1. Not Unifying Company with Common Goal  

If your executive sponsor for a new employee time tracking solution doesn’t communicate a clear plan and explain how a new employee time tracking solution will help the company achieve a common goal, you could be fighting an uphill battle with user adoption. Also, if your executive sponsor doesn’t clearly communicate the plan and explain the goals and benefits of the employee time tracking solution well in advance of the implementation, employees will be forced to make their own negative assumptions about why the change is happening. For example, they may think that the executives don’t trust them to track their time correctly on paper time cards or spreadsheets. They might feel as though that they are being punished for other employees’ buddy punching misbehavior and think it’s not fair. Check out The Six Reasons to Change Your Employee Time Tracking Blog for a list of benefits. If your executive sponsor doesn’t explain the benefits to the different groups of employees from users, to the payroll department, to the mangement team, they could be sabotaging the success of your employee time tracking implementation. Don’t forget to position the benefits to your employees to explain the “What’s In It For Me” and how the new employee time tracking solution will benefit the different groups of employees.

2.  Missing from All Project Stages  

If your executive sponsor’s only involvement is sending an announcement email that a change is being made without participating throughout the implementation process to support and lead these changes, you could really be setting up your project to fail. Lack of executive support at all stages of the employee time tracking implementation can lead to poor user adoption and potentially negative ROI of the software purchase.

Executives have to participate in all stages in the implementation process, especially when there is an opportunity to get in-person or live feedback from employees at all levels of your company regardless of title. You need to provide a feedback channel for employees that will only enter time, for supervisors approving time, and all members of the payroll department. Employees are more likely to adopt change when they have participated in the development of the solution. Employees want to participate in a two-way discussion regarding the changes. It is more imperative for the executive sponsor to be involved in two-way engagement activities, to overcome employee’s resistance to the changes.   

3. Not leading All Levels of Employees

Implementation success can be hindered when executives aren’t participating and leading the change for all levels of employees. Many executives think if they lead the project team and attend their meetings, the project team can lead the employee time tracking rollout by managing through others. This is a big mistake. Executive leadership needs to be present and leading this change at all levels of the organization. They need to give employees the chance to give their feedback and ask questions, so they can understand the change, how it will affect them, and how it will support the company’s goals. 

For example, your payroll team may be excited about the change, but with poor user adoption of the employee time tracking solution by hourly employees, the implementation is headed for failure. If the goals and benefits aren’t clear and relevant to hourly employees, supervisors, the payroll and other departments on the project team, the implementation is doomed to fail.