ActivTrak Coach (available in select plans) alerts managers each week to changes in team members' behavior, so they know where to focus their time and attention. Coach analyzes team work habits to identify early indicators of disengagement, burnout and declining productivity — enabling managers to take swift action to prevent a negative impact on performance.
- Identify and validate potential issues like burnout risk, disengagement or declining productivity — before they lead to attrition
- Increase team productivity, drive employee engagement, and promote healthier work habits
- Drive collaborative discussions with team members
- Assess the impact of coaching on team members' work habits
Watch the video below for a quick tour of the feature and read this article for additional details.
A video overview of ActivTrak Coach
Overview
To access ActivTrak Coach, click on Coach from the left app navigation.
Tip: Add Coach to your Favorites for quick access.
Underneath the title bar at the top of each Coach page, you will see four tabs (views):
Highlights
The Highlights tab displays six types of Coaching Opportunities bucketed into three categories:
1. Productivity
- Productivity Decline: Team members whose productivity has declined from the previous four weeks’ trend
- High Passive Time: Team members who spend a high proportion of their productive time in a “passive” state, or not engaging with their mouse or keyboard
2. Utilization
- High Utilization: Team members who are at risk of burnout because they are consistently working long hours or aren’t taking enough breaks
- Low Utilization: Team members who may be starting to disengage or who have bandwidth to take on additional work
3. Efficiency & Focus
- Low Efficiency: Team members who are missing their productivity goals or have additional screen time that could be contributing to fatigue as a result of low productivity efficiency
- Low Focus: Team members who are missing focus time goals, likely due to meetings, multitasking or other distractions
The Highlights tab in Coach
Coaching Opportunities are based on trends in work activities that suggest an employee could benefit from manager guidance. Managers can reference these opportunities every week for important signals about team members’ performance — along with actionable advice to address employees’ specific challenges.
Each category card displays team members with new opportunities in the current week, those who have recurring opportunities and those whose behavior is improving. See additional information about each opportunity by clicking “View details” or by navigating to the corresponding tabs at the top of Coach.
Note: Users will show up as “Recurring” each week they meet the criteria for a coaching opportunity. After 6+ consecutive weeks of improvement, team members will be removed from the opportunity list.
Tip: You can adjust how Coaching Opportunities are identified by updating team goals in Insights. Learn more.
Coaching Opportunities are refreshed once a week on Mondays. When new opportunities are available for review, a notification will appear next to Coach within the app navigation. You can also create email subscriptions for Coach to stay on top of areas that need attention and to track progress.
Tip: When you see an ongoing negative trend, hold an exploratory discussion with the team member to better understand the key drivers behind the behavior. Remember, not all issues are addressable at the individual level and may require broader solutions. Based on the opportunity type, consider whether it’s necessary to make team-level changes, such as reallocating work, reducing meetings and distractions or adding headcount.
Productivity
In the Productivity tab, you can review details on team members with declining productivity and high passive time. Click See Coaching Advice for specific recommendations that help managers take action to help improve team productivity.
The Productivity tab in Coach
Productivity Decline
Identify team members whose productivity has declined in the last week compared to their average for the previous four weeks.
Criteria for coaching opportunities
A user is flagged as having declining productivity if their Productive Hours/Day in the last week are at least 15% lower than the user’s average in the previous four weeks.
Formula: Productive Hrs/Day (Last Week) ÷ Productive Hrs/Day (Prior 4 Complete Weeks) < .85
Coaching Advice:
- Validate if there is a known contributing factor such as PTO, an increase in in-person meetings due to a return to office, or other recent events that would lead employees to spend less time on their computers.
- In a 1X1 discussion, gather context to better understand workstyle and ensure the individual has the tools and resources needed for success in their role. Consider customizing the individual’s goals to better reflect screen time required.
- If relevant, encourage the employee to leverage their Personal Insights Report for professional development.
High Passive Time
Identify team members who spend a high proportion of their productive time in a “passive” state — meaning they are online but not engaging with their mouse or keyboard.
Note: Learn more about how Passive Time is defined and how to configure it for your account.
Criteria for coaching opportunities
A user is identified as having High Passive Time if at least 10% of their Productive Hours/Day over the last four weeks is Passive Time.
Formula: % Productive (Passive) Hrs/Day = Productive (Passive) Hrs/Day ÷ [Productive (Passive) Hrs/Day + Productive (Active) Hrs/Day] * 100
Coaching Advice:
- Validate if there is a known contributing factor such as a conference or all-hands that would account for the increase in Passive Time.
- In a 1x1 discussion, gather context to better understand workstyle and ensure the individual has the tools and resources needed for success in their role. Consider customizing the individual’s goals to better reflect screen time required.
- If relevant, encourage the employee to leverage their Personal Insights Report for professional development.
Utilization
In the Utilization tab, you can review details on overutilized and underutilized team members, along with Coaching Advice — specific actions a manager can take to help their team avoid burnout and disengagement.
The Utilization tab in Coach
High & Low Utilization
Identify employees who show signs of potential burnout risk (consistently exceeding their Productive Hours/Day goal) or disengagement (consistently falling short of their Productive Hours/Day goal).
Note: Learn how to check and adjust the Productive Hours/Day goal for your team here.
