculating Productivity is crucial as it will keep the overhead cost manageable and consistently improve the financial state of your organization.

2. Establishment of a healthy workplace culture

Unproductive employees not only harm their portfolio and expertise toolbox by being inefficient and time killers but also induce other employees to go bonkers. Healthy workplace culture can only be promoted once you have a set of productive employees who preaches a culture of staying productive and nurturing the habit throughout the organization to create a ripple effect.

3. Value of your invested money is properly realized

Being the organization owner, it’s your major headache if the invested money behind the employees has its true meaning realized. Keeping the workforce productive most of the time is not necessary. Still, you need to make sure that whenever they are on a crucial operation, they maintain the maximum productivity to keep the project on the money. If it goes out of the funds, maintaining productivity in small and insignificant tasks won’t have much to offer.

4. Quality assurance for the upcoming tasks

The more productive your employees are on the ongoing tasks, the more chances that their following projects will go as planned with successful execution. Productivity thus can create a chained impact that motivates the productive employees to go more productive or maintain the state of productivity across tasks and projects.

5. A less skilled productive employee is better than a more skilled unproductive one

A skilled unproductive employee is like a white elephant who becomes a liability for the employers. On the flip side, an employee who possesses lesser skills but constantly pushes himself to be better at work with more productivity can be considered an asset. Skill is an essential factor; there’s no doubt about it, but skill alone can’t make up for an employer’s investment if it is not paired with productivity.

Employee productivity tracker template

The downloadable template below helps you keep track of the productive and non-productive work hours and calculate the total hours that you generally use or waste in-office time. A pie chart on the right side of the template shows you the percentage count and gives you a visual impression of how you are using the time during office hours. This productivity report templates will be helpful in calculating an individual’s daily productivity by inputting data in the suitable places.

Here are the samples that you can use as an Employee productivity tracker template.

1. Employee productivity tracker template in excel
2. Employee productivity tracker template in google sheet

Drawbacks of Employee productivity tracker template

The employee productivity tracker template is an elementary sort of calculation sheet that doesn’t fulfill the objectives you set for yourself when tracking and improving productivity is your target. Followings are the drawbacks of the Employee productivity tracker template, which you should know while considering it for your work.

1. The Process isn’t automatic

Every time you do a job, you need to return to the productivity tracker template to put the input. Then at the end of the whole day, you will see the overall result. All these happen with the help of you. You might forget to put the data after completing the task or simply forget to open the tracker template once at work. Again, getting back to the tracker template all the time is also a hassle, given you have a lot to do within that time. So, the missing automation is a big drawback of this type of tracker template.

2. You can’t keep track of it 24/7

Someday, your boss will put some more responsibilities and set a deadline in front of you. There might be days when you may have a lot of client contacts that may hamper your usual pace of work. There will be days when you may not be in the mood to keep track of your workflow management and sit idle in the corner of the office. So, keeping track of such a ‘manually’ managed template is impossible even if you are determined at the first go. So, it is another drawback of the Employee productivity tracker template.

3. The productivity measurement could be ‘Illusive’

Having an excel template to manage your productivity tracking isn't very difficult, but it's tedious and illusive. It's tedious because you have to update the same sheet every day after each task is completed. The illusive part is that many of your activities might be productive for you, yet the employer may find that unproductive. Reading newspapers may be helpful for you as it may give you information to ensure continuous individual growth, but it might be considered a time killer by your boss! So, the easier you find the word productivity in the definition, it's, in fact, that elusive and hard to track down.

Best Alternative to Employee Productivity tracker template – Apploye

Apploye is a time tracking software that helps you keep up with productivity without any hassle that you usually face when you use an employee productivity tracker template. It is an excellent time tracker with screenshots that can also be used as a remote employee monitoring software that helps you keep the remote workers productive as an owner of the business.

Apploye offers more than a hundred features at a very competitive price, and its user-friendliness helps you operate all the time smoothly. The problem that you face when you use an employee productivity tracker template, such as the complete lack of automation, frequent updating, and tracking, won’t be an issue if you start using Apploye for your productivity computation. It’s automatic, hassle-free, and better than any solution you may find to keep up with your productivity.

The following features of Apploye will give you enough rationale why you should use it as the ultimate Alternative to the Employee Productivity tracker template.

1. Accurate Time tracking

Apploye is a precise time tracking software that helps you automatically track workers time once they are turned on. You can add manual time if you forget to start the timer. The timesheet of Apploye can be seen in a customized view, and additional features like Pomodoro timer, billable and non-billable hours, and idle time tracking can help you get everything that you perceive as a time tracker offers you.

