9th Myth of Time Management

After almost two years of Covid troubles, the world has been forced to adapt in many ways. Probably the single biggest change is the wide acceptance of working from home. In one of our previous blogs, Top 8 Time Management Myths, we debunked the most common excuses for not having a proper time and attendance system. Perhaps now is the time to add another one: 

Myth No. 9: It does not work for remote workers

During these two years much has been written and discussed about working from home, so we will not attempt to analyze it here. All that matters to us is that working from home is now commonplace and, as many will agree, will remain so after the pandemic is over.

Some employers have been quick to adapt to this, providing home workers with some form of time reporting or remote clocking solution. Technically, this is nothing new – remote workers have been using mobile time tracking for years. So using the exact same solution for home workers was no-brainer.

For those who did not need mobile clocking before, it may be a little less obvious. However, unfamiliarity with current time recording technologies does not seem to be the main reason for clocking hesitance. Even some employers who did track remote hours previously, are skeptical of (let us call it) home clocking.

The main objection to home clocking is that it does not work because there’s no way to control it. This claim assumes that given the opportunity, people will automatically want to cheat. That’s not what the social sciences tell us. By and large, people are decent, they do not like to cheat, and the vast majority will not cheat. Some might, especially if they feel cheated or taken advantage of. To say that home clocking will not work because everyone will cheat is a pretty dismal assessment of the workforce and may even say something about the company.

Also, the assumption that there is no way to control home clocking is in fact, wrong. By stating their working hours, by actually clocking them, employees take responsibility for the accuracy and authenticity of the information provided. This information does not need to be checked in real time by peeking over the shoulder or by any kind of surveillance. Much of it can be verified at a later time using the many clues and traces that remote work generates. Emails, ERP system transactions, work platform records, business interactions, etc. Is such control bullet proof? No. But is it ever? Does it need to be?

With home clocking, the employee draws a clear line between work and free time, and that in itself can be beneficial. We do not need to go into work-life balance here. Home clocking can also help with compliance issues regarding benefits, insurance, expenses, and in fact anything legal related to working hours. This recent news story about working from home sums it up here.

In any case, when you work from home, it’s not feasible and often not possible to keep fixed hours. No doubt, some flexibility is unavoidable. This flexibility of actual hours worked in a day can either be ignored or tracked. So, in the end, we can ask ourselves, which do we prefer? Tracking with some margin of inaccuracy or complete ignorance?

December 19, 2021