Many of us who work in offices are subjected to the demand for time registration on a daily basis. Unfortunately, all the time registration systems I’ve encountered are prime examples of poor project management and a lack of understanding of change management and behavioral design.

I often come across systems with long, incomprehensible rows of numbers that are extremely difficult to understand, let alone use, and where there is no help available on how or what to register time for.

It’s not enough for the project manager implementing the new time registration system to simply post a message on the intranet and send out an email saying that everyone should register their time every day. On the contrary, the system should be designed from the start to be easy to use, intuitive, and provide an accurate record of the user’s time. This can only be achieved by putting the user at the center from the beginning and providing continuous user support and follow-up.

When it comes to regular working hours, it should not be up to the user to find the time codes. Instead, the team leader should provide a template where all necessary activities that the employee might have are pre-filled, so that only the user’s time needs to be registered.

In the case of project work, it should be the project team that provides the necessary templates for the user.

The user interface should be so intuitive that the user doesn’t need any guidance or training to register time. Access to time registration should be easy, for example, time registration could automatically appear the first time the user logs on each day. Or imagine if the time registration system could recognize activities from the employee’s calendar and automatically populate them into the time registration system!

Finally, the user should be continuously reminded of the importance of accurate time registration. This can be done through information campains, ongoing follow-up on how time registration is being utilized, including competitions and information about who consistently registers their time on time, etc. And remember KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid. Create a system that is as simple as possible, as it increases the chances of accurate time registration.