How To Conduct A Professional Time Audit

The term “audit” can sound incredibly intense. Many people who experience this word out in the wild–particularly in their work environment–will experience an immediate adrenaline rush as their nervous systems respond to a stressful situation.

It’s true. Audits get a bad rap. That may be because people think of taxes and fraud when they think of audits. Ideas of the government coming after you for a minor slipup on paperwork or taking your money or criminalizing you for something run rampant.

But it isn’t all bad.

What is an audit?

The Oxford Dictionary defines the term “audit” as: “An official inspection of an individual’s or organization’s accounts, typically by an independent body.” In layman’s terms, someone who is not affiliated with the company is tasked with learning about certain aspects of operational procedures.

The end game? Usually, it’s making everyone’s lives easier. Ensuring that individuals within the company are working within their zone of genius and using the tools they have access to to the best of their abilities.

Benefits Of Audits

It’s true. Audits can help the government find out where people are using loopholes or have tried to defraud them. They can also help an organization or company improve upon itself. Hiring a third party to come in and observe the way your company approaches workflows, the personalities on each team or any other number of items can help everything to run more efficiently.

According to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, audits can:

• Determine the adequacy of operating processes

• Promote best practices for the team

• Ensure compliance with policies and regulations (This is often where tax audits come in.)

• Identify operational inefficiencies

• Review IT projects, systems, and technology for efficiency

• Provide objective insight

• Assess responsible use of resources

• Identify potential cost savings

• Assist management in addressing cross-functional issues

Many teams end up bringing in professionals when the company has more profit potential than it is incurring. Other companies will assess audits to help improve the work/life balance of their workers. A time audit primarily addresses these two issues, but assesses the entire functioning of your team as well.

Conducting A Professional Time Audit

1. Meet With Company Leaders

Conducting a professional time audit begins by approaching leaders at the company or the major players in the C-Suite team. This may look like an in-person or via video conferencing. Sometimes, the only face-to-face meeting opportunities exist during initial pitch calls. Whether someone schedules a phoner or sends a host of questions via email or chat–which can sometimes help the auditor retain objectivity–gathering information from the hiring party for the work can help auditors understand how to approach their research.

Since the person performing the audit is a third party, it is important that they do not develop relationships with their subjects outside of the work at hand. This often means that facetime with workers is limited so that they do not receive too much information from perspectives other than their professional, tenured thoughts.

2. Implement Time Tracking

Professional auditors will want to have a host of information to extract from their work with the company or team they are assessing. Sometimes, professionals will break their audits up into specific teams. This allows them to utilize those results against all of the numbers to get both big picture and minutiae detail on what obstacles the company is facing.

Time tracking is really the most important step in the time tracking process. Establishing a system that works for the team is a crucial step that could drastically affect the data extracted. Here are some ways to approach gathering this data.

Start with a shared spreadsheet.

Each worker can have their own tab, where they log their information and which projects they are working on for how long. If you expand outside of Google Drive – say, into Hive – you can track your time directly in-app.

Design a template for everyone to have their own spreadsheet.

If the work involves a wider variety of tasks and job responsibilities–or if a company would like their employees to maintain anonymity–each employee could set themselves up with their own spreadsheet.

If you are using Google Drive, you will be able to share a spreadsheet template with each employee. Instruct them to duplicate it and share the new one with you immediately. This way, you can track their work alongside them as they implement healthy work habits.

Suggest time tracking applications.

While using the stopwatch on your phone or watch may be your preferred method of tracking time, there are ways to aid tracking tasks. Desktop applications like Toggl allow you to hit a button when you are beginning your work, and assign it to . There is an extension you can download for your browser that often identifies when you are working with a pop-up. This helps you miss any time tracking you maybe forgot to actually track.

The best news about Toggl? You can easily extract that information at a moment’s notice and add it directly to your Hive dashboard for internal, easy-to-access time tracking.

Try payroll systems that track hours.

Did you know that inner customer relation management systems Gusto is one of the most user-friendly operations we have experienced, especially as freelancers? Track your hours after signing in, and–if your boss has the updated operating system–they automatically issue checks based on the hours and tasks that were logged. This streamlines payroll for the higher-ups whose efforts are often valued elsewhere.

Establish A Working Timeline

Professionals will often work on a scale of 1-3 months when consulting on time allotments and productivity tracking. Whether people utilized their time correctly before the audit or not, establishing a healthy work habit over a longer period of time can help jumpstart the habit for the foreseeable future.

Cast A Wide Net

Specific results about how you can better structure your day or cut costs are always productive finds However, it is important to make the most out of your experimentation and data analysis. Compare results in timelines of 24 hours, a workweek (whatever that looks like for your team), a month or over the lifespan of a particular project.

If you have a regular client, there may be options to cross-compare data from the project to project, in hopes to build consistency in efficiency over time. The company will significantly appreciate the depth of these services, and that can turn into referrals.

Keep Communication Open

Meet with the company or send regular updates when considering an extension or any additional work you’d like to do with the test group to assess the results at a later date. If you have a strong finding while processing the results and want to pivot your approach, discussing the ramifications to the team could be important as well.

Be sure not to share too much of your knowledge of the project while it is still ongoing. Even if the audit isn’t focused on the C-Suite team at the time, it could affect the way they frame their approaches or allow them time to communicate their findings elsewhere.

Consider Regular Time Audits

To streamline your own productivity and allow yourself more control over how your time is spent, consider instigating regular time audits with your own work. Even if you work full-time for a company that does not have you track your time, it is suggested to do so on your own. Keeping notes about how long each task takes you can help you organize how you batch your work. It can even help you determine how to delegate work and who to consult for those delegations. These audits can also lead to you learning about the capacity your body and mind function at different times of the day. This way, you can cater your schedule to work with your emotional and energetic ebbs and flows. The best part about keeping track of all of your work for each client regularly (or at least once per year for 2-6 weeks)? You can make yourself completely aware of what makes you an asset to your company. You can also figure out what your natural work rhythm is so that you can mind your creative endeavors (work-related or otherwise) when you are feeling the most inspired. This helps to breed innovation. It might even give you some leverage when negotiating your salary or the next step in your career.