By repeating the cycle of setting daily goals for the day, conducting work, looking back, and applying the results to designing the next day’s goals, the daily activity report can contribute to the improvement of individual skills and the accumulation of knowledge throughout the entire operation.
However, many people may be concerned that the daily activity report is not being fully utilized for business operations.
In this issue, we will focus on the meaning and merits of daily activity reports, as well as key points on how to write them for below people.
- “To unify employees’ awareness of the daily activity report and effectively utilize the daily report in business operations”
- “To understand how to write a daily activity report and the key points, and to have employees create a meaningful it.”
- “To establish an efficient daily activity report writing method and get rid of the situation where the daily activity report is not utilized.”
This article will help you learn how to create an efficient daily activity report and also give you tips on how to use the content of the daily report to help your team grow.
Contents
- 1 What is a daily report?
- 2 5 merits of daily reporting
- 3 What should be written in the daily activity report?
- 4 Tips for writing a meaningful daily activity report
- 5 Points to note for supervisors who view daily activity reports
- 6 3 means of writing daily reports
- 7 How to share the created daily activity report?
- 8 Best tool for creating and managing daily activity reports
- 9 Summary of the meaning, merits, and writing of daily activity reports
What is a daily report?
A daily activity report is a document that reports daily work to your supervisor and team members.
The daily activity report allows the supervisor to track the team’s work progress and adjust the workload if there is a delay in progress. It also allows the team to share individual work progress and work-related know-how, so that they can work efficiently while keeping track of each other’s movements.
Thus, the daily activity report plays an important role in ensuring that the team’s work is carried out without delay, and it needs to be shared appropriately.
5 merits of daily reporting
Here are 5 merits of daily reporting.
The following information, if disseminated to all employees, will promote employee understanding of the creation of daily reports, and is a must for teams that are struggling with daily activity report is not utilized.
Enable information sharing and management
The first merit is the ability to share and manage information with the team.
Daily activity reports not only transmit the progress of work, but also activate information sharing, such as feedback from superiors and exchange of opinions among team members. Smooth information sharing enables communication and efficient progress in business operations.
In addition, since the submitted daily activity report is important internal information, it must be properly managed. However, if daily activity reports are managed in an analog manner, important information in the daily report cannot be accessed immediately, and the space used for management is unnecessarily overwhelming.
Therefore, it is recommended to manage daily activity reports in an environment where information can be accessed regardless of time and location.
Conduct PDCA cycle
The second merit is that the PDCA cycle can be used.
The PDCA cycle is the repetition of the following 4 processes.
- Plan = Goals for the day
- Do = Execution of work
- Check = Review of the work
- Action = Goals for the next day
When the PDCA cycle is established, individual competence improves, which increases operational efficiency and leads to increased productivity for the organization as a whole.
Leads to employee growth
The third merit is that it leads to growth.
When creating a daily activity report, employees need to set their own goals and reflect on their work. Therefore, through the analysis of goals and performance, employees can gain “awareness” of their own good points, issues, and areas for improvement.
By applying the insights gained from the daily activity report to the next task, work efficiency and performance can be improved, and employee growth can be encouraged.
Helpful for communication
Fourth, it is useful for communication.
Daily activity reports are not the end of the process; you need to get feedback from your supervisor after submitting them. Therefore, the daily activity report can be used as a means of communication, for example, by writing down questions or consultations that arise in the course of work and asking for advice.
As described above, the daily activity report can be a starting point for communication, which tends to decrease as remote working becomes more prevalent.
Know-how can be accumulated
The fifth merit is the accumulation of know-how.
By sharing the daily activity report, issues, improvements, and solutions to business problems can be accumulated as know-how and become intellectual property within the company. The accumulation of know-how within the company enables employees who are in charge of the same tasks to work more efficiently, and reduces the cost of handing over tasks and training new employees.
However, in order to accumulate and utilize know-how through daily activity reports, an environment must be created in which daily activity reports are stored without being buried and can be accessed regardless of time or location.
For example, with Stock, which makes it easy to manage daily activity reports, daily activity reports can be reliably stored and quickly accessed with an excellent search function.
What should be written in the daily activity report?
Below is a list of what you should write in your daily report. Add items as necessary to create a daily activity report that is ideal for sharing progress and accumulating know-how.
(1) Basic information of daily activity report
The basic information essential to a daily activity report is as follows
- Date
- Department
- Name of reporter
- Starting time
- Ending time
- Working hours
This is necessary so that when you look back on the daily activity report later, you can determine when it was written.
The department to which the report belongs should also be included, since it is not only the immediate supervisor who checks the daily report.
