It’s no secret that technology is bleeding into every facet of our everyday lives. Since the advent of the internet, businesses have been riding the wave of technological advances, or struggling to keep up with it. One hallmark of a solid business today is its ability to keep up with advances in technology, and wearable technology is the next big thing. We’re becoming more and more familiar with wearables such as smart watches, Google Glass, and health monitoring devices, but companies are taking wearables to the next level.
Some types of tracking devices cater specifically to enhancing productivity in the workplace. These apps for wearables can monitor time tracking and employee timesheets using apps with many beneficial results for productivity (read here some productivity hacks).
Productivity Boost
The benefits of wearables in the workplace begin and end with productivity. As with all technology, employers are wising up to the fact that integration of new tracking items like wearables leads to an increase in productivity and thus a stronger presence in the market. The only real difference is how the devices and apps achieve productivity increase. According to an article in Entrepreneur, time tracking apps and devices start enhancing productivity by making employees aware of their behaviors in the workplace. As you can read here, the timecard is a longstanding problem in business and several alternatives for a resolution have been tried over time. As soon as attention is called to how productive an employee is, they become a lot more attentive to their daily tasks. In fact, the average increase in productivity, just from wearing a time tracking device, is 8.5%.
The second greatest advantage to wearables and time tracking apps links the technology to movement. We’re familiar with the concept of using a device like a FitBit to monitor physical activity, but some of these wearables can track movements and analyze the productivity of an employee based on those movements. Harvard Business Review examines the example of an athlete. Not only does the technology assess the time it takes the athlete to complete a task, as it would in integrated time tracking with a mobile app, it also tracks how efficiently each step of the task was being done. In warehouses, wearable technology with time tracking can provide employees with maps or even vocal communication on the shortest route to an item. The wearable device can then monitor employee time tracking, providing information to the employee and the employer on how quickly a task is being completed.
But it doesn’t end there. The applications of wearable technologies are quite varied, but tend to shine in the ways they cut down on movement, and thus, the time it takes to complete a task. By furnishing employees with wrist-worn computers, time spent traveling back and forth between a computer and a job site can save hours. Analytics and blueprints of site locations can cut down on time spent searching a building for a specific location, and time tracking apps feed all of this information back into a program that analyzes the employee’s performance.
Time Tracking
The best in wearables combine both concepts: one of the most feasible applications of wearable technology and time tracking is using devices to put time management in the employee’s hands (read more about time management techniques). By employing web and mobile time tracking apps which connect to a smartwatch, employers can subtly enforce a higher standard of accountability with how employees spend their time.
There are a variety of apps on the market that automate timesheets and provide integrated time tracking – Runrun.it is one of them –, which monitor employee performance and allows them to take control of their tasks. Some of these apps allow workers to log time in a task by starting and stopping a counter, and the best of these also record bodily systems. These report on things like heart rate and brain chemistry, alerting employees and employers when their bodies are most – and least – productive.
Wearable technology that uses time tracking places the power of time management in the employees’ hands, creating awareness of productivity and providing information about the things that are impacting workers throughout their day. While we can most certainly look forward to continuing advances in wearable technology that will revolutionize the tools we use to do our jobs, time tracking technology is here now, and can be introduced to most businesses cost-effectively, with a solid return.
The Future of Wearables
Like most technologies, we can expect to see wearables and timesheet apps taking more and more precedence in the market, along with other wearable apps as time passes. As companies and their employees grow used to the concept of using time trackers and wearables in the office, productivity will continue to grow. In the meantime, the goal remains the same as it always has for managers. Assemble the best team you can and equip them to take control of their productivity and time management, then, when wearables become a reality for your employees, it’s the next logical progression in a forward-thinking business.
Runrun.it is one of the first forays into task management and integrated time tracking. Specializing in streamlining paperwork, tasks, and time tracking, Runrun.it provides a system that can increase productivity by an average of 25%. Know what else is awesome? You can try Runrun.it for free.
