A Manager's Guide to Using Insights

This guide explains how people managers can understand and interpret the Insights dashboards and Coach features, and leverage these insights to drive measurable and sustainable improvements across various use cases, including:

• Preventing Employee Burnout
• Managing a Remote or Hybrid Workforce 
• Measuring and Managing Productivity 
• Balancing Workloads
• Streamlining Technology Usage
• Ensuring Operational Efficiency and Compliance
• Improving Team Focus and Communication

While managers are likely to identify with several of the use cases covered in this guide, working to address too many obstacles at once can be disruptive and overwhelming to your team. To start, we suggest identifying the two or three use cases that have the greatest potential to drive results across your team. Oftentimes, the mitigation of these can have a positive impact on the other use cases as well.

In assessing which use cases to prioritize, consider which are most likely to yield “quick wins” so you can build immediate momentum and demonstrate the value of these insights to your teams (and garner their buy-in). Below, view the reports associated with each use case to collect your data-based insights before devising an action plan to communicate and coach your team.

Please Note: Users' access to dashboards and features may vary based on account configuration. ActivTrak Admins can adjust access settings from the Role Access page. Learn more about roles & permissions for access to your ActivTrak account here.

Preventing Employee Burnout

1. First, refer to Workload Balance Dashboard to understand which team members are underutilized, overutilized, or healthy. ActivTrak Coach also alerts you to employees who are nearing overutilization. Explore these Coaching Opportunities on the Coach: Utilization tab.
2. Zero in on team members who are overutilized to get a better understanding of their working habits. (You can see more detail by clicking on a team member’s name within the report.) Consider questions for greater context: Was there a specific deadline that required additional hours? Is the employee onboarding or upskilling? Have they expressed stress or difficulty keeping up with their workload? The Progress tab within ActivTrak Coach can help you differentiate between long-term patterns and anomalies.
3. Next, zero in on those who are underutilized. Consider questions for context: Were they on vacation? Are they onboarding or upskilling? Have they expressed experiencing issues lately?
4. Additional hours may be a result of training gaps, especially related to technology. View an individual’s Personal Insights Dashboard to help answer questions like: Are team members leveraging the appropriate technologies? Are they distracted? What could be leading to the distractions or lack of focus? What do their work habits look like?
5. When burnout is pervasive throughout a team, it can indicate broader issues. If you are seeing burnout across a team, refer to the Work Efficiency Dashboard to understand time allocation and Inefficiency Sources.
6. To guide a team to a healthier workload balance, refer to the Benchmarks & Goals Dashboard. Within Benchmarks & Goals, you can adjust Productivity, Focus, and Collaboration goals and track the team’s progress toward a healthier workload balance.

Screenshot of the Workload Balance Dashboard

Screenshot of Coaching Opportunities related to workload balance in ActivTrak Coach

Managing a Remote or Hybrid Workforce 

1. Begin by viewing the Executive Summary Dashboard to see monthly and quarterly trends in productivity goal attainment and utilization levels. A sustained shift in either of these metrics may be correlated to changes in workplace model or staffing.  The ‘Stats by Team’ report provides a side-by-side view of productivity and utilization to help determine whether teams are able to achieve their goals while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
2. For additional insight, view the Activity Category tab within the Activity Breakdown Dashboard to further understand how individuals are spending their time. Inconsistent usage across categories may suggest coaching opportunities, the need for changes to remote or hybrid work policies, or additional training needs.
3. To gain insight into remote or hybrid team members’ ability to focus throughout the day, review the Work Efficiency Dashboard. You can also reference the Coach: Efficiency tab to see team members with low productivity efficiency and get recommendations to help them gain back time and achieve better work-life balance. Understand sources of inefficiency by referencing the Work Efficiency: Inefficiency Sources tab.
4. Interested in understanding how remote work could be contributing to burnout? Reference the Workload Balance Dashboard to identify overutilized and underutilized team members. Click on an individual's name to understand their work habits and spot signs of potential burnout before it becomes a bigger problem.
5. For managers with both remote and in-office team members, reference the Team Comparison Dashboard to compare the impact of collaboration and multitasking on productive focused time of teams in and outside the office.
6. Guiding your team toward increased productivity is easiest when clear goals are set and progress can be shared. Consider adjusting productivity goals within the Benchmarks & Goals Dashboard.

Screenshot of the Team Comparison Dashboard

Measuring and Managing Productivity 

1. Reference the Executive Summary Dashboard to see how your team is performing against their productivity goals and compare their performance to that of the organizational average. The ‘Stats by Team’ report displays team productivity alongside utilization levels, enabling you to assess the balance between performance and well-being.
2. In cases of considerable change to productivity trends (increases or decreases), refer to the Work Efficiency Dashboard to better understand changes in productivity and focus. Coaching Opportunities on the Coach: Focus page make it easy to identify team members who are unable to spend time on focused work due to excessive time in meetings, distractions from messaging applications, or frequent multitasking.
3. Viewing activity trends over time is a helpful way to manage productivity. Review the Activity Breakdown: Trends Dashboard for additional information about trends over the course of weeks or months. The Coach: Progress Report can also help you detect productivity patterns.
4. Guiding your team toward increased productivity is easiest when clear goals are set and progress can be shared. Consider adjusting productivity goals in the Benchmarks & Goals Dashboard.