In addition to the department to which the report belongs, it is important to indicate who wrote the report.
If you include the starting time, you can easily calculate work efficiency by looking back.
Similar to the starting time, you can easily calculate work efficiency by looking back.
Supervisors manage their work hours subordinates, so it is important to calculate them.
This information is a prerequisite for organizing a day’s work. It will be shared within and outside the department, so be sure to fill it in correctly to avoid any omissions.
(2) Work details
Fill in the “time,” “place,” “contents,” and “results” of the work in detail. The key to this is to be specific and quantitative.
If you write concretely, the daily activity report will be easy for readers to understand, and appropriate feedback can be expected. In addition, if the details of work and results are expressed quantitatively using numbers, the difference from the target can be visualized, making it easier to come up with measures for improvement.
However, too much detail can make the report difficult to read, so bullet points and headings should be used.
(3) Impressions
Enter “issues,” “areas for improvement,” and “questions” gained through the day’s work.
In addition to the degree of achievement of the goals, the background and reasons should be included to make the results of the analysis easy to understand for everyone.
On the other hand, be careful not to make the “Comments” section merely “impressions”. By describing the results of your analysis objectively, you can obtain appropriate feedback and accumulate know-how for your team.
Tips for writing a meaningful daily activity report
Here are some tips on how to avoid making a meaningless daily report. If you communicate the following points to your team members, they will be able to easily create daily reports that are useful for their work.
Write on the same day
The first point is to write the daily report on the same day.
If you fill out and submit the report while your memory is still fresh, you can look back on your work in detail and coordinate schedules among members of the team at an early stage. On the other hand, the reason why daily activity reports are put off is that employees have an image that “making a daily report is a hassle”.
Therefore, it is recommended to create an environment in which employees can easily create daily reports, for example, by introducing tools that allow anyone to create daily reports without burden.
Write only the necessary information
The second point is to write only the necessary information.
Carefully select the items and content of the daily report so that it is easy for the reader to understand. In particular, it is recommended that the main content should be objective, such as work details, issues, and improvement measures.
However, as a daily activity report is a means of communication, it is necessary to include subjective information such as impressions and matters discussed by the author.
Utilizing templates
The third point is to use templates.
Templates solve the “I do not know what to report in the daily activity report” problem and reduce the time required to create a daily activity report. It also reduces the burden on the supervisor who checks the daily report because the format is standardized.
Thus, the use of templates is a great merit to both supervisors and subordinates. Some daily activity report management tools, such as Stock, provide a “template function” that simplifies the tedious task of inputting daily reports.
Be aware of 5W2H
The fourth point is to be aware of the 5W2H, which consists of the following 7 elements.
- 5W
- 2H
When, Where, Who, What, Why
How, How Much/How Many
If you are aware of the 5W2H, you can create sentences that get to the point and are less likely to omit information. Use the 5W2H frame to accurately communicate each other’s situation through the daily report.
Writing down challenges you faced
If you face the challenges, you should write down the report regarding it.
No matter problems and challenges that were occurred on the workplace are important information as fact to take countermeasure. If you mention these information, you can inform your status of tasks to the person related with.
This mentions helps the other members to cooperate with you for more productivity.
Points to note for supervisors who view daily activity reports
Here are some points that supervisors who review daily activity reports should be aware of. The following points must be understood, otherwise it will be impossible to activate communication through the daily activity report.
Do not reprimand in the daily report
Be careful not to reprimand subordinates in the daily activity report.
On the contrary, reprimanding in the daily activity report, which can be seen not only by the supervisor but also by team members, is no different from reprimanding in public and can cause rebelliousness. If you find a problem with a subordinate’s work in the daily activity report, it is effective to give advice based on your own experience rather than reprimanding him or her.
Consider the daily report as a means of communication and try to build a good relationship with your subordinates.
Always provide feedback
Feedback after receiving a daily activity report is essential.
However, be aware that feedback should not be a one-word response, but rather feedback that leads to communication, such as asking questions or offering suggestions.
Positive feedback helps to motivate subordinates and build a relationship of mutual trust. It can also prevent problems caused by lack of communication.
Have an awareness of managing information assets
Having an awareness of managing information assets is another point that supervisors should pay attention to.
Daily activity reports are important company information assets and should be handled with care. In particular, the know-how and customer information contained in the daily activity report must be thoroughly managed to prevent leakage.
However, if daily activity reports are managed on paper, the information may become scattered or lost. Therefore, it is recommended to manage information using IT tools that can reliably and easily accumulate daily reports.
