Enterprises which have implemented the TIMATE system use the new working time monitoring tool to completely eliminate the problem of leaving work for private purposes or unauthorized overtime. They also shortened the cigarette breaks by 78%. In general, they have managed to limit the working time waste by 80%. As a result, they save up to several hundred thousand PLN per year.
TIMATE analysed the working time use in the businesses that decided to implement the system. When the system started operating, an average employee wasted 460 minutes per month. It was the time which should have been devoted to tasks and duties. TIMATE did not include the statutory breaks in the analysis. Only the time which the employees were obliged to use for work-related purposes was considered (i.e. after deducting the time for breaks).
Both we and the business owners could hardly believe what we saw in the measurement results. A record-breaking employee in one company wasted as much as 50% of his working time. In other words, he received one half of his salary for doing nothing. As we are now facing an economic crisis, no manager can afford to spend the company money in such a way, says Sebastian Młodziński, TIMATE’s CEO.
When wasting time instead of working, most employees did the following: they went for a cigarette break (90 minutes per each employee per month on average), they left work for reasons unrelated to their duties or tasks (60 minutes), they had meals and meetings at the cafeteria or the cloakroom (90 minutes). It was also revealed that the employers paid for unauthorized overtime (60 minutes per each employee per month on average) and for the time that the employees did not spend at work, because they left early or arrived late (20 minutes).
I would not go so far as to say that employees waste their working time deliberately. Of course, such things happen. However, in many cases the long breaks, leaving the office or the factory or simply doing nothing during working hours result from the ineffective division of tasks among employees. Some of them have too much on their hands, while others have too little to do within their contractual working hours. TIMATE allows to analyse the division of tasks and the task performance time, which makes it easier to optimize the business operations and increase their effectiveness, adds Sebastian Młodziński.
More effective work translates into actual savings. In the cases under analysis, the initial parameters could be significantly improved thanks to TIMATE and the monitoring of entrances and exits and of what the employees actually did during the working hours. Within one year, the time devoted to activities unrelated to work was reduced by 80% on average. The following issues were completely eliminated: leaving work for private reasons, unauthorized overtime and situations when employees spent less time at work than specified in their contracts.
Additionally, the cigarette break time was reduced by 78%, the meal time by 92%, and the exit and entrance time (e.g. queues to the turnstiles) by 87%.
At the beginning of our analysis, the enterprises paid each employee for the average of 460 minutes of not working per month. If a company employed 500 people, it generated losses exceeding one hundred thousand PLN per month. During a year this amount exceeded 1 million PLN. TIMATE made it possible to reduce the expenses on empty hours by 80%, concludes Sebastian Młodziński.
The analysis was performed in large businesses from the sectors of production and logistics from mid-2019 to mid-2020.