I Was Working…

Posted on August 6, 2008

Is that what you tell your boss?

Do you need to prove it or like Dilbert’s Wally can you just slough your way through with meaningless drivel aimed at your pointy-haired boss?

A new startup, ididwork, has announced its launch. The service, which is web-based, lets employees keep record of the work they have completed. They can then submit a report, weekly or monthly, to their manager in the form of a chart, graph, or simple summary, and receive feedback through the system. The service is designed toward performance reviews, eliminating status meetings, and allowing employees to be evaluated on information rather than (possibly false) impressions.

What makes this service different, and there a lot of them out there, is that managers don’t have to participate. It is designed to be useful from the employee’s perspective, letting them track progress and analyze trends over time. Employees can decide to forward performance breakdowns to managers, who then have the option of joining the network. So for this to work, it depends on how necessary employees find it to record progress of their work, and ultimately, whether managers want to jump on board to complete the formula for a successful app, otherwise it’s pretty one-sided in its scope.

There is a big problem out there from a company standpoint and that’s what ididwork is out to address. The problem is that it is difficult to judge productivity in big companies. A la Wally, in employee reviews managers often have very little idea of what an employee has done, which leads them to make judgments based on behavior that seems productive; like staying late a lot, or sending out emails in the middle of the night. It also gives employees an idea of what their co-workers are working on with a news feed, eliminating status meetings.

The company plan is to eventually charge employers, allowing early users to continue using it free of charge. They also plan on integrating desktop widgets and customizing performance charts in the future.