Deeper Productive Time Insights Now Available!

Prior to May 4, we had two categories for Productive Time – Focused Time and Attention Shifts. We've now introduced new logic in our Premium Insights reports, which breaks Productive Time into three categories – Focused, Collaboration, and Multitasking Time – for deeper insights.

Customers expressed a more neutral way to explain when an employee is working on multiple tasks at once and have also wondered exactly where collaboration time fits in. That got the ActivTrak team thinking and we feel this new approach enables us to account for collaborative time and also capture the time cost of context switching.

Breaking This Down

• Focused Time: This is the working time in which an employee is engaged on a single task, without disruption or multitasking activity. 
• Collaboration Time: This is a new category we are introducing, which is the working time that occurs through two-way communication using digital collaboration tools like meeting software, chat and messaging. Collaboration Time, by definition, is not focused, even though it is critical in every company. Also, you will be able to configure the categories that roll up to collaboration, which can be updated in the Insights > Configuration page.
• Multitasking Time: This is currently called “attention shifts” and includes productive activities consisting of multiple tasks executed in a short period of time. The term “attention shifts” is a very broad category, not capturing the time spent collaborating or can be interpreted as a negative by some managers, when in fact the individual has been pulled away by something in their environment and they are actually multitasking. Short period of time is triggered by 4 apps/2 screens in less than one minute and is configurable through the Insights > Configuration page. 

Premium Insights Enhanced so you can Work Wiser

These deeper insights are apparent in the reports that analyze Productive Time. That includes:

• New naming – Multitasking Time – replaces Attention Shift Time.
• New category called Collaboration Time is viewable across Premium reports.
• Focused Time, Focus Efficiency %, Focused Session (min), Multitasking Time are now lower because Collaboration Time is carved out separately. 
• New Premium users will be onboarded with a Focused Goal of 3 hrs/day (currently 5 hrs/day) by default. This can be adjusted at the team level in the Insights > Benchmarks & Goals page.
  • These insights will be retroactive for all your data history so you can compare apples to apples over time. 

These deeper insights offer the following benefits:

• Provides a deeper understanding on how time is spent across the organization
• Highlights how time allocation varies across teams, roles and individuals
• Better hone in on focus capabilities across your organization with more precise calculation
• Clearly extend your view of collaboration across and outside your organization

For example, in the Personal Insights Dashboard you see Focused Session (mins) and Multitasking Time (formerly Attention Shifts) in the Productive Time Breakdown. Also, notice that the Productive Time Breakdown includes the new Collaboration Time. Because we’ve carved out Collaboration Time separately, these metrics are now lower.

Another great example is the Work Efficiency - Trends Report. Here times are lower for Focus Time and Productive Time Breakdown Trends include Focused, Collaboration and Multitasking Time.

Premium reports and dashboards that have these deeper Productive Time insights include:

• Executive Summary
• Team Comparison - Productivity & Focus
• Team Comparison - Efficiency & Workload
• Team Comparison - Side by Side
• Work Efficiency - Overview
• Work Efficiency - Inefficiency Sources
• Work Efficiency - Trends
• Benchmarks & Goals
• Personal Insights