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Communication is important when it comes to teamwork, especially when it comes to what you have been working on. Which is why writing proficient and effective weekly activity reports is so important. So, how exactly do you write a weekly report? The process can be a little confusing for beginners. Vladimir Nikolaev answers these questions in a nice presentation:
Evaluating employee performance
The long and short of it is that employee performance is evaluated by the results achieved. The best way to know about these results is for everyone to record them on a weekly basis. These weekly reports can contain daily activities, productivity and progress updates, and personal thoughts about work.
Who needs weekly reports?
For employees that are not in leadership positions, weekly reporting is the only way to communicate to team leads and the organization as a whole that they are doing the right things correctly and is consistently progressing on a personal level in their knowledge and skills.
Management uses these reports to evaluate their performance as managers. In addition, management uses these reports to keep track of their daily activities and assigned tasks. This can apply to every level when implementing the OKR system, and the management benefits should be used as a go-to when confused about weekly reports.
How to write a weekly activity report
Reports should be clear and concise. They should not ramble on about standard, weekly tasks, and contain everything you have done during the week. Your weekly activities report should be no longer than a page if you’re writing them out physically, and no more than 3-10 items if you are using software. Remember, you need to focus.
Weekly activity reports must also serve as a two-way communication tool between various levels of an organization. Managers and coworkers alike should write comments on the reports left by others. This system of feedback is incredibly important from both angles. Managers can give constructive feedback or acknowledge that a report was read while employees can ask clarifying questions or ask for opportunities to collaborate with other teams if someone’s report seems relevant to their own work.
Remember that weekly reports are sent in real time. Try to send reports by Friday afternoon or sometime over the weekend. This way, you can start next week fresh and not forget about any of the important details from the week prior. If you are using software, email reminders will likely be sent to you and an update automatically sent in by default on Friday or Sunday evening.
Try to form a routine around your weekly activity reports. If you spend 5 minutes summarizing your activities daily, the process of reporting on Friday can be cut down to five minutes.
Team Compass effectively takes care of the technical aspects of communication and helps companies to seamlessly adopt the easiest weekly reporting process. Try it out for free from here.