Prejudice is a false believe and judgement without full knowledge. Peter s'Jongers, the CEO of Protime, experiences it regularly. "I often get the question "How can you turn a company that markets time registration into a growth company? Isn't that something from the past?". Let us confront and disprove prejudices like that in this blog post.

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the current landscape for time registration

Time registration is a burning issue. For example, 70% of the companies that become Protime clients today are ‘new to the market'; companies that did not previously use time registration. And no, they are not all production companies with blue collar workers. Of those new customers, 50% are knowledge-based companies that want to make more and better use of flexible work. The other 50% are companies that want to professionalize.

Of course, prejudice about time registration has its roots somewhere. After the industrial revolution, the demand for time registration arose. People had to be able to be paid per hour worked. Time registration took on a whole new dimension when glide times were introduced. Sliding time was a first form of flexibility where you had to work within predefined core time, and the hours before and after you were flexible. But this glide time was (and still is) often eroded, where it is a matter of saving minutes to get a free hour.

 

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Technology for more flexibility

But there you are, in a bar during the evening, discussing and debunking that prejudice. Because, no, that is not what Protime aims to do with time registration. Protime wants to make time valuable by providing technology that allows people and companies to work more flexibly, to give people tools to be (more) self-managing. We want to show companies that you should not control people. But that you should trust your people and facilitate them in their work and life. After all, work needs to be in harmony with life.

Peter: "We offer the basis for flexibility, a way to monitor. And that is our added value. We are a heartbeat monitor for people's work performance. If you are going to exercise, you also have your heart rate monitor on, right? Or maybe you use some app to record your performance.

Peter s'Jongers CEO Protime
Why are the Fitbits and Strava's of this world so popular? Because people like to understand what they are doing. If my heart rate is too high, I slow down when I run. When I accelerated, my muscles soured: work point for next time. We find these insights perfectly normal. But if it becomes a work monitor, suddenly it gets an unpleasant edge. Crazy, isn't it?
Peter s'Jongers
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An example...

A concrete example: take the creative person who works 60 hours a week. Why does he do that? And does that person still have a private life at that time? Probably not, but it is because of the pressure. Or can they not define where the boundaries lie? We must ask ourselves the question: shouldn't others be watching over someone's health? And what if that same creative is only creative for 20 hours? Shouldn't we then check whether a colleague is not up to his ears in work and would very much like to hand over some projects?

Time registration viewed differently.

2 insights to remember:

- Companies sometimes hesitate to introduce time registration because they fear a negative reaction of their workforce. Then it is necessary to listen to your staff and really ask them the question. What do your employees see as the perfect balance between their private and professional lives? Make agreements and use the metaphor of the heart rate monitor in your communication.

- Time registration helps to test these agreements against reality. Because if an employee works too much, he or she is not fulfilling the agreement. Perhaps they have taken on too much, or they are not good at defining their boundaries. Working too long can result in dissatisfaction with the work pressure, or the person can be heading for burn-out.

 

Want to know more about time registration?
Written by: Isabelle Fassin
Field Marketeer Flanders Protime