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It seems almost contradictory. How can a greater
emphasis on accounting lead to better employee morale?
The Problem: You're a
manager in the typical white-collar forest of cubicles. Your
employees show up on time and seem to be clicking away at their
keyboards, but you're not quite sure how hard they're working,
or exactly what they're doing. Are they slacking, working on
the wrong things, or worse? And by hanging over their shoulders, "checking
up" too often, and projecting your suspicious feelings,
you create bad vibes all around. It's not their fault but they're
paying the price for it.
The Solution: Nip this in the
bud: enforce good time accounting. It all starts
simply enough - sign for an electronic
timesheet product. Ask your team to account for their time
every day, in fairly general terms. It takes just a few minutes
online.
By requiring your staff to report their time
you create benefits across the board:
- Employees will respect your desire
for transparency: you're not being a jerk, you want
the truth.
- Voluntary reporting distributes your
management burden to each staffer; it's not all on
your plate.
- By enforcing real discipline in categorizing
time, you build respect from your team.
- You can stop hanging over their shoulders and
asking too many "what are you working on?" questions.
- Your performance reviews will be more
meaningful when you're armed with reports and analysis
of their time
Our timesheet
tool of choice is ClickTime (full disclosure: it's our parent
company). We use it and we've seen how effective it can be for
managers in stopping the cycle of suspicion and improving morale.
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