How to Effectively Prevent Time Theft in the Workplace

Intro

Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the USA, was many things – writer, successful businessman, printer, philanthropist, politician, and inventor.

In one of his essays – ‘Advice to a Young Tradesman’, he wrote, “Remember that time is money.”

Mr. Franklin would have been amused to know that his advice to young tradesmen remains relevant even after 275 years, particularly for organizations aspiring to address the challenge of ‘employee time theft’ while optimally utilizing employees’ time.

Employee time theft is a major challenge for organizations seeking to constantly improve workplace productivity levels. Failure to address it can lead to loss of profits, and impact growth prospects for organizations and even longer-term sustainability.

As organizations probe the reasons for low employee productivity, they need to dive deep into whether or not their employees are knowingly or inadvertently indulging in time theft. This blog will help you understand all about time theft, how employees engage in such practices, and how to prevent them as employers.

What is time theft?

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Time theft is simply misappropriation of work hours by employees, either by pretending to work and engaging in non-work-related activities knowingly or unknowingly. This way, employees get paid for the hours they haven’t worked, thereby causing a loss of productivity and output for the organization.

Time theft may seem trivial and even difficult to understand as it's not like material theft. We’re wired to think of theft as the physical loss of property or belongings. That’s why organizations may find it challenging to fully comprehend the contours of time theft and its impact on their business performance.

However, it's a form of misconduct that can lead to a tremendous loss of organizational production and revenue, especially for larger organizations with a substantial number of employees.

Let’s understand this with an example of an organization with 700 employees. If each employee steals or misappropriates 30 minutes a day, then the organization loses 21,000 minutes or 250 hours of productive time every day!

These numbers can snowball into hundreds of thousands of work hours and millions of dollars in monetary sums, underlining how time theft can impact business output and even endanger longer-term organizational sustainability.

Now that we’ve understood what constitutes time theft let’s look at some ways employees steal time from their employers.

Seven Ways Employees Undertake Time Theft

Ingenuity knows no bounds, and there’s no dearth of ways in which employees engage in time theft. However, we’ve listed below the seven well-known ways in which employees steal time from their organization.

1. Mouse automation

One of the most effective ways of deceiving time-tracking software tools is to use an automated mouse. Employees can place a mouse can on top of a battery-operated or remote-controlled device, which they can operate from a distance.

This way, the mouse continues to hover on the screen at periodic and predefined intervals, as deemed fit by the user, keeping the computer screen active. As the time-tracking software tool assumes that the user is active, it's unable to register any suspicious activity and report time theft.

2. Opening multiple small windows

Another effective yet simple means of time theft is to open multiple small windows on the computer screen. Using such windows, employees can surf the Internet, chat with their friends, or even shop online. Meanwhile, they keep the main, full-screen window open for office-related activities. As some types of online time-tracking software track the full-screen window, these can be deceived to register employees as working actively on office-related tasks.

3. Timing the screenshot software

Using this trick requires some proficiency in operating software, especially the ability to bypass or crack the software code being used for tracking employees. Employees can hack the time-tracking software to discern the time interval in which the software takes a screenshot of the user’s computer screen.

This information can help them time their activities in a manner that the time-tracking software registers them as engaged in official duties. Meanwhile, the employee can conveniently surf the Internet or engage in non-work-related tasks during the gap between the two screenshots.

4. Using multiple monitors

Some employees connect their laptops to multiple other monitors/screens via USB cables. This allows them to operate multiple windows simultaneously while they use the main window for office-related tasks. Unfortunately, not many time-tracking software on the market can identify and track multiple monitors.

This existing lacuna enables some employees to steal employers’ time.

5. Tampering with the software code

It is a more uncommon way of tricking the time-tracking software. However, employees proficient in technology and software can exploit time-tracking tools by making changes to the software code.

Some time-tracking software tools are susceptible to hacking and tampering, creating an opportunity for employees to change how they work. This way, such tools register incorrect information, which is pre-fed by the employees.

6. Buddy punching

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Buddy punching as a means to deceive employers about employees’ use of work hours has been around since the concept of time-tracking came to the fore. Buddy punching involves proxy attendance, where some other employee marks the attendance on behalf of their colleagues.

However, organizations have largely plugged in this means of time theft by institutionalizing biometric attendance systems, where employees register their attendance using retinal scans, fingerprint scans, facial recognition systems, etc.

