Workforce Utilization

Workforce Utilization translates workforce underutilization into financial metrics by quantifying underutilized FTEs and associated salary costs. Available in select ActivTrak plans*, this dashboard is designed to help executives identify cost-saving opportunities by department, location, or productivity threshold, informing resource allocation decisions and productivity improvement programs.

To access Workforce Utilization, navigate to Executive Summaries > Workforce Utilization. Admins and Configurators on a Professional or Premium plan will have access by default. Admins can manage access for other User Roles via the Role Access page (Settings > Access > Role Access).

Tip: Add Workforce Utilization to your Favorites for quick access.

*Contact sales@activtrak.com to try this feature, get a demo or upgrade your plan.

Contents

• Requirements
• When to use Workforce Utilization
• Navigating Workforce Utilization
  • Filter settings
  • Monthly Summary
  • Monthly Financial Loss by Team
  • Monthly Financial Loss by Productivity Threshold
  • Productivity Goal Achievement Trend Summary
  • Productivity Goal Shortfall Trend
  • Recurring Productivity Goal Shortfall
• Customizing the dashboard
  • Subscriptions
• Practical applications
  • Identifying recurring productivity gaps
  • Optimizing workforce allocation
  • Quantifying productivity ROI
• Frequently asked questions
• Learn more

Requirements

Before diving in, make sure the following are configured. Taking time to set these up correctly will ensure your data is accurate and your insights are meaningful.

1. Groups (or Teams): Organize your users into teams or business units that reflect how your organization actually operates. Without well-structured groups, it's difficult to pinpoint productivity gaps or understand their impact at the department or team level. If you haven't set up groups yet — or need to update your existing ones — start with Group management before moving forward.
2. Goals: Define the productivity benchmarks your groups are measured against. Setting goals at the group level allows you to track performance trends, identify areas of concern, and quantify the gap between current and target productivity. Goals should reflect realistic expectations for each team's role and work patterns. Make sure to set productivity goals before digging into your data.

When to use Workforce Utilization

Workforce Utilization translates productivity data into financial metrics, helping executives:

• Identify where workforce capacity is underutilized across teams and departments to help mobilize remediation initiatives
• Quantify the financial impact of productivity gaps in dollar terms
• Track improvements in productivity and resource allocation over time
• Make data-driven decisions about headcount and resource allocation

Navigating Workforce Utilization

Filter settings

Workforce Utilization can be customized using the filter options at the top of the dashboard:

• Month: Select which month to analyze from the past 12 complete months

Pro Tip: Set up your subscription using the "This Month" or "Last Month" option in the Month filter, and it will automatically update each month accordingly.

• Team: Filter data by specific departments or business units

We recommend selecting the departments and/or business units that represent the top line of your business (n-1 groups or the key organizational divisions (i.e., Sales, IT, Customer Success) that roll up directly to executive leadership and provide a high-level view) to provide leadership with a high-level view of the organization

• Avg Annual Salary: Select an average annual salary figure to calculate the financial impact

Click the refresh icon in the top right corner after making your filter selections to ensure they are applied to the dashboard.

Monthly Summary

The Monthly Summary panel provides a high-level overview of productivity gaps for the selected team(s) and month, including:

• The number of active users working below their productivity goal compared to the total users
• Total productivity gap in hours per day
• Equivalent number of full-time employees (FTE)
• Monthly and annualized financial impact based on the specified average salary

This summary quantifies the scale and cost of unused capacity across your organization.

Monthly Financial Loss by Team

The By Team panel breaks down productivity gaps by team or department, showing:

Teams are sorted from highest to lowest financial impact, helping you quickly identify the most significant areas for improvement. 

Note: When multiple teams are selected in the filter, users who belong to more than one of the selected teams will be counted multiple times in this grid. This may result in the sum of users across teams exceeding your total user count.

Click the three-dot menu to the right of any Team listed in the first column and select Activity Breakdown to view the activity data for users on that team in detail.

This dashboard shows you exactly how each team member spends their time, letting you compare productive time against goals and assess their time usage. You'll see side-by-side comparisons of activity types per user, plus category percentages that reveal where users focus their attention throughout the day.

Monthly Financial Loss by Productivity Threshold

The By Productivity Threshold panel segments users by the following productivity tiers:

• Less than 5 hrs/day (< 5 hrs/day)
• Less than 4 hrs/day (< 4 hrs/day)
• Less than 3 hrs/day (< 3 hrs/day)

For each tier, the panel then shows:

This breakdown helps identify the severity of productivity gaps across your organization.

Note: The data in this grid uses cumulative counting across productivity levels. Users who work less than 3 hours/day are also included in the counts for "Less than 4 hrs/day" and "Less than 5 hrs/day" rows. Similarly, users who work less than 4 hours/day are counted in the "Less than 5 hrs/day" row. This approach allows you to see the full impact at each productivity threshold, but it means that summing the values across rows will exceed your user count.

Productivity Goal Achievement Trend Summary

The Productivity Goal Achievement Trend Summary panel compares productivity metrics between the first and last month of the available data range (up to 12 months), showing whether:

• The number of users below their productivity goal has increased, decreased, or remained the same
• The percentage of users working less than 5 hrs/day has increased, decreased, or remained the same

This comparison provides context about whether productivity gaps improve or worsen over time.

Productivity Goal Shortfall Trend

The Productivity Goal Shortfall Trend chart displays a monthly visualization of:

This visualization helps identify patterns and seasonal fluctuations in productivity.

