Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[wurinauXcat]

I've been given some extra hours every day to maintain my skills. So far I've been doing that succesfully and just put "read this and that" or "watched a webinar about something" on the time sheet, and it's been ok like that for years.

The other day my new boss walked in to have a discussion about my time sheets. He wants me to make an addition to these time sheet entries. He says I should write about how do each of these activities benefit the company.

Any creative ideas how to do this?

[Sy Borg]

It looks to me as though the new boss is questioning the value of giving employees extra hours for self development. Some would argue that this work can be done in one's own time. So the boss seems to be giving you a chance to justify this arrangement, or he's looking for justification to make changes.

Thing is, the benefits of training & development to an organisation have been exhaustively documented. It's obvious that learning can improve awareness of the organisation's functions as a whole, it can refine job performance and enhance promotability. Asking a worker to describe the benefits of their activities makes sense for trainees but, for experienced workers, it would seem to be a faux-accountability game in preparation for rationalisation.

To be fair, having been out of the workplace for some time, I may have become cynical.

[LuckyR]

I've been given some extra hours every day to maintain my skills. So far I've been doing that succesfully and just put "read this and that" or "watched a webinar about something" on the time sheet, and it's been ok like that for years.

The other day my new boss walked in to have a discussion about my time sheets. He wants me to make an addition to these time sheet entries. He says I should write about how do each of these activities benefit the company.

Any creative ideas how to do this?

There are two correct answers for the two common situations.

If you are basically playing video games (using the time for personal reasons) then you need to identify an activity that is reasonable and believable and commonly done by other workers.

OTOH if you are actually improving yourself, then you just need to describe it in such a way that maximizes it's apparant value to the company. You're in the best position to know what that is.

[Pattern-chaser]

It looks to me as though the new boss is questioning the value of giving employees extra hours for self development.

During my working life, I was lucky enough that one of my employers - sadly, only one, of quite a few - required me to use 5% of my (paid) time on professional self-development. Very farsighted of them, I thought.

[Sy Borg]

It looks to me as though the new boss is questioning the value of giving employees extra hours for self development.

During my working life, I was lucky enough that one of my employers - sadly, only one, of quite a few - required me to use 5% of my (paid) time on professional self-development. Very farsighted of them, I thought.

Did you have to document what you did during development time? Some of my old employers provided study time for trainees and those doing work-sanctioned long courses.

[Pattern-chaser]

It looks to me as though the new boss is questioning the value of giving employees extra hours for self development.

During my working life, I was lucky enough that one of my employers - sadly, only one, of quite a few - required me to use 5% of my (paid) time on professional self-development. Very farsighted of them, I thought.

Did you have to document what you did during development time? Some of my old employers provided study time for trainees and those doing work-sanctioned long courses.

Although self-directed study was fine, we were also able to use the facilities of the company training school, to reinforce our existing skills, or to develop new ones (not necessarily skills that our then-current positions would require or use). We didn't have to document anything, although completion of training courses was recorded, as you might expect.

[Steve3007]

In my past experience it tends to be very big employers who will fund non-specific education, like degree courses, (as opposed to job-specific training courses) and they tend not to do it so much now. BT used to completely fund people through university, but stopped that a long time ago. They funded me to do VAX/VMS system management and operator courses, which are now about as much use as chocolate teapot. Kind of like a course on how to use a mechanical calculating machine.

My current employer (a small company) occasionally funds job-specific training and, although it didn't fund it, did allow one of our employees day-release to do his engineering degree.

[Pattern-chaser]

They funded me to do VAX/VMS system management and operator courses, which are now about as much use as chocolate teapot.

Ah, I fondly remember the batch-processing language (the equivalent of Windows/MSDOS .bat or .cmd files) on VMS. It was very capable.

[Steve3007]

Ah, I fondly remember the batch-processing language (the equivalent of Windows/MSDOS .bat or .cmd files) on VMS. It was very capable.

Yes. DCL (Digital Command Language) I think it was called wasn't it?

[Pattern-chaser]

Yes! I taught myself to program all kinds of amazing and ridiculous things using DCL. I learned a lot.

[Sy Borg]

Yep, the big organisations are much more likely to have programs that support employee professional development.

Generally, they don't ask for documentation to prove that you are doing useful things. Ideally, that should be apparent from work performance metrics.

[Steve3007]

Years ago, my old boss was a keen amateur astronomer and since I'd worked for him before going to Uni I was free to go back there during the summer, phone the personnel/HR department and get put back on the payroll for the summer. Then my boss had me work on some software for controlling his astronomical telescope. Them were the days.

[Sculptor1]

I've been given some extra hours every day to maintain my skills. So far I've been doing that succesfully and just put "read this and that" or "watched a webinar about something" on the time sheet, and it's been ok like that for years.

The other day my new boss walked in to have a discussion about my time sheets. He wants me to make an addition to these time sheet entries. He says I should write about how do each of these activities benefit the company.

Any creative ideas how to do this?

Take care. Beware that you do not write yourself out of a job.
In these times jobs are scarce and employers find clever ways of getting rid of people.
Do you think your boss knows what you job entails?
What is it that you do exactly?

[Pattern-chaser]

Do you think your boss knows what your job entails?

During my working life, I had quite a few employers. Only two of my supervisors, both from my final employment, actually understood what my job entailed. The rest had no idea what I did or how I did it, and these were the people who controlled how I was (financially) rewarded for what I did. Frightening but true.

[Sculptor1]

Do you think your boss knows what your job entails?

During my working life, I had quite a few employers. Only two of my supervisors, both from my final employment, actually understood what my job entailed. The rest had no idea what I did or how I did it, and these were the people who controlled how I was (financially) rewarded for what I did. Frightening but true.

Indeed. I had the same experience.
This is why I laid down the warning.
My son recently got his first job in accounting. One of his jobs was to source an outside company to deal with their own employment payroll. For some reason the company he found had a 10 employee limit to their system. Guess how many other people worked for the company other than my son?? TEN.
So as soon as he had sourced the new system, they gave my son the sack after he had had the jobn for 6 weeks.
In large firms people can carry on without anyone knowing what they do, often transfered, moved, and given new job desription without ever making a significant contribution.
It's a wonder the world works at all.