Manager's Guide

ActivTrak Premium introduced several new reports and was recently expanded to include Coaching Opportunities, to help Managers save time and improve team member productivity and engagement. This guide explains how to interpret these new reports, navigate Coaching features, and leverage the data and actionable insights to coach employees on better work habits and drive measurable improvement across their teams.

While teams 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. We suggest identifying 2-3 use cases that have the greatest potential to improve productivity across your team. In assessing which use cases to prioritize, consider which are most likely to yield “quick wins,” so you can immediately demonstrate the value of these insights to your team and garner their buy-in. Coaching Opportunities, which refresh weekly, can be targeted to align with each use case as well.

Below, view the reports associated with each use case to collect your data-based evidence before communicating with or coaching your team:

1. First, refer to Workload Balance to understand across the team which team members are underutilized, overutilized, or healthy. ActivTrak Coach also alerts you to employees who are overutilized or nearing that point. Explore these Coaching Opportunities in the Coaching: Utilization tab.
1. Zero in on those who are overutilized to get a better understanding of 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? Has he or she expressed stress or difficulty keeping up with work? The Progress tab within the Coaching page can help you differentiate between long-term patterns and anomalies.
2. Zero in on those who are underutilized by doing the same. Consider questions for great context: Were they on vacation? Are they onboarding? Have they expressed having trouble?
2. Additional hours may be a result of training gaps, especially in technology. Click on an overutilized team member to view that individual’s dashboard. Consider questions while viewing the data: Are they leveraging the right technology? Are they distracted? What could be leading to the distractions? What do their work habits look like?
3. 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 report to understand time composition and Inefficiency Sources (tab 2).
4. To guide an individual or team of individuals to a healthier workload balance, refer to Benchmarks & Goals. In Benchmarks & Goals, you can adjust goals accordingly and track the team’s progress toward healthier balance.

1. Begin with viewing the Executive Summary to see productivity trends over time. Gauge whether productivity has remained consistent, or has increased or decreased.
2. For additional insight, view the Activity Breakdown to further understand how individuals are spending their time. Over- or under-usage across categories may suggest coaching opportunities, the need for changes to remote policies, or training needs.
3. Remote work can be a difficult transition for even the strongest team members. Review the Work Efficiency report to gain insight into team members’ ability to focus throughout the day. Reference the Coaching: Efficiency tab to see team members with Low Productivity Efficiency, and get recommendations to help them gain back personal time and achieve better work-life balance. Understand sources of inefficiency in the Work Efficiency: Inefficiency Sources tab.
4. Interested in understanding how remote work could be contributing to burnout? Reference the Workload Balance report to get the critical insights you need to identify overutilized and underutilized team members. Click on an individual's name to understand their working habits and spot potential fatigue before it becomes a bigger problem.
5. For those with both remote and in-office teams, reference the Team Comparison page 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 in the Benchmarks & Goals section.

1. Understanding a team’s productivity begins with collecting insights into their habits. Begin with viewing the Executive Summary to see an overview of time composition, trends, workload balance statistics, and top categories. 
2. In cases of considerable change to productivity trends (increases or decreases), refer to the Work Efficiency report to better understand changes in productivity and focus. Coaching Opportunities in the Coaching: Focus tab make it easy to identify team members who are unable to spend time on focused work due to excess 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 report to get additional information about trends over the course of weeks or months. The Coaching: 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 section.

To use ActivTrak to flag improper technology usage, refer to the Alarms: Configuration tab to review alarm set up, then navigate to the Alarms: Alarm Log report to review when alarms have been triggered. These alarms may indicate coaching opportunities or a need for policy reinforcement.

1. Ensuring the even distribution of work across a team can decrease burnout risk and increase employee engagement and wellness. Use the Workload Balance: Analysis report and the Coaching: Utilization tab to quickly identify which employees are over-/under-utilized. The Coaching: Progress Report can help you differentiate between long-term patterns and anomalies and zero in on team members at the greatest risk of burnout.
2. Navigate to the Workload Balance: Trends report 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, new hire who is onboarding showing low utilization).
3. Understand how efficiently your team is working with the Work Efficiency: Overview and Work Efficiency: Inefficiency Sources reports. These reports shed light on key insights such as excessive screen time, distractions, or attention shifts that may be contributing to unhealthy utilization levels. 
4. Finally, refer to the Technology Usage: Adoption report to view which tools employees are using most. This allows managers 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 distraction sources.  

1. To understand if technology is being used efficiently and effectively, start with the Technology Usage: Overview report to see which applications and websites a 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 efficacy and value of technological investments. The Technology Usage: Top Changes report will show where there have been increases or decreases in usage, which may help identify areas of misalignment or improper usage of tools.
3. The Technology Usage: Adoption report shows individual user activity for each technology category, providing insight into the technology habits of specific users. If certain users are seemingly not using certain technologies as effectively as others on their team, there may be a need for additional training.
4. Understand what is causing your team’s attention to shift by navigating to the Work Efficiency: Inefficiency Sources and reviewing the Top Apps/Sites used by the team to collaborate and/or where multitasking happens regularly; thus, affecting their focus.

1. Begin with the Activity Breakdown: Activity Type report to understand how much time is spent on productive or unproductive activities, and review team metrics and individual activity detail compared to team goals. Review Coaching Opportunities in the Coaching: Efficiency tab to identify team members with Low Productivity Efficiency, and get recommendations to help them limit distractions and reduce time spent on non-business activities.
2. In the Technology Usage: Adoption report, investigate 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 training.
3. For a more general understanding of which tools are being used most and least frequently, see the Technology Usage Overview report. 
4. For additional concerns about operational compliance, review the Work Efficiency: Inefficiency Sources to see which apps/websites are driving non-business activity and might be violating company policy. 

1. Understanding a team’s communication style is important when trying to determine if communication habits are effective and efficient versus distraction sources. Start by looking at the Activity Breakdown: Activity Category report to see the percentage usage of collaboration tools such as Slack, Teams, etc. compared to other categories.
2. Team members with Coaching Opportunities in the Coaching: Focus tab spend a disproportionate amount of their Productive time collaborating or multitasking, which takes away from time for focused work. Reference Coaching: 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/websites are involved in attention shifts, specifically looking at two-way communication using digital collaboration tools like meeting software, chat and messaging.
4. Beyond communication, this report can be used to identify any other distraction and/or disruption sources.
5. Lastly, use the Technology Usage: Top Changes report to identify any sudden changes in activity category. 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 becomes a helpful way to assess change.