Schedule Adherence Trends

When your business depends on people being available at specific times—whether it's providing timely customer support, responding to urgent IT requests, or collaborating during core hours—even small schedule deviations can have big impacts. A customer support agent starting 15 minutes late could mean longer wait times and frustrated customers. An IT team member working outside core hours might miss critical collaboration opportunities.

Schedule Adherence Trends helps you identify team members who aren't adhering to their schedules before it becomes a larger issue. See who's starting late, leaving early, or working outside scheduled hours, so you can have productive coaching conversations with real data and ensure your team shows up when your business—and your customers—need them most.

Access the dashboard at Productivity Optimization > Schedule Adherence Trends.* Admins and Configurators on an Essentials Plus or Professional/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 Schedule Adherence Trends to your Favorites for quick access.

*Available in select ActivTrak plans. Contact sales@activtrak.com to try this feature, get a demo or upgrade your plan.

Contents

• Requirements
• When to use Schedule Adherence Trends
• Define a Work Schedule
• Navigating Schedule Adherence Trends
  • Filter settings
  • Productive Time Breakdown
  • Goal Achievement during Schedule
  • Users with 100% Goal Achievement during Schedule
  • Schedule Adherence Trend
  • Schedule Adherence by User
• Drilling down to Schedule Adherence
• Subscribing to Schedule Adherence Trends
• Practical applications
  • Improve customer experience
  • Having better coaching conversations
  • Figuring out if it's attendance or productivity
  • Adjusting schedules that actually work
  • Building team accountability
• 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 Schedule Adherence Trends

You'll find this dashboard helpful when:

• Someone seems to always be "running late," but you need data before having that conversation
• Your team coverage feels spotty during core business hours, affecting customer response times
• Customer satisfaction is declining, and you suspect inconsistent staff availability is a factor
• People complain about workload, but you're not sure if it's a scheduling issue or a productivity issue
• You want to track whether schedule changes actually help attendance
• You need to document attendance patterns for performance reviews

Define a Work Schedule

Before using this Dashboard, you'll need to create a Work Schedule. A default schedule is automatically set up with all users added to it, so you can get started right away. If you need additional schedules to match different work patterns across your teams, such as Flexible Hours schedules, you can create additional ones. The number of custom schedules available depends on your plan.

Navigating Schedule Adherence Trends

Filter settings

Schedule Adherence Trends can be customized using the filter options at the top of the dashboard:

• Activity Date: Select a time period to analyze
• Team: Choose one or more teams
• Day Type: Limit data to either weekday or weekend activity

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

More: These advanced filters help you find specific problems:

Goal Achievement during Schedule: Use the slide bar to set a range (0 minimum, 100 maximum) for the percentage of working days that users achieved their productivity goal during the scheduled time Productive Hrs/Day: Use the operator dropdown and enter a value to filter by total daily productive hours Productive Hrs/Day (Schedule): Use the operator dropdown and enter a value to filter by productive hours during the scheduled time Productive Hrs/Day (Non-Schedule): Use the operator dropdown and enter a value to filter by productive hours outside scheduled time Active Days Use the operator dropdown and enter a value to filter by the number of active days Days Starting Late: Use the operator dropdown and enter a value to filter by the number of days users started after their scheduled time Days Ending Early: Use the operator dropdown and enter a value to filter by the number of days users ended before their scheduled time Time Off Days Use the operator dropdown and enter a value to filter by time off days Schedule Type: Use the dropdown menu to select either Fixed Hours or Flexible Hours to filter by the type of Work Schedule assigned to users

Productive Time Breakdown

This circle chart illustrates when productive work actually happens by comparing Productive Hrs/Day (Scheduled) vs. Productive Hrs/Day (Non-Scheduled). If the light blue section (work outside scheduled hours) is large, your team might be:

• Making up for the missed scheduled time
• Working extra hours due to a heavy workload
• Following natural work patterns that don't match their official schedule

Goal Achievement during Schedule

Goal Achievement during Schedule indicates how often people meet their productivity goal during scheduled work hours. Low percentages usually mean one of two things: attendance problems or productivity issues during scheduled time.

Users with 100% Goal Achievement during Schedule

Users with 100% Goal Achievement during Schedule shows how many people consistently meet their goal during scheduled hours. The format looks like "7 of 15 (47%)" - meaning 7 out of 15 people fully hit their goal during the scheduled time during the Activity Date.

This metric helps you identify your most reliable team members and understand what "normal" looks like for your team.

