Work reporting can be so frustrating. While important for any team, if handled incorrectly, reporting can consume your life and take up all of your time. While the process of reporting work is essential to running a team well, it can drag the productivity of your company to a halt and reduce the job satisfaction of both you and your team
Many people think that when they become a manager they can finally do all the things they want and lead a team towards their end vision. But they are quickly disappointed, when they find out that most of your time as a manager is spent reading reports and, well, managing. If you don’t look out, you’ll be overwhelmed by managerial tasks and the romantic image of being a leader will get crushed.
Luckily, there’s a way you can reclaim your time and automate the mundane tasks which increase your stress level and reduce your job satisfaction. If you work smart, you can increase the productivity of everyone who works for you and turn them into a more effective team.
Reclaiming your Time with Continuous Work Reporting
All the ranting aside, you need to build a good system to manage employees and monitor performance and work reporting. Otherwise, you’ll drown in mundane work. Not to mention, your team will fall into chaos.
When I became a manager, I was taken aback by how much time it took to deal with reporting and general management. My main motivation for advancement was to implement my own vision with the team.
After I had recovered from the initial shock, I quickly started looking for ways to improve my team’s communication and working reports. At the same time, I wanted the new system that would consume as little time as possible. That led me to discover the Plans, Progress, and Problems (PPP) methodology and continuous performance management.
Continuous Performance Management
The idea behind continuous performance manager is simple. You always know what your team is doing and can easily give them feedback.
Using the PPP methodology in an online tool like Weekdone takes care of the first part of the problem. Your employees set 3 -7 plans each week (or you can assign plans to them). When they complete them, you will receive live updates. If you have any questions or feedback, you can quickly leave a comment on your phone or computer. Reviewing a person’s work never takes more than 5 minutes.
Weekdone also offers a way to set quarterly goals with the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) methodology. OKRs lets you set measurable quarterly goals and measure the progress toward these goals every week. This works well with the PPP approach. PPP requires employees to set tasks that align with their long term goals. With this it is a lot harder to misplace your focus on wrong assignments or lose sight of your goals.
Learn how to use OKRs with your company with our free ebook!
Happy Teams Mean Happy Managers
When using an effective work reporting solution, none of us have to deal with too much bureaucracy. Instead, we can focus on what is important: our long term goals and our company’s vision.
You have to remember; when you do one thing, you decide not to do the other. If you spend all of your time managing and reporting work, you decide not to work on your team’s goals. You make a decision not to improve. Are these the kind of decisions you wanted to make when you dreamed about becoming a leader?
Author E.B. White once captured the essence of this:. “I wake up in the morning unsure of whether I want to savor the world or save the world,” White said, “This makes it hard to plan the day.” Ben Casnocha has summed up the problem from this: “All of us who enjoy privilege in the world struggle with the dilemma on different scales.“
If you want to improve the quality of your team and your own work, I have a guide to help my employees do online reporting. You should read it. Or try out Weekdone for free and get started.