Balancing Culture and Accountability: How to Implement Time Sheets Without Hurting Morale

A very large global company currently has over 200 staff in its Brisbane office. We have a lot of upcoming projects and need more resources at our disposal. We want to implement “Cross charging across GLOBAL departments within a single organisation”. This will allow us to scale up very quickly.

This means there needs to be a structural change. We will need to implement time sheeting to keep track of the work of individual employees as they get “seconded” to work on another project. We are very worried about staff motivation and morale with implementing time sheets due to the staff feeling they are being watched like a hawk and billed correctly, thus affecting the overall culture.

For example, the security team in Brisbane may be asked to do some penetration work for another office in another country. How do we monitor the staff that have been moved onto this project to ensure they are doing the hours they are asked to, since the hours will be billed to the other office? He said that the only edge they have is its culture and cannot risk losing this.

Another problem is that we currently have only about 9 managers for 200 staff. If we implement this strategy, how will they be able to keep people motivated and accountable? He feels he will need more managers/staff to keep this in line.

We already have the software to manage this; it is all about how to keep the current culture. Does anyone have any knowledge or experience with methodologies that could be used to manage the pushback and maintain the current culture during this implementation? It is important to make these changes as it will increase the ability to scale up instantly for projects.

Thank you

First and foremost, thank you so much for bringing forth your actual workplace problem for discussion and inviting suggestions. To handle a problem of your kind, one will require to apply real knowledge of management. Skimming on the surface will not suffice.

To sum up, your challenge is (a) employees should work across the sections and not only in their departments, and (b) to do this, you do not want them to maintain time logs or timesheets lest they may get demotivated; this is what your fear is.

One of the solutions could be to encourage the employees to break from their routine and volunteer to work in other departments. At least 10% of their time should be spent in other departments. You can circulate an office circular outlining this scheme, and whoever takes initiative, publicize their names. Instruct the managers to encourage their staff to volunteer for work.

As the staff come forward on their own, nobody will complain. You are not forcing it upon them. Provide suitable non-monetary rewards. Give them some extra points in Performance Appraisal (PA) as well. Withdraw this extra points scheme from PA after 1-2 years.

A famous company, Google, I am told, works on the concept of volunteering.

When one works in other departments, there are benefits too. Superiority complex towards one's department dilutes, and silo mentality also reduces.

Other seniors may provide their comments.

Thanks,

Dinesh V Divekar

Thank you for your reply. Some very good points, Dinesh. I feel some of these will work very well. I have one slight problem with a model like that. The reason we are implementing cross-charging across all of our global offices and departments is due to budget constraints. No department head wants their staff to go offline and work on another project that is not related to their own. Each department/branch around the world has its own budget, and headcount and hours worked come out of this budget. As you can see, we need to have a timesheet of some sort to keep an accurate track of what is owed to each department.

How would this work (or anyone else with a different idea) if you had to use timesheets and not all work could be voluntary?

Thank you

Dear Elroy,

Tracking Personal Productivity with Time Logs

Time logs or Activity Logs work best to track personal productivity. However, if you tell employees to fill out the logs and force them to start extracting work from them, it may backfire on you.

Manager Support for Cross-Section Working

If your managers are not supportive of the idea of cross-section working, then the scheme is bound to fail. First, you should have buy-in from managers.

Imposition by Head Office

If your Head Office is imposing it on you, then they are treating their employees as per "Theory X" of Douglas McGregor. If they start imposing it on you, then employees may work solely to protect their employment. Nevertheless, it may demotivate them, and good ideas will never emerge from demotivated employees. Therefore, has your management noted the cost of the loss of opportunities?

Focus on Employee Targets

By the way, why is your management interested in tracking employees' time but not their targets? If they are tracking targets and still want to track time, it is concerning as they could be treating "employees" as "workers" and not as "employees," let alone as "business partners."

Anyway, implement the scheme of Time Logs and confirm the outcome to us after 3-4 months.

Thanks,

Dinesh V Divekar

These are very valid concerns when implementing any change, and it is good to consider the potential repercussions even before these measures are implemented. While there is no single solution to every situation (it depends a lot on organizational culture, historical context, employee engagement, and how employees perceive their leadership), it is clear that there is an opportunity to implement this using a change management and communication plan.

There are a number of change management methods you could use based on your realities. Do let us know if you intend to seek professional help, and we will be happy to talk. My email id is in my signature below.

Thanks!

This is in addition to what I have written earlier. In fact, I should have asked these questions in my earlier posts. What is your finished product or service? What type of industry do you belong to? Are these 200 employees spread across how many departments? What is their education level?

Have you done the process mapping for each department? If yes, have you measured the cycle time for each process?

Have you conducted the "Time and Motion Studies" for each department? When you conduct the time and motion studies, you will come to know the surplus amount of time in each department. Maintaining a time log will be part of this activity.

Time and motion studies will help you in recruitment, identifying skill gaps, training, performance planning, and so on. This is one of the most scientific ways of working. Employees will not get demotivated because of time and motion studies.

Nevertheless, this would be a massive exercise and much easier said than done. It will take a lot of investment of time and effort. Therefore, check whether your management has the patience to do this activity. However, once the time is invested, it will continue to provide benefits for a long time.

To reduce the cost of operations, you may outsource certain processes or automate certain processes. However, to arrive at these decisions, the basic exercise of time and motion studies is important. You may be able to combine processes or eliminate certain processes altogether to save time.

I hope this will meet your requirements now. Please come back after a couple of months and confirm how you handled this challenge.

All the best!

Regards,
Dinesh V Divekar

Employee Skills and Preferences in Organizational Departments

How the organization has different departments/sections, the employees also have different skills and preferences for working in various sections.

Firstly, it may not be accepted by all when they have to leave their domain and work in another section. This reluctance could be due to workload or lack of interest in working outside their area of expertise.

Secondly, even if they agree to work in a different section, concerns arise about accountability if something goes wrong. This fear of taking the blame can be a significant demotivating factor.

Thirdly, if an employee works for a period and then suddenly stops coming to work, it can create a vacuum that may lead to issues, especially in terms of crucial information not being available for decision-making along the organizational hierarchy.

Lastly, compensation in some form is essential, whether immediate (such as cash, memento, or gift) or long-term (such as promotion, salary increment, or overseas assignments). Recognizing and rewarding employees is crucial for motivation.

It is important to maintain an inventory of the skills possessed by each employee so that informed decisions can be made when assigning duties.