Criteria for coaching opportunities
Formula for High Utilization Opportunities:
Individuals are identified as overutilized if they meet one of the following conditions over the last four complete weeks:
1. The number of productive hours per day is at least 20% higher than the Productive Time goal. (Note: 20% is the default Utilization Level Threshold, however, this can be customized and set via the Insights Configuration Page. Learn more here.)
OR
2. The number of productive hours per day is 15% higher than the goal AND the average break time per day is less than the suggested break time per day (10 minutes of break time for every productive hour per day).
Formula for Low Utilization Opportunities:
Individuals are identified as underutilized if they meet one of the following conditions over the last four complete weeks:
1. The number of productive hours per day is at least 20% lower than the Productive Time goal. (Note: 20% is the default Utilization Level Threshold, however, this can be customized and set via the Insights Configuration Page. Learn more here.)
OR
2. The number of productive hours per day is at least 15% lower than the Productive Time goal AND the average break time per day is more than the suggested break time per day (10 minutes of break time for every productive hour per day).
Click on a team member’s name to drill into The Workload Balance - Team Dashboard for more detail on how work is distributed across your team.
Coaching Advice:
High Utilization Opportunities
Understanding how workload is distributed across your team enables you to spot burnout risk early, so you can address it before it becomes a serious problem. It’s normal to see occasional fluctuations in workload, but if team members are consistently working long hours or outside of traditional working hours, this signals an ideal time to check in and see how they are feeling, or what they may need to achieve a healthier balance. The Highlights tab can help you differentiate between an ongoing issue and anomalies caused by a big project or deadline.
- Engage in 1x1 discussions with individuals in this zone to understand the context and offer the necessary support.
- When high utilization opportunities appear to be team-wide or role-based, engage in team discussions to further understand and provide support on how to alleviate workload strain.
- Suggest taking some time off in the near future.
- Offer additional training and support to address skill gaps that may be contributing to additional hours.
- Set expectations for calendaring break time and respecting it across the team.
- Consider whether additional team members would help redistribute the workload.
Low Utilization Opportunities
- Engage in 1x1 discussions with individuals in this zone to understand the context and offer the necessary support.
- When low or under-utilization opportunities appear to be team-wide or role-based, engage in team discussions to further understand and provide support on how to expand workload.
- Offer additional training and support to address skill gaps that may be contributing to disengagement.
- Set expectations for accessibility and accountability across the team.
- Consider where low or underutilized team members can help support overutilized peers.
Efficiency & Focus
In the Efficiency & Focus tab, you can review details on employees who display signs of low efficiency or low focus, along with Coaching Advice on how managers can remove common distractions and focus blockers.
The Efficiency & Focus tab in Coach
Low Efficiency
Identify team members who are not achieving their productive time goal or who spend a disproportionate amount of time on activities that aren’t classified as productive for their role.
Criteria for coaching opportunities
Formula: Individuals are identified as having low efficiency if their productivity efficiency (percentage of productive time relative to total time) over the last four complete weeks is less than 90%.
Click on a team member’s name to drill into the Work Efficiency - Team Dashboard for more detail on efficiency trends across your team.
Coaching Advice:
- Engage in 1x1 discussions with individuals with low productivity efficiency to understand and offer the necessary support. Aim to uncover common distractions, training needs, or goal clarity as it relates to the team strategy.
- When inefficiency appears to be team-wide, engage in team discussions to further understand what may be leading to disengagement or distractions during traditional working time.
- Guide employees around how to improve productivity and focus habits daily.
- Review goals and establish role alignment across employees to help keep employees on track and objective-driven.
- Highlight the benefits of greater efficiency for employees by limiting expectations around time behind the computer and instead, rewarding outcome achievement.
- Consider working with IT to restrict commonly used web pages used for non-business-related work activity.
Low Focus
Identify team members who are not meeting their focus time goals or who have low focus efficiency.
Criteria for coaching opportunities
Formula:
Low Focus Coaching Opportunities are determined based on the Focused Hours/Day goal. Learn how to adjust goals here.
Individuals are identified as having low focus if their Focused Hours/Day over the past four complete weeks are lower than the goal AND their focus efficiency (the percentage of focused time relative to total time) is less than 35%.
Click on a team member’s name to drill into the Work Efficiency - Team Dashboard for more detail on efficiency trends across your team.
Coaching Advice:
Focus time is essential for creative thinking, deep work and high-quality output, but it can be hard to come by. Meetings, email and distractions tend to eat into workdays, leaving little time for extended periods of focus. While it's true that all roles will require different amounts of focus time, everyone benefits from getting more focus time throughout their work weeks.
Managers can support team members who have low focus efficiency by helping reduce distractions, carve out more focus time, optimize processes, and more. The Highlights tab can help you determine whether team member focus is improving and if your guidance is making the intended impact.
- Align on the best schedule to collaborate/communicate vs perform deep work.
- Streamline processes by consolidating applications into a single window or reducing the tools required.
- Align on team-wide blocked time with no meetings (i.e.Wednesday mornings) and block it across calendars to help ensure effectiveness.
- Mute notifications from email and chat/messaging applications to increase focused time.
Subscribe to Coach Updates
To ensure you never miss a Coaching Opportunity, we recommend that you subscribe to receive emailed reports of all ActivTrak Coach tabs.
Note: You can subscribe team members to these reports as well! Navigate to each Coach tab and follow these step-by-step instructions.
Learn more:
- How to Set Goals in Insights
- Creating and Managing Insights Email Subscriptions
- Insights Configuration
- Contact Support