First published on Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Last updated on Thursday, September 25, 2025
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Timesheets provide valuable insight into the day-to-day activities of your employees.
If you manage a large team, particularly one which is spread across the office, at home or in other locations, timesheets can be priceless.
Not only are they great for giving you information on the working time of your employees, but you can also gain data-driven insights into their performance and productivity too. Providing a useful tool for those annual and bi-annual performance reviews that so often crop up out of nowhere!
Data-driven performance reviews
To ensure fair assessments of your employees’ performance, it’s important to gather as much data as possible. Gaining full insight into their work, the outcomes they achieve and the contribution they provide for the business.
By integrating timesheet reports into your performance reviews, you can gain even greater insight into how an employee works throughout the day. Assessing how they spend their time and possibly even finding areas for praise or improvement.
For example, an employee may be spending less time than is usually required to complete a report or send their daily target of outbound emails. By knowing this, you can set new performance goals. Goals which are both achievable and relevant (SMART).
Utilising the valuable free time left in their week. You could even allocate this time for personal development by offering training courses or mentoring.
Stamp out time theft
Time wasting and examples of time theft will have significant impacts on the productivity and performance of your team.
If it’s easy to identify where time theft may occur, with data from your timesheets, you can quickly address this issue.
This may be as simple as addressing concerns surrounding un-recorded hours or extended break times.
By talking to your employee, you may discover what is causing this. Perhaps the issue is deep-rooted. They may be lacking motivation or dealing with an undisclosed personal issue. But by taking the time to have a private 1:1 conversation with them, you can address the concern and enhance their performance in the long run.
Holding employees accountable for their time
By using timesheets in your workplace, the onus is on your employees to record their working hours.
Giving them both a sense of ownership over their work and responsibility for this essential administrative task. If you depend on the accuracy of your timesheets for the general running of your business, concerns around the use of timesheets can be raised within performance reviews.
To determine the effectiveness of timesheets and your staff’s ability to fill them out, you could consider the following points:
Are staff completing their timesheets on time?
Do the timesheets reflect the daily tasks of employees?
Are all hours being accounted for?
Did staff stick to the hours required of them for the day/week?
On average how much time did an employee contribute to a team project?
Any issues you identify can be quickly addressed with individuals during their reviews and one to one meetings.
Justify decisions to promote and increase salary
On a more positive note, timesheets can be used to provide evidence for the support of promotions, pay rises, career advancements and bonuses.
If an employee is regularly going above and beyond within their role and is recording this within their timesheets, such as when they do overtime or work extra hours on a project, you can use this as evidence to provide them a reward.
This could be a promotion, in alignment with their performance goals and objectives, or a pay rise to acknowledge their hard work and contribution to the business.
Elevate your performance reviews with tools and features from BrightHR
Incorporating timesheets into your performance reviews provides a clear, data-driven assessment of productivity and working hours. Offering the evidence business owners and managers need to make informed decisions about an employee’s performance.
Whether certain working behaviours need to be re-enforced or praise and career advancements can be offered, timesheets are a window into effective time management. Allowing you to have fair and honest conversations with employees about their use of time but most importantly how time is invested to achieve key goals both for their personal development and the business.
Want to optimise how you integrate your timesheet data with performance reviews?
Choose BrightHR.
Our award-winning HR software contains all the tools and features you need to manage both your time and staff in one easy-to-use online platform.
Book a free demo to discover Blip, our clocking in app with timesheet report functions, and our latest performance management tools, including ready-to-go employee 1:1 and review forms at your fingertips.
