Should I trust my employees?

Working from home – and now what?

Trust is a tricky thing. Trusting one another is probably indispensable in almost every area of life. Whether in private life between friends and partners, or in a work context between colleagues, or between employees and their managers. Trust is not simply there from one day to the next; it needs time before it can grow. Where no basis of trust can form, mutual suspicion often follows. In the relationship between boss and employee, a common consequence is excessive control or monitoring on the boss’s part. In what follows we take a closer look at the subject of trust in a work context.

A particularly topical subject

At the moment the employees of many companies are working from home. That brings with it the worry among some managing directors that employees might use their time at home for private activities at the company’s expense, instead of being productive and doing their work as they should. In other industries it has always been normal for individual employees or entire crews to be out in the field. Here too the boss cannot always keep track of where his employees are and what they are doing right now.

Trust is good, control is better?

Trust matters a great deal in a work context too - and not only when employees work from home or carry out jobs elsewhere, but also when they work in the office as usual. Because a manager who always wants a precise overview of every step his employees take is quickly labelled a control freak. And constant control and monitoring usually come at the cost of a good atmosphere in the business.

A balancing act...

Of course a manager does not have to hand over the reins entirely. It is much more about balancing the fine line between keeping an overview on the one hand , and exercising control on the other. It is about giving employees enough trust that independent work becomes possible. Of course it can happen now and then that an employee does not record their working hours precisely. When working from home in particular, the postman or a neighbour may turn up at the door. But as long as they still deliver proper work and move the business forward, that small distraction should be bearable.

Having a general overview of what is happening in the business is nevertheless very important for one reason: when problems come up, the causes can be uncovered quickly and processes improved. Adjustments and post-costing are then possible without difficulty. At the same time, transparency can only be achieved if both sides - that is, employees as well as managers – put their cards on the table. Both sides benefit from that equally.

In many companies it has proved worthwhile to set certain deadlines and schedule regular meetings or calls in which the manager can get an overview of the current state of the projects. In between, employees are given enough freedom and the trust that they will do their work properly and under their own direction. No matter when and from where you happen to be working.

Max Bayer-Eynck, owner and managing director of the trades business Kawentsmann, confirms from his own experience that a system cannot replace a grown culture of trust, only safeguard it:

“A system cannot replace the culture, and you are the ones responsible for that. And then, with clockin, with a system, with the greatest possible simplicity of use, we can also be a good tool.” – Max Bayer-Eynck, Owner & Managing Director, Kawentsmann

Max talks about how deeply this trust is anchored in the team at KAWENTSMANN in the podcast „Angepackt“ – for example when he describes how naturally colleagues in the team help each other out.

Time tracking, no ifs or buts

Keeping an overview of the working hours employees have put in and documenting them will soon be a legal requirement, and is therefore indispensable for managers. Trust or no trust.

Here clockin offers you an employee- and employer-friendly solution. Employers see how much working time their employees have put into individual projects and so always keep an overview, even with people working from home. At the same time, overtime an employee has worked no longer slips through the cracks. clockin is ready to use in just a few clicks and produces your employees’ individual timesheets fully automatically.

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