How can I motivate my employees to register their hours?

This is probably the question we’ve been asked most often over the course of the 20 years we've been advising companies about time registration.

It’s also the question that I’m aiming to answer for you in this post, taking as my starting point one of the popular management tools from the behavioural theory toolbox: nudging.

My post this time centres on two Danish women – Henriette Diernisse and Kathrine Springborg – and their thesis about time registration and how behavioural theory and nudging can be used to encourage more employees to register their hours.

Their thesis is based on register and survey data, backed by interviews completed over a period of six months at a Danish company with 600 employees.

To this, I’ve added practical knowledge that we’ve built up progressively since 2001.

What is nudging?

The original version of the concept of “nudging” was developed by two American professors, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.

Many people define a “nudge” as a gentle push in the right direction. Here is the professors’ definition:

The concept stems from their 2008 book Nudge, which the international news magazine The Economist named book of the year that same year.

How can you use nudging to motivate your employees to register their time?

In their thesis, Henriette Diernisse and Kathrine Springborg suggest that nudging is a powerful management tool if you, as a manager, are experiencing that:

The advantages of nudging is that it’s an inexpensive management tool that is easy to implement, and which you can use in pretty much all contexts where your aim is to help your employees make good decisions.

There are major differences from one person to another with regard to what motivates them to register time. You therefore need to understand the behavioural bias that governs your employees in order to ensure that your nudge will have the desired effect.

Understanding the behavioural bias of your employees

Behavioural bias has to do with our propensity to make irrational decisions. In other words, we take mental short cuts such as omitting important details, and we are often motivated by the short-term perspective (thesis on time registration and nudging, 2021).

There are more than 100 behavioural biases, but which ones have an impact in the context of time registration? In their thesis, Henriette and Kathrine argue that “the present bias” in particular can have an effect on time registration by your employees.

Present bias and continuous time registration

“Present bias” is another way of saying that the individual prioritises the present over the future. For example, your employees may have a tendency to say: “I just need to go through my mails – I’ll get to my time registration later.”

If your employees are subject to present bias, you can use continuous time registration as a nudge to encourage them to register their hours.

You can register time in several ways. Some companies have regulations stating that it has to be done on a monthly basis, others register weekly. We ourselves do it daily – before or after meetings, for example, or while the customer is on the phone.

Five great benefits of continuous time registration

One of the benefits of continuous time registration is that it eliminates duplicated work. In our experience, a great many people are in the habit of recording their hours on a piece of paper first, and then registering them in whatever system they use later on.

Another advantage of continuous time registration is that it prevents your employees from finding themselves in the following situation: It’s 4 o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and they suddenly have to remember all the work they’ve done over the past week. Hand on heart, I can barely remember what I was doing at 2.30 yesterday. How about you?

My colleague Sofie presents more advantages of continuous time registration in the video clip below. 

Present bias and shorter time registration periods

If continuous time registration fails to motivate your employees to register their hours, you could consider giving them shorter periods for time registration. For example, you can ask them to register daily or weekly.

This can be a good nudge, because they are then required to register time for shorter intervals, which makes the whole process seem more manageable. 

How others nudge their employees to register time

A reminder can serve as an effective nudge. One of our customers has the following message on the front page of their TimeLog set-up – i.e. It’s the first thing employees see when they log into TimeLog.

Make it easy for your employees to register their time

If you want to motivate your employees to register their time, you need to make it easy as possible for them.

One of the findings of Henriette´s and Kathrine´s thesis is that some employees fail to register their time because they think the process is too difficult and overwhelming.

It is important to focus on simplicity regarding:

Keep the level of detail to a minimum

If there are too many tasks linked to a project, your employees will quickly lose their overview when it comes to registering time. You should also think about whether it is really necessary to require your employees to link comments to their time registrations.

By keeping your time process simple, you add structure to complex choices for your employees - and this is precisely what a good nudge should do ( Danish thesis on time registration and nudging, 2021). 

Focus on user-friendliness

How user-friendly is the time registration system you already use or thinking of using

You can also use our “5 things you should ask about” guide in your hunt for a user-friendly time registration system.

Use framing to present the purpose of time registration

In their thesis, Henriette Diernisse and Kathrine Springborg have examined the issue of why employees forget to register their time.

One reason is that they simply do not understand the purpose of time registration.

So how can you use nudging to help your employees understand that purpose?

Framing is a specific tool you can use as a nudge. Briefly put, “framing” has to do with the way you present your message.

For example, you can highlight the positive aspects of time registration. This can be effective because people have a tendency to choose options with positive framing.

Some employees may think that the purpose of time registration has to do with control and monitoring. By using framing, you may be able to limit or even change this perception and instead help your employees to understand that time registration makes a positive contribution.

‘What’s in it for us’?

As a manager, you can use framing to start a discussion about the benefits of time registration for your company.

Our experience indicates that it is not unusual for a company:

‘What’s in it for me?’

In addition to understanding the importance of their time registration from the perspective of the company, self-interest is another key motivator for many employees.

Don’t forget that some people may view time registration as a type of monitoring. It is therefore extremely important that you as a manager help your employees to understand the personal outcome of their time registrations.

Alignment with expectations: A good place to start is to ensure a good alignment with expectations, where you clarify what you as a manager plan to do with your employees’ time registrations. For example, you can explain that the objective is to remove friction – in one form or another – from their everyday work.

The employee appraisal interview: You can also use your employees’ time registrations in connection with their employee appraisal interviews and pay negotiations.

Flexitime scheme: And if any of your employees are on flexitime schemes this should provide instant encouragement for time registration because timely registrations can translate into time off.

Establish good habits and a healthy culture regarding time registration

As a manager, you should take the lead and establish good habits and a healthy culture regarding time registration. In their thesis, Henriette and Kathrine put forward three extremely practical suggestions for what you can do:

1. You can use reminders: send your employees an email reminding them to register their time
2. You can call your employees in for a “have a good weekend” meeting on Friday, where you remind them to register their hours
3. You can hang a poster on the door reminding them to complete their time registrations

If you don’t already have a time registration system, check out the market for systems that incorporate nudging features.

Here’s an example of how the American software company Clarizen uses fast feedback to encourage its users to close their weekly timesheets.

And here’s an example of how TimeLog has incorporated a progress bar which shows how many hours the user has registered in relation to his/her normal working time.

Summary

If you’ve read this far, I hope that you have become more aware of:

I have previously commented on how easily gaps can appear in our memory. So here’s an outline of the six key take-aways from this post:

1. Nudging has to do with changing someone’s behaviour by giving them a gentle push in the right direction
   
   
2. According to a new Danish thesis about time registration and nudging, there are three main reasons why your employees fail to register their time:
   
   
   • They don’t understand the purpose of time registration
     
     
   • They don’t understand the personal outcome of time registration
     
     
   • They find it unnecessarily complicated and daunting
     
     

3. If your nudge is to be successful, you need to start by understanding the behavioural bias of your employees
   
   
4. You can use framing as a specific tool to present your employees with the good narrative about time registration, such that they come to understand the purpose
   
   
5. You need to make it easy for your employees to register their time. This applies in particular to how user-friendly your time registration system is, and how detailed the time registrations need to be (number of tasks, comments, etc.)
   
   
6. You can also use reminders and posters as nudges to establish good habits and a healthy culture in the context of time registration.

Good luck nudging your employees towards registering their time!