Month: March 2023

March 20, 2023

How to be a good leader? 10 tips to lead your team to success

Collaboration

Productivity

Being a good leader is not the same as being a good boss. Although both roles are directly related, the leader guides his team through the use of soft skills that encourage teams to feel stimulated, motivated, with a sense of belonging, and therefore, more efficient. The leader is a figure that allows to improve the organizational culture and performance of the company, because, if the employees feel happy, listened to and with an inspiring reference, from the professional and the human aspects, success is assured. In this blog, we give you some tips to become the leader your team needs.

The figure of a good leader implies having skills and characteristics that allow you to guide, motivate and support a team to achieve goals and objectives. Effective leadership is not just about personal skills and characteristics, but also about learning to adapt and apply your knowledge and experience in all contexts. Here are some qualities that are often associated with a good leader:

  1. Inspiration and motivation: A good leader must be able to inspire and motivate his team to give the best of themselves. This involves setting clear goals, acknowledging team accomplishments, and providing constructive feedback.
  2. Clear and honest communication: It is important to be transparent with the team and clearly communicate the situation and the challenges that are being faced. It’s better to be honest from the start and address issues openly and transparently.
  3. Keep calm and perspective: It is important to keep calm and perspective during difficult times. It’s no use panicking or allowing stress and anxiety to take over. You must maintain a positive and focused mentality, always with the focus on the objectives.
  4. Set an example: As a leader, you must be a role model for the team. This means staying positive and showing how to face challenges with courage and resilience.
  5. Emotional support: In difficult times, it is important to be available to emotionally support your team. Listen to their concerns and fears, and try to provide support and encouragement to help them through challenges.
  6. Encourage collaboration: Instead of facing challenges alone, encourage collaboration and cooperation in the team. Working together can increase creativity, innovation and find solutions that might not have been possible otherwise.
  7. Planning and organization: During difficult times, it is important to have a plan and stay organized. This helps ensure that the team is focused on important goals and is working effectively toward them.
  8. Effective delegation: A good leader must be able to delegate tasks and responsibilities effectively, ensuring that each team member has the necessary skills and resources to do their job.
  9. Recognition and celebration of achievements: As the team overcomes challenges, it is important to recognize and celebrate achievements. This helps maintain team morale and increases motivation to keep working together to achieve goals.
  10. Adaptability: A good leader must be able to adapt to changes in the environment and in the organization. This involves being flexible and willing to change direction and goals as needed.

Leading correctly is an opportunity to grow and strengthen the team, and therefore, the company. Maintaining a positive attitude and working collaboratively are the keys to overcoming challenges. This is achieved not only with the development of soft skills and experience, but also with tools that help plan projects, organize work teams, and correctly distribute resources. Workdeck is a platform that can accompany this process, as it offers multiple functions such as:

  • Gantt diagram
  • Kanban board
  • Project, task and activity management
  • Calendar management
  • Purchases and expenses
  • Time control and timesheet management
  • Internal chat

If you don’t know Workdeck, we invite you to live the experience starting a free trial here

March 8, 2023

Time Control Law

Collaboration

Uncategorized

On March 8, 2019, the government approved the royal decree-law 8/2019 that obliges companies to have a control of the time worked of each employee. This hourly control law aims to guarantee compliance in terms of working hours, it also creates legal certainty for both workers and companies and it enables control by the Labor and Social Security Inspectorate.

We already mentioned that the objective of this law is to ensure compliance with the established working hours to support the legal certainty of the employee and the employer. The idea of this blog is to summarize and explain in detail everything related to this law.

What type of workers and companies does the time registration apply to?

Hourly recording applies to all workers, regardless of their category or professional group, to all sectors of activity and to all companies, whatever their size or organization of work, as long as they are included in the scope of application that defines article 1 ET. Companies are obliged to record the daily working hours also with respect to “mobile”, commercial, temporary, remote workers or any other situation in which the labor benefit is not carried out, totally or partially, in the workplace of the company. The only peculiarities or exceptions are the following:

  • Labor relations of a special nature
  • Workers who have a specific or particular regime regarding registration of working hours

What means can be used to record  hourly control?

The standard does not establish a specific or predetermined modality for the daily recording of the day, limiting itself to pointing out that it must be carried out day by day and include the start and end times of the day. For this, and regarding the rest of the configuring elements, it calls for self-regulation, through collective bargaining or the company agreement.

Any system or means, on paper or digital, capable of fulfilling the legal objective, that is, providing reliable, unchangeable and non-manipulable information afterwards, either by the employer or by the worker himself, will be valid. For this, the information of the working day must be documented in some type of written or digital instrument, or mixed systems that guarantees the traceability, reliability and invariability of the working horse registered.

Can companies unilaterally establish their own working day registration systems?

Yes, within certain margins: the law provides that collective bargaining or company agreements are responsible for the organization and documentation of the time record, as well as the specific system (manual records, digital platforms, lathes, etc.) or the specific form to complete them, incorporating all those aspects that are considered necessary for the fulfillment of its purpose. This provision allows the different types of companies, sectors and professional occupations to have a model or system adapted to their characteristics, and specify, in accordance with the definitions contained in the agreement, conditions such as interruptions, pauses, flexibility in the distribution of working time or others.

Is the entire time elapsed between the registered start and end times of the daily workday considered as effective working time?

The formal obligation is the daily record of the working day, so it must contain, by express legal mention, “the specific start and end times of the working day for each worker”. However, it is also convenient that everything that is part of it be subject to keeping, especially that related to mandatory daily breaks legally or conventionally provided for, or voluntary, to avoid the presumption that all the time between the start and end of the registered working day constitutes effective working time.

When the legal, conventional or contractual expression of these interruptions or intra-day breaks is clear, predetermined and global, the daily record may evade those internal configurative elements of the daily work, because they are identifiable in relation to those other instruments that provide certainty and security of the work time performed and attributable.

How are the hours of workers traveling to clients recorded?

In relation to workers posted outside the usual work center, with or without overnight stays, the daily recording of the working day does not alter the application of the general statutory rules, and the effective working time must be recorded.

All this information is recorded in the Spanish “Guide on the registration of working hours“, a file published by the Ministry of Labour, Migration and Social Security and whose objective is to facilitate the implementation of the mentioned law.

Although after the pandemic it seems that most companies are migrating to virtual / digital work, there are many who still have doubts about when and how to do it. With this new regulation, virtual work must also be controlled and from Workdeck we offer a platform with the possibility of controlling work time, focused on project management and that allows a holistic vision of what is happening in the company.

If you want, you can start your free trial of our platform here!