7. Excessive non-productive internet surfing

Internet surfing is natural and employees do visit the Internet occasionally to research or validate information or to gain insights on a subject they’re likely to engage with their clients, managers, or colleagues. However, excessive Internet surfing, especially for non-productive tasks like replying to personal emails, shopping online, or reading about non-work-related topics can lead to a loss of productive work hours.

Some employees may also surf the Internet meaninglessly during office hours while pretending to be looking for relevant information related to some official tasks. To deal with such scenarios, you may need to work on inspiring your employees in various ways to enhance their performance.

Impact of time theft on businesses

Industry findings suggests that time theft remains a serious source of revenue leakage for organizations. An industry report, for example, revealed that time theft caused an annual loss of US$20 billion and US$50 billion for US organizations.

Meanwhile, businesses globally lose more than US$400 billion in lost workplace productivity! These are serious numbers and a cause of concern for organizations wading through multiple crises like a turbulent labor market and uninspiring macroeconomic indicators in key markets.

How to stop time theft

Mentioned below are some ways in which organizations can stop time theft.

1. Enhance employee engagement

A recent industry report has affirmed that employee engagement levels remain at an all-time low. Only one-fifth or 21% of the global workforce identifies as being actively engaged. Meanwhile, employee stress clocked 44% in 2022, which was even higher than the figures of 2021.

The abrupt shift to remote and hybrid workplaces impacted work-life balance, boosting burnout rates. Such challenges have impacted employees’ ability to focus on office-related tasks and balance their personal and professional lives. To deal with this, organizations must spend time with employees to understand the reasons behind their low productivity rates and the need to use ways to cheat the time-tracking software.

Engaged employees are less likely to waste their work hours on non-productive tasks and create greater value for the organization. For this, employers can undertake various employee engagement activities to enhance productivity and contribute towards curbing the issue of time theft.

2. Communicate effectively

Effective communication is more critical than ever, especially as in-person interactions become less frequent and remote work assumes a more mainstream status. Organizations should not only communicate effectively to engage employees but also to help them understand the need for time-tracking systems.

Organizations must make their employees buy into the idea that using such time-tracking mechanisms is not to micro-manage them but to offer them more actionable insights into how they can be empowered to engage in higher-value tasks. Business leaders must take the lead in helping institutionalize such practices across the organization by acting as change-makers.

Also read: 5 Effective Internal Communication Tools To Improve Your Business Workflow

3. Onboard a time-tracking software

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Onboarding a time-tracking software is a strategic move for businesses seeking enhanced productivity and time theft prevention. By adopting a time tracking tool like Replicon, organizations can accurately monitor employee work hours and activities, mitigating the risk of time theft. These advanced solutions offer real-time insights into tasks and project timelines, ensuring accountability and transparency in the workplace. Some of these tools offer AI-powered timesheets and mobile timesheets that help organizations capture time and attendance data, book time off, and manage work schedules efficiently anytime, anywhere.

4. Enable flexible work hours

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Employers can help employees attain a better work-life by enabling flexible work hours. Flexible work timings can help employees manage their personal lives and responsibilities in a manner where they wouldn’t need to lie about being online during “fixed” hours or find ingenious ways to trick the time-tracking software.

This would allow them to focus intently on their work and live a more stress-free life, which would help increase their productivity levels, benefitting the organization in the long run by helping them win the ongoing war for talent!

You can try out flexitime arrangements where employees can work for a set number of hours but choose when to work or even try compressed workweek schedules like 4/10, 9/80 or 2-2-3 that enable employees to complete their workweek hours in less than the standard five days to get more time offs where they can carry out their personal activities.

5. Focus on outcomes

Organizations need to develop a culture where employees and managers focus on outcomes rather than the time spent on a project or a task. This may be a change from the established paradigm where ‘time spent’ is considered the yardstick for productivity.

However, making such changes requires longer-term interventions and commitment, as cultural changes take a long time to manifest.

6. Audit diligently

Auditing how employees spend their time can provide deep insights into organization-wide trends, which leaders can use to create roadmaps for improvements. For instance, an organization can automate administrative tasks if its workforce spends more time on administrative activities than business-critical tasks.

Conclusion {#conclusion}

The past few years have been tumultuous for organizations globally. Reduced profit margins, a considerable drop in client spending, a raging war on talent, and increasing costs of human resources mandate a sharp eye on ways to plug in revenue leakages. And addressing the issue of time theft among employees is an easy yet highly effective way of improving the bottom line.