[thelist] Filling up timesheets - good or bad?

[Steve Cook]

I worked for a while with a larger company who had a similar system. If
there's no incentive to fill in timesheets, then people WILL forget/refuse
to do it and not take the job seriously. For management, timesheets can be
an invaluable tool for working out how much time is spent on what (duh!) and
then for making organisational changes that can increase effectivity. What
makes this worthwhile for the user though? 

The company I worked with based their bonus scheme on time worked which was
billed to a client. This had the effect of getting everyone to fill in their
timesheets - which were linked to the billing system and would be used to
generate bills to clients. 

The system had its downside. Firstly the time reporting program was
HORRENDOUS to use. Ugh - definitely the worst user interface I have ever
experienced. Secondly everyone wanted to be spending as much time on client
billed work as possible. This led to inefficiencies in the system and
clients receiving higher bills than they probably would have on a
"set-price" type contract. It also meant that people were less prepared to
work on internal projects etc unless these were marked as having the same
bonus related value as client work.

Overall I didn't like the system very much but mainly because it was too
rigid. However I was never in a position to do anything about it.

.steve


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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Madhu Menon [mailto:madhum at trisoft.net]
> Sent: den 11 januari 2001 12:04
> To: Evolt (E-mail)
> Subject: [thelist] Filling up timesheets - good or bad?
> 
> 
> Our company requires that *everyone* fill in daily timesheets on our
> Intranet - right up to the departmental heads 
> 
> Very few people, including entry-level people are actually 
> filling in their
> daily timesheets.Management is wondering how to increase compliance. 
> 
> What do you think of this practice? Are filling timesheets an 
> effective way
> of keeping track of what people are doing? Personally, I find that I'm
> almost always doing several different things at any given 
> time, and it's
> very hard for me to put down any ONE thing as an activity for 
> any given
> hour. I've tried (unsuccessfully) to argue this out.
> 
> I'm interested in hearing other peoples' experiences with 
> timesheets. FYI,
> people are NOT paid by the hour here. Everyone gets salaries. 
> 
> Regards, 
> 
> Madhu 
> 
> <<<   *   >>>
> Madhu Menon
> Head - User Experience Group
> Trisoft Systems Pvt. Ltd.  
> Global Software Services
> 
> Work: http://www.trisoft.net
> Personal: http://madman.weblogs.com 
> 
> 
> 
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