2. Productivity Calculation

The productivity calculation at Apploye is accurate and easy to comprehend. It is dependent upon your keystrokes and mouse clicking. So, wherever you go off from work, Apploye automatically counts your time for that specific tenure as unproductive. It’s an excellent way to compute the productivity of any independent contractor or a firm that hires freelancers regularly.

3. Performance Based comparison

The dashboard of Apploye is an intuitive one that shows the performance-based comparison among the employees in color-coded format. Employees working on various projects and tasks are offered, and they are evaluated based on the hours they worked and the activity rate at which they work. You can also see the hours they spent together on different projects.

4. Screenshot monitoring

Screenshot monitoring is the single most significant way to keep yourself and your employees super productive. Random screenshots in different frequencies can help you stay aloof from distractions and sources that can hamper the normal pace of work. Apploye offers random screenshots by which you can take a maximum of three screenshots in an interval of ten minutes, which is a great way to keep oneself from distracting materials and thus ensure a good productivity score.

5. Apps & URL usage

Apps and URL usage is another essential feature of Apploye which is worth discussing. Apploye keeps track of the websites you visit from your device and tracks the usage of the apps you use when you work on your devices. So, it’s a beautiful way to keep yourself out of distractions.

6. Reports on Employee Performance

Apploye generates reports on the activities of the employees, and the report is comprehensive. So, if you are a freelancer or just an individual who wants to have a full-fledged report on a specific period, then Apploye would be a smart choice.

3 Truth regarding Productivity you should know

There are certain aspects of productivity, but some harsh truths are also present that are somehow unknown to us. Here are three truths that you must know while learning about productivity.

1. 100% Productivity is not possible and not even expectable

You can’t expect a hundred percent productive work hours from your employees because the expectation would be thoroughly absurd. You may optimize most of the processes and set big and ambitious goals, but you’re dealing with many Gen Y and Gen Z guys who are prone to many distractions and problems. They may offer you a productive day or two on the go, but you can’t always expect every one of them to stand up for you every day, every hour. So help them stay productive but give them some breathing space too.

2. Flexibility is good but not always

To a certain extent, you can show your leniency to your employees. But a bit more flexibility can harm your employees’ productivity which you should keep in mind. Rolf Dobelli, the famous author of the best-seller book ‘The Art of Thinking clearly’, has written in his book ‘The Art of Good Life’ that flexibility in important issues is not an advantage; instead, it’s a trap. When you become lenient during a critical issue on the run, employees tend to roam around various tasks, which may sap their willpower and trap them into decision fatigue. So, inflexibility can be a blessing in disguise if you want your employees to stick to a goal, achieving which may give you a massive drive ahead.

3. Not all the members of a productive team are productive

Like every friends’ group has a plan destroyer, every team has members who may callously go opposite when everyone moves together. No matter how perfect a productive team you are maintaining, some people, a few odd guys, will always go wrong or go slow. So, omit the idea of constituting a team that can give you total productive hours every day. Expect some hiccups and accept those hiccups. But strive for excellence.

Enhancing Productivity in 5 strategic ways

Productivity might be an illusive term but achieving it through constant hustling is not an uncommon practice. Companies worldwide go through different trial and error processes, hire top-notch psychologists, and carry out thousands of dollars’ worth of experiments to get the most out of their employees.

Following are six strategic ways that can help you get a productive workforce.

1. Grow an ‘Organizational mindset’

It's vital to grow a sense of belongingness in the employees to help them build up an organizational mindset that can enhance productivity.

2. Bring the smartest tool to automate and optimize the business operation procedures

Try to optimize the processes by bringing the most innovative tools that will substantially save the employees' time and help them expedite the productivity scale. You may find some manual functions in your businesses that those tools can optimize.

3. Find out the flaws in the system

A flawless system can propel the employees' productivity by miles because that eliminates time wastage and system losses. So, finding out the flaws is essential.

4. Micromanagement is a game-killer

Monitoring employees on a regular basis is critical and mandatory for driving the productivity up but don't micromanage them to downgrade their morale and demolish the drive to enhance productivity.

5. Continuous Monitoring is mandatory

Micromanagement and continuous monitoring have a fine line between them. Try to monitor the progress of your employees and see how to improve. Constant monitoring will help you take your team over the line and help them build a habit of staying productive for a more extended period.

Wrapping up

An Employee Productivity tracker template is an essential solution for measuring the personal level of productivity. But, that’s time-consuming, boring, and a menial task. Tools like Apploye help you drive the productivity meter upward, and it can be implemented from the grass-root level to the enterprise level.

So, why wait! Implement Apploye today and see how your level of productivity gets a thrust to go up by miles!

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