Screenshot of the Executive Summary Dashboard

Screenshot of the Work Efficiency Dashboard

Balancing Workloads

1. Ensuring the even distribution of work across a team can decrease burnout risk, increase employee engagement, and help with retention efforts. Use the Workload Balance: Analysis Dashboard and the Coach: Utilization page to quickly identify which employees are over-/under-utilized. The Coach: Progress Report can help you differentiate between long-term patterns and anomalies, and zero in on team members with the greatest risk of burnout.
2. Analyze employee work capacity based on historical data in the Workload Balance: Capacity Planning Dashboard to understand where to better distribute workloads across team members in the future. This can be helpful after a reduction in force (RIF) or reorganization. You can also leverage these insights on an ongoing basis for quarterly or bi-annual resource planning for headcount allocation and to help make a case for hiring new FTEs or contractors if team members are over capacity.
3. Navigate to the Workload Balance: Trends Dashboard to see how utilization levels have fluctuated over time. Consider the unique circumstances that may be affecting utilization trends (i.e. specific deadlines, projects causing high utilization, a new hire who is onboarding, etc.).
4. Understand how efficiently your team is working with the Work Efficiency: Overview and Work Efficiency: Inefficiency Sources Dashboards. These dashboards shed light on key insights such as excessive screen time, distractions, or attention shifts that may be contributing to unhealthy utilization levels. 
5. Finally, refer to the Technology Usage: Adoption Dashboard to view which tools employees are using the most. This allows you to see if technology usage is helping or hindering productivity, as particularly high or low activity for certain categories might indicate inefficient processes, training needs, or sources of distraction.  

The Workload Balance Dashboard

The Progress Report in ActivTrak Coach

Streamlining Technology Usage

1. To understand if technology is being used efficiently and effectively, start with the Technology Usage: Overview Dashboard to see which applications and websites your team is using most frequently.  
2. Intentional use of technology is important not only to ensure employees are working efficiently but also to validate the necessity and value of technology investments. The Technology Usage: Top Changes Dashboard will display any increases or decreases in usage, which may help you identify areas of misalignment or improper usage of tools.
3. The Technology Usage: Adoption Dashboard displays individual user activity for each technology category, providing insight into the technology habits of specific team members. If specific individuals are not using certain technologies as effectively as others, this may indicate a skills gap and need for additional training.
4. Understand what is causing your team’s attention to shift by navigating to the Work Efficiency: Inefficiency Sources Dashboard and reviewing the Top Apps/Sites used by the team to collaborate and/or where multitasking occurs regularly; thus, affecting their ability to focus.

The Technology Usage Dashboard

Ensuring Operational Efficiency and Compliance

1. Begin with the Activity Breakdown: Activity Type Dashboard to understand how much time is spent on productive or unproductive activities, and to review team metrics and individual activity detail compared to team goals. Review Coaching Opportunities on the Coach: Efficiency tab to identify team members with low productivity efficiency, and get recommendations to help limit distractions and reduce time spent on non-business activities.
2. In the Technology Usage: Adoption Dashboard, dig into which tools employees are using to see if technology usage is helping or hindering productivity. Particularly high or low activity for certain categories might indicate inefficient processes, distraction sources, or a need for additional training.
3. For a more general understanding of which tools are being used most and least often, review the Technology Usage: Overview Dashboard. 
4. Review Work Efficiency: Inefficiency Sources to understand which apps, websites, and activities pose risks. 

The Technology Usage Dashboard

Improving Team Focus and Communication

1. Understanding individual communication styles is important when assessing if communication habits are effective and efficient vs. contributing to unnecessary distraction. Start by looking at the Activity Breakdown: Activity Category Dashboard to understand your team’s usage of collaboration tools such as Slack, Zoom, etc. compared to other categories.
2. Team members with Coaching Opportunities on the Coach: Focus tab often spend a disproportionate amount of their productive time collaborating or multitasking, which takes away from time for focused work. (Note that expected Focus Time varies based on an employee’s role. To ensure that Coaching Opportunities reflect the expectations for your team, adjust the Focus Time goal in the Benchmarks & Goals Dashboard.) Reference Coach: Focus for advice on how to help employees minimize distractions and reclaim time in their schedules.
3. To further understand if these activities are helping or hindering productivity, navigate to Work Efficiency: Inefficiency Sources. Compare which apps or websites contribute to attention shifts, specifically focusing on two-way communication using digital collaboration tools like meeting software, chat, and messaging. This report can also be used to identify any other sources of distractions.
4. Lastly, review the Technology Usage: Top Changes Dashboard to identify any sudden changes in categories of activities. You might look for an increase or decrease in communication tool usage to understand the degree to which your team is collaborating versus working independently. When new goals and expectations have been set around the use of collaboration tools, this report can be a helpful way to assess change.

The Work Efficiency Dashboard

This article has provided frameworks for people managers to interpret and act on the data insights in Insights dashboards and features to help address several common use cases. For additional guidance on navigating the product or understanding the workforce analytics in your account, please explore the resources in ActivTrak Academy or reach out to your customer success manager.

Learn More:

• Insights Overview
• ActivTrak Coach
• How to Set Goals in Insights
• Insights Configuration
• Creating and Managing Insights Email Subscriptions