March, 2014
By, Beth Lassiter
I have heard this battle cry from many an employee over the years when faced with the perceived burden of reporting. And who can blame them? No one wants to spend so much time fulfilling reporting requirements that they can’t get their “real” work done. And even if data entry and reporting is simple and efficient, employees still need to know that the end result is both used and useful to the organization as a whole. Additionally, wasted time spent reporting impacts your bottom line by throwing hours away that could be spent doing other activities – not to mention lost engagement when your resources FEEL like their time is being wasted and thus perceive themselves to be under-valued.
The good news is that this particular reporting issue is relatively easy to address with just a few simple steps:
1. Confirm reporting alignment
All reports within your organization must clearly serve a purpose and should, ideally, point back to your organization’s strategic objectives. In a perfect reporting utopia, every report within the organization would tic and tie with each other through the organization – vertically and horizontally – and would map to your organization’s mission, vision, objectives, and overall strategic direction.
In a less utopian organization, you should at least be able to answer these questions for ever report within your organization:
– What is its purpose?
– How will this information help me meet my organization’s goals for the month/quarter/year/etc?
– Who uses the report? How do they use it? When do they use it?
– What action is taken as a result of the information provided? Who takes action? How do they know to do so?
If you are unable to answer the question above, then either redefine the report to do so (and preferably so that it is aligned to strategic objectives), or consider that the report may not be needed.
2. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.
Other times, the issue is not necessarily alignment, but awareness. In this case, some levels of the organization may be unaware that other levels of the organization are using said report – and even more unaware of WHY they’re using it. Assuming that your organization’s goals and priorities are aligned through reporting vertically and horizontally (i.e. Solution #1), then the solution to this problem is to communicate more effectively.
The following lists a few ways you may seek to increase communication effectiveness:
– Add key metrics to key written messages – SHOW that you are using data to manage your business.
Example: The quarterly update provided by the CEO is updated to include a metric that highlights the improvement in quality for the organization. Additionally, a “Best in Class” team is showcased for their significant efforts to improve quality.
– Add key metrics to meeting agendas – SHOW that you are using data to manage your business.
Example: The monthly functional area meeting now includes a slide that provides Productivity trends and correlations with % Overtime to show that employees are more productive overtime is reduced to < 10% (helping to satisfy the organization goal around work-life balance).
– Display key reports visibly – SHOW that you are using data to manage your business.
Example: The Call Center has a monitor mounted in their seating area which keeps a live value for the month to date for: Mean Time to Respond, and % Tickets Resolved on First Call, along with target numbers for the month. The team can actively monitor whether they are meeting their Client Satisfaction objectives real-time.
When your resources begin to gain awareness of how and when the reports are used to propel your organization toward its goals – and can see how they participate in the propulsion – then the perception of “wasted time” tends to dissipate, and you sometimes even create advocates for reporting.
So the next time you hear “Who looks at this report anyway?”, try one of the approaches above. It may allow you the opportunity to further meet your organization’s goals and improve employee engagement.