Recurring Productivity Goal Shortfall

The Recurring Productivity Goal Shortfall panel shows the persistence of productivity issues by categorizing users based on how many months they've worked below their goal:

• Between 2 and 4 Months (2 - 4 Months)
• Between 5 and 8 Months (5 - 8 Months)
• More than 8 Months (> 8 Months)

For each category, the panel shows:

This breakdown helps distinguish between temporary productivity dips and chronic underutilization while identifying any correlations with work location.

Customizing the dashboard

Subscriptions

Set up regular email subscriptions to ensure executives receive this vital financial data without logging into ActivTrak. Executive visibility is the primary goal of this dashboard!

When introducing this dashboard to executives, immediately set up a monthly subscription during your presentation to ensure ongoing visibility. Frame the subscription as their "monthly financial opportunity report" that quantifies potential savings across the organization.

• Create Monthly Subscriptions for C-level stakeholders, department heads, and financial decision-makers to maintain consistent awareness of untapped capacity costs

Pro Tip: Set up your subscription using the "This Month" or "Last Month" option in the Month filter, and your subscription will automatically update every month appropriately.

• Schedule for Month-End to provide timely insights that can influence upcoming resource allocation decisions
• Include Multiple Recipients in a single subscription to foster collaborative workforce optimization discussions
• External Stakeholders Welcome – add non-ActivTrak users via email address to extend insights to board members, consultants, or executives who don't regularly access the platform

To create subscriptions:

1. Click the Subscribe button in the upper-right corner of the dashboard
2. The currently logged-in user is added as a recipient by default
3. If sharing is enabled (see note below), you can add additional recipients:
   • Select from a list of app users
   • Enter external email addresses for non-app users
4. Configure the subscription schedule
   • Frequency: Set to Daily, Weekly or Monthly (recommended)
   • Format: Select PDF (recommended) or PNG
   • Options: Check Include Link to Dashboard for easy navigation back to ActivTrak
5. Click Add Subscription

Note: Sharing is enabled by default, which allows users to create subscriptions for non-application users, such as company executives and other application users. The Subscription & Sharing setting can be found in the app by navigating to Insights > Configuration > Subscriptions tab.

Practical applications

Identifying recurring productivity gaps

This dashboard provides executives with actionable insights to address systemic productivity issues:

• Spot persistent problem areas: quickly identify teams with consistently high percentages of users below their productivity goals
• Distinguish between isolated vs. widespread issues: determine whether productivity gaps are limited to specific departments or represent organization-wide challenges
• Correlate with work location patterns: analyze whether productivity gaps show different patterns among office, remote, or hybrid workers to inform workplace policies

Optimizing workforce allocation

For executives facing headcount decisions, this dashboard offers critical financial context:

• Validate headcount requests: identify departments with significant untapped capacity before approving new positions, potentially saving hundreds of thousands in unnecessary labor costs
• Enable strategic reallocation: support data-driven decisions to shift resources from teams with excess capacity to those facing resource constraints
• Inform hiring freezes or reductions: provide data-driven financial justification when considering workforce optimization initiatives

Quantifying productivity ROI

Help executives measure the financial impact of productivity programs in concrete terms:

• Establish financial baselines: document the financial impact of productivity gaps before implementing improvement initiatives
• Track improvements in dollar terms: measure the direct financial benefit of successful productivity programs over time
• Build executive support: demonstrate the ROI of productivity initiatives in the financial language executives understand and value

Pro Tip: When introducing this dashboard to executives, emphasize how it translates abstract productivity concepts into concrete financial metrics directly impacting bottom-line performance and strategic decision-making.

Frequently asked questions

How do you calculate Untapped Capacity FTE?

The productive hours per day goal is what ActivTrak uses to determine the full-time equivalent (FTE) for each employee. The Untapped Capacity FTE metric is calculated by subtracting each employee’s average productive hours per day in the selected time period from their productive hours per day goal, and then aggregating the results for all employees in scope. This helps executives understand how much employee-equivalent productivity you are missing to compare with proposed/potential new hire requests.

How are the productivity goals defined?

For Essentials Plus and Professional/Premium accounts, we use the goal value(s) set by the customer (at the account or team level, respectively). For Essentials/Advanced plan accounts created after September 2024, we assume 7 productive hours/day for all users. For Essentials/Advanced plan accounts created before then, we assume 6 productive hours/day for all users.

How is the Financial Loss (Monthly) metric calculated?

Financial Loss (Monthly) is calculated by multiplying the Untapped Capacity FTE by the Average Monthly Salary (i.e., Average Annual Salary divided by 12). This is then annualized in the summary section by multiplying by 12.

How to avoid double-counting in the groups?

You can avoid double-counting by selecting mutually exclusive groups (i.e., without members appearing in multiple groups). Our recommendation is to choose the groups that represent your departments or business units (n-1 of our organization), as they are usually mutually exclusive.

How do you account for part-time employees?

This can be accounted for by filtering on the set of groups or teams containing part-time employees and selecting a lower annual salary.

Salaries in my organization vary significantly, and a single average may be misleading. How do you manage that?

We believe that Untapped Capacity FTE provides very valuable and actionable insights, as it translates underutilization into employee equivalents, even if the salary amount is not granular enough. In other words, knowing that the Sales team has the equivalent of 11 employees not utilized (for example) is very actionable for making staffing decisions, even if the Financial Cost is only directional. However, if you are looking for highly accurate financial cost metrics, two options are available:

1. Export the grid and multiply the Untapped Capacity FTE metric by a different salary amount.
2. Level ActivConnect and the ActivTrak for BI - Financial Loss Report to specify more granular salary amounts for each team.

Learn more

• Benchmarks & Goals
• How to Set Goals in ActivTrak
• Executive Summary
• Workload Balance
• Real-time Visibility