Schedule Adherence Trend

This weekly chart shows whether attendance trends by comparing Goal Achievement during Schedule (teal bars) and Users with 100% Goal Achievement during Schedule (black line). Use it to:

• Spot seasonal patterns (like summer vacation impacts)
• Track whether policy changes actually helped
• See if attendance issues are getting worse

Schedule Adherence by User

This table gives you the details you need for individual conversations.

A User's schedule:

A User's performance:

The table is sorted by Goal Achievement during Schedule, placing individuals with the most significant attendance challenges at the bottom.

Drilling down to Schedule Adherence

When reviewing the Schedule Adherence by User table, you'll see aggregated metrics that provide a high-level overview of each User's performance across the selected time period. While these summary metrics are valuable for spotting patterns, they don't tell the complete story.

To see day-by-day details: Click on the three-dot menu next to a User in the table to open the Schedule Adherence dashboard in a new tab. 

The dashboard automatically applies:

• The same Activity Date filter from Schedule Adherence Trends (Schedule Performance)
• The selected user in the User filter

This drill-down view helps you:

• Identify specific problem days - A User with 75% goal achievement might have had one or two challenging days rather than consistent underperformance throughout the period
• Understand the context - See exactly which days Users started late or ended early, and how this correlates with their productive hours that day
• Make informed decisions - Day-level activity data helps you determine whether intervention is needed or if performance variations are temporary fluctuations

Best practice: Drill down into Users with unexpected metrics to understand the full context before taking action or initiating coaching conversations. What appears to be a pattern at the aggregate level may be a series of isolated incidents upon closer examination.

Subscribing to Schedule Adherence Trends

Don't add schedule monitoring to your list of things to remember. Set up subscriptions to receive attendance data.

• Set up weekly subscriptions for yourself, team leads, and HR partners who need to monitor attendance patterns. Weekly delivery keeps schedule issues visible before they become bigger problems.

  Pro Tip: Use "Last 7 Days" in your Activity Date filter to get consistent rolling data that updates each week automatically.

• Schedule for Monday mornings to get attendance insights for the week ahead. This timing lets you address issues proactively rather than reactively.
• Add multiple people to a single subscription to keep everyone on the same page regarding team attendance. When managers and HR see the same data, conversations about performance become more productive.

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 by selecting from a list of App users
4. Configure the subscription schedule
   • Frequency: Set to Daily, Weekly or Monthly
   • 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 other users of the application. The Subscription & Sharing setting can be found in the app by navigating to Settings > Insights Configuration > Subscriptions tab.

Practical applications

Improve customer experience

Consistent schedule adherence ensures reliable coverage during key business hours, reduces customer wait times, and ensures timely responses to support requests or service inquiries.

Having better coaching conversations

Instead of saying "you seem to be late a lot," you can say "the data shows you started after 9:30 AM on eight days this month." Real numbers make conversations more productive and less personal.

Figuring out if it's attendance or productivity

Someone with low goal achievement might have an attendance problem (lots of late starts) or a productivity problem (poor focus during scheduled hours). The data shows you which conversation to have.

Adjusting schedules that actually work

If someone consistently works outside their scheduled hours, it may be because their official schedule doesn't align with their actual work hours. Use this data to create schedules that align with real work patterns.

Building team accountability

Share team-level data to illustrate the impact of schedule adherence on overall coverage. Set realistic improvement targets based on current performance rather than arbitrary goals.

Frequently asked questions

How do you calculate Goal Achievement during Schedule?

Goal Achievement during Schedule is the percentage of working days when someone met their productivity goal during scheduled hours. For people with a fixed schedule, this looks at activity between start and end times. For flexible hours, it considers all activities on scheduled working days.

Formula: Days achieving goal / Total working days.

Someone is highly productive outside scheduled hours. What does that mean?

This could indicate:

• They're working extra to meet demands
• Their schedule doesn't match their natural work patterns
• They're making up for time missed during scheduled hours

Look at their Days Starting Late and Days Ending Early numbers to understand which situation applies.

How is this different from other schedule dashboards?

This dashboard displays trends over time and allows you to filter for specific issues. Other schedule dashboards give day-by-day details. Use this for spotting patterns and performance details; other dashboards for daily monitoring.

What if someone doesn't have a schedule assigned?

Contact your ActivTrak Admin. Everyone should have a schedule assigned to make this data meaningful.

Learn more

• Schedule Adherence
• Benchmarks and Goals
• How to Set Goals in ActivTrak