Time tracking: when a lack of transparency becomes a reason to quit

Where is the problem?

In many companies it is still common practice for employees to fill in handwritten timesheets and for the boss to then transfer the working hours into the system afterwards. Misunderstandings caused by messy handwriting or lost timesheets are no rarity. Whether it is overtime that was not recorded or breaks that were not deducted, discrepancies and conflicts between employees and managers come up often.

That makes it all the more important for employees to be able to view their own hours and report mistakes early. This applies even when working hours in the company are already recorded digitally. Only then can discrepancies be corrected early instead of leading to conflicts between employees and managers after the fact. Our experience shows, however, that this is still not standard in many companies.

Disputes as a daily occurrence

The following example from practice makes clear where the problem lies:

Conflicts between an owner and the employees of his trades business, who still recorded their hours on the classic timesheet, were no rarity. At the beginning of the following month, when the statement drawn up by the boss was available, there were repeated discussions about the hours worked: employees claimed that their overtime had not been billed correctly or that break times that were too long had been deducted. Since several weeks had passed by then and the old timesheets had been destroyed, the statements often could not be traced. So the employees kept having the feeling that the boss wanted to short-change them.

This one reason keeps causing stress

The owner, on the other hand, had done nothing wrong. He had merely transferred the hours that the employees had submitted to him. He did not want to deny, though, that the odd mistake could have slipped in, whether through an employee's messy handwriting or because a timesheet had got lost in the rush of everyday work.
This awkward situation meant that the working atmosphere in the company deteriorated more and more. Bit by bit, a drop in work motivation became noticeable among many employees, which in turn affected the quality of the work and therefore the entire company.

Over time the conflicts came to a head to such an extent that two of his best employees finally decided to leave the company. They gave a lack of transparency and outdated time tracking processes in the company as the reason for their decision.

For the owner the resignations came as a great surprise and left him with staffing problems that put the profitability of his firm at risk. At the same time, the owner decided to take a step towards his employees and got in touch with clockin.

Digital time tracking creates facts instead of endless discussions

After trying clockin during the free trial,  he decided to roll out our system for time tracking and documentation across the whole company. Since then all employees use the clockin app, where with just a few taps they can not only record their working hours, overtime or break times, but also document progress on jobs directly and work through checklists. From now on, thanks to the clockin app, employees can see their working hours transparently and report mistakes. Discussions about forgotten overtime and the like are history.

The owner then receives a notification on his PC and can check the requested change and, if necessary, correct it with just a few clicks. Thanks to the newly gained transparency, the working atmosphere has improved again. Not only was the owner able to keep most of his employees, but by using a modern time tracking app he now cannot keep up with the number of qualified young professionals coming his way.

A real success story!

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