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Understanding Employee Utilization Score
Understanding Employee Utilization Score

Learn all about the customization of Utilization score and formulas in Insightful to enhance your employee productivity management

K
Written by Katarina Dakic
Updated this week

Understanding Employee Productivity with Insightful helps Admins customize how they want to measure productivity to fit the specific needs and goals of their organization or industry.

With options to adjust what actually falls under productive time and how it is measured and by exploring different ways of employee Utilization calculation, Admins can research what their organization's employee utilization is like under different scenarios which allows them to better understand and enhance it.

To calculate the utilization score go to the Settings → Utilization tab.

Calculating Utilization scores of employees

As an Admin, you can create a custom formula for the calculation of employee utilization.

Utilization score percentage = (Sum of activities that you consider productive/tracked time based on your requirements) x 100%

The following sections will provide a more in-depth explanation of the numerator and denominator components of this formula.

Numerator of the formula

In the numerator of the formula, you can define what you consider as a productive activity. You can choose from one or all of the following options:

  • Productive Time (default choice)

  • Neutral Time

  • Manual Productive Time

  • Manual Neutral Time

  • Break Time

Denominator of the formula

In the denominator of the formula, you can choose what you'd like to measure productive activities against. You can select from one of the following options:

  • Expected Productive Time

  • Scheduled Time

  • Active Time

  • Work Time

In the Utilization tab, the screen only displays the formula currently used by the organization. Other formulas are accessible by clicking the Change button. The Change utilization formula dialog provides brief descriptions of each formula along with recommendations for suitable organizations.

Utilization score calculation against Fixed hours

In this scenario, when assigning expected productive time, you will be prompted to fill in the number of hours and minutes, as well as the threshold option.

Expected Productive Time

Fixed hours allow you to establish a set number of hours per day that you expect your employees to work productively. For example, if your goal is to achieve 6 productive hours per day, you can use this value as the denominator in your formula. It serves as your benchmark for measuring your utilization goal, indicating how well you've performed relative to your expected target.

Threshold option

Set the minimum amount of time an employee needs to be clocked in for Insightful to recognize it as a workday.

Working days

This functionality distinguishes whether an employee is scheduled to work or if it’s a non-working day for them. Incorporating clear definitions of workweek and non-working days into our system is essential for delivering accurate and reliable utilization percentages.

By defining non-working days, such as weekends, at the organizational level, you ensure the system accurately differentiates between workdays and days off.

Selecting working days helps in identifying days your employees are supposed to be working thus enhancing attendance tracking accuracy. This distinction is crucial for calculating Fixed Hours on Any Day, offering an option to exclude non-working days from the utilization formula, resulting in more meaningful data analysis for management.

  • Non-working days daily Utilization for an employee is displayed as N/A.

  • When showing Utilization for a range that includes non-working days, productive activities occurring during those days are taken into account, while targeted hours for those days are = 0.

  • You can select all days as working days.

Time Off impact

The Time Off feature helps determine whether an employee is scheduled to work or has a personal time off. All personal time off needs to be added manulaly or imported through CSV into Insightful. Here's how it impacts utilization calculations:

Full-day Time Off

A full day off is treated as a non-working day, and utilization is not calculated for that day. However, if the employee worked during their scheduled Time Off, that productivity is recorded and factored in when analyzing a longer time period.

Partial-day Time Off

For partial days off, such as working 4 out of 8 hours, the expected productivity is adjusted accordingly. Metrics are based on the hours worked, reducing expectations proportionally. For example, all metrics are divided by 4 instead of 8, reducing the expectations for the hours taken off.

Exclude Days Below Threshold

This applies to days when an employee worked below a set threshold (e.g., 5 or 15 minutes), and those days are excluded from utilization calculations over longer periods.

This is particularly useful for:

  • organizations that do not use Time Off tracking, this prevents the system from recording zero utilization for each day the employee was absent.

  • organizations that use time off but do not retroactively enter time-off data (e.g., for the past 3 or 6 months), this feature allows utilization to be calculated based on fixed hours without needing the Time Off records.

This approach ensures accurate utilization, even when Time Off data is incomplete or unavailable.

Effect of Selecting a Single Non-Working Day on Utilization

Since the organization expects to get zero utility out of that Employee on the weekend, utilization will not be shown, it will be N/A even though we are recording that activity, and take it into account when looking at percent over longer time periods.

Impact of Weekend Work or Time Off on Long-Term Utilization

If an admin activates the Fixed Hours for Any Day calculation and sets organizational working days, employees who put in extra work over weekends may have a higher utilization percentage compared to colleagues who didn't work on non-working days. This is because the calculation excludes non-working day activity from the divisor, potentially inflating the utilization percentage for those who did work on those days when viewed over a longer period.

Utilization score calculation against Scheduled time

Utilization calculation based on scheduled shifts involves measuring how efficiently work is being completed during scheduled shifts. Therefore, before switching to this calculation, make sure you have scheduled shifts.

The scheduled hours represent the expected working hours according to the schedule you set for employees.

Hours worked outside of the schedule

We offer an option to consider or exclude hours worked outside of scheduled shifts. When calculating employee utilization, you have the flexibility to choose whether to count or disregard these extra hours.

When enabled

If you choose to include extra hours, the calculation considers both scheduled hours and hours worked outside regular shifts. We allow clocking in up to 120 minutes before a scheduled shift and clocking out up to 120 minutes after a scheduled shift.

Example 1: If an employee is scheduled for 6 hours on Wednesday but works 8 hours, their utilization percentage will be 133%, which can help identify overperformers.

Example 2: If an employee works beyond their scheduled hours or on weekends (assuming there are no scheduled shifts during those days), the utilization percentage will be 100%.

When disabled

When this option is disabled, the calculation only considers scheduled hours. In this scenario, the maximum utilization that can be achieved is 100%. Any work done outside scheduled hours is not factored in.

Utilization score calculation against Active time

Active time consists of Productive Time + Neutral + Unproductive + Unlabeled + Manual Time.

This utilization assessment determines whether what you are actively working on is indeed productive. Simply put, it involves dividing productive activities from all activities.

The calculation of this utilization score takes into account the natural flow of work and the inherent presence of idle times during working hours. Therefore, the calculation excludes both idle time and break time.

Utilization score calculation against Work time

Work time consists of Active Time + Idle Time + Manual Time + Break Time.

Work time is calculated by factoring in not only total Active time, but also Idle time and time spent on Breaks. If your business or industry is sensitive to the influence of Idle time and breaks on overall productivity, then this utilization score calculation is well-suited for you.

Please be aware that this Utilization calculation is an organizational change that applies to everyone and cannot be customized on a team-by-team basis.

During the customization process, the calculation example will update automatically to show you the results of the selected settings.

The Utilization formula will be applied to historical data as well. The custom utilization formula is not applied to Projects. On the Employee Projects tab, utilization is calculated based on the Clocked time on a project, while on the Projects page, utilization is calculated based on Computer Activity.

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