3 means of writing daily reports
Here are 3 means of writing a daily report. Knowing the following will help you adopt the most efficient method of writing a daily report.
The first is to fill out the daily activity report directly in an email and send it to your supervisor.
This method does not cost much because a personal company e-mail address can be used, but it has the demerit that only the recipient can check the daily activity report via e-mail. If the recipients of the daily activity report change depending on the daily work, it is necessary to set the recipient each time, which is inefficient.
In addition, e-mail is not easy to search because it is buried in other business communications. Therefore, not only is it “time-consuming to check the daily report,” but it is also not optimal from the team’s perspective as a whole, as it may not be easy to find when looking back and other employees may not have access to the know-how.
Word and Excel
The second method is to create daily activity reports in Word or Excel.
Templates can save time, but Word and Excel alone cannot be shared, so employees must use different tools for creating and sharing, which can be stressful. In addition, it is inconvenient because it takes time to find the information member need if it is buried in other e-mails.
Furthermore, if a correction is made, the information must be re-shared each time, which is a waste of time.
IT tools for creating and managing daily activity reports
The third is an IT tool that allows you to create and manage daily reports.
IT tools are efficient because they allow you to create and manage daily activity reports regardless of time and location.
The first thing to keep in mind when implementing an IT tool is that you need to choose a simple IT tool. In particular, when introducing such a tool in a non-IT company, multifunctional tools should be avoided, as they are likely to create confusion in the field.
Therefore, consider the IT literacy of your employees and introduce a tool that is easy for anyone to use, such as Stock.
Here is how to share the daily activity report you have created. Note that if you do not share them correctly as described below, the method of sharing the daily activity report will belong to you, causing the information to be dispersed.
Sharing with a daily activity report management tool
The introduction of a “daily activity report management tool” is an effective way to share daily activity reports.
Daily activity reports can be easily shared in the cloud, and past daily activity reports can be easily accessed. In addition to the management and sharing of daily activity reports, a notification function prompts the submission of daily activity reports when they are not submitted, thereby preventing omissions.
Daily activity report management tools also reduce the burden on employees by allowing them to submit daily reports even when they are away from the office, such as on business trips.
Sharing with groupware
Daily activity reports can be shared effectively through the proper use of groupware.
Groupware refers to software that facilitates the sharing of information within an organization and promotes operational efficiency. By utilizing groupware that excels in information sharing, daily activity reports can be shared immediately after they are created, which can be expected to promote quick feedback and communication.
However, groupware varies from service to service in terms of functions and pricing. In particular, groupware that is so complex and multifunctional that it is impossible to master will not be widely used throughout the company, so consider simple groupware that has the functions your company needs.
Best tool for creating and managing daily activity reports
Below are best tool that can streamline everything from the creation to management of daily activity reports.
If daily activity reports are properly managed, they can help facilitate business operations. However, if each of creation, sharing, and management is done in different ways, information may be scattered, and the man-hours involved may cause the creation of daily activity reports to feel like a “hassle”.
Therefore, create an environment in which employees can easily create daily activity reports by using “IT tools” that can centralize the process from creation to management. In particular, if the tools are easy for anyone to use, there is no need to worry about employees not being able to use them and leaving them behind.
In conclusion, in order to utilize daily activity reports in your business, Stock, which can be easily mastered by employees in non-IT companies and can streamline for creating and managing daily activity reports.
Daily activity reports created in “Note” of Stock are immediately shared with any member of the team and can be easily managed in the intuitive “File” section. Another great feature is that “Message” associated with the Note can be used to provide feedback on the daily activity report without complicating the topic.
Stock｜Anyone can easily create and manage troublesome daily activity reports
The simplest tool to stock information "Stock"
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In addition, by using the "Task" and "Message" functions, you can communicate with each topic described in the Note, so that information is not dispersed here and there and work can always be carried out in an organized manner.
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Summary of the meaning, merits, and writing of daily activity reports
We have focused on the overview of daily activity reports, their merits, and how to write them.
A daily activity report is an important document that allows you to grasp the progress of your work and accumulate know-how related to your work. However, if the burden from creation to management is too great, employees will be reluctant to create daily activity reports, and work efficiency improvement through the use of “information” obtained from daily activity reports will not be realized.
It is necessary to sublimate the daily activity report into an information asset by using IT tool that enable efficient and easy management of the daily activity report.
Therefore, a tool like Stock, is required that is equipped with all the essential “information management” functions for daily activity report management, and can be easily operated by anyone.
It only takes 1 minute to register for free, so using Stock to create effective daily activity reports that lead to individual and team growth, and share them efficiently.
