Tracking Employee Actions

This program is designed to help you track specific employee actions. This works best for tasks employees are already doing or already know how to do. The goal of this program is to track their completion of specific tasks for compliance. It also provides you with the insight to coach those who don’t regularly complete required tasks.

We’ll start with three daily requirements to help you and your team get used to the program. Once you feel comfortable, you can expand and customize your program.

Step 1: Get familiar with the application.

If you haven’t already seen the overview video, click here to get a high-level view of how Pract.us helps build accountability.

If you haven’t logged in and set up your profile, learn how to do so here: Getting Started for New Learners
Once you’ve logged in, take a few minutes to get used to the software. You’ll see a menu icon (three horizontal bars) in the upper left of the screen. Click that to see the main menu. Here are a few important options on the menu.
- “Learn” is where you and your employees go to complete and sign off skills. You’ll also go to “Learn” to assign cards to your employees.
- “Mentor” is where your mentors will go to see if they have any sign off requests.
- “Manage” is where you will go to see learner status and any cancel or extend requests.
- “Profile” is where you will set up your personal information, set your password and PIN, and set up reports.
- “Cards,” “Skills,” and “References” are for creating or editing cards, skills, or references respectively.
- “Members and Fields” is for inviting new people to your team.
- “Support” will take you to help resources and contact information.
- “Logout” will log you out of the application.
Since your system isn’t set up yet, many of your screens will be blank, but you’ll soon fill them up.

Step 2: Define your daily requirements.

Start by deciding which tasks you want to track. We’ll put those into the application by editing skill templates already provided for you.

Log in to Pract.us at app.pract.us.
Go to “Skills” in the main menu.
Select the Daily Task 1 skill.
Click the edit icon (pencil on paper) in the upper right to make changes to the skill.
Replace the title (Daily Task 1) with a short description of the task.
Add a more complete description and/or instructions in the “Instructions” box.
Click the “+” sign in the “Points” box to set the points. Points tell someone how long the task should take. 1 Point = 15 minutes.
Click the save icon (check mark) in the upper right to save the skill.
Click the “Closed” toggle switch to open the skill.

Video: Editing a Skill Template - 51 seconds

Here’s what your skill might look like if you’re tracking whether employees have run a safety check on equipment:

Repeat this procedure for Daily Task 2 and Daily Task 3.

When you’ve finished go to “Cards” on the main menu and select “Daily Requirements.”

Your three new tasks are listed there. Click the “Closed” toggle switch to open the card. Now you’re ready to add employees to your team.

Step 3: Set your normal work days.

To ensure that employees get fresh cards only on work days, specify your normal work days.

In the main menu, select “Team Settings.”
Scroll down to the section labeled “Normal Work Days.”
Select the days you want.
Your new settings are automatically saved.

Here’s what a typical work week looks like:

Step 4: Invite employees to your team.

Now that you know what employee actions you want to track, you need to identify the people who will participate in your accountability program.

Determine which people you want to track. You may want to start with just 2 or 3 people until you feel comfortable with the program.
It’s a good idea to let people know what you’re doing and why so they’re not surprised or confused.
Watch the video below: Inviting New Members to Pract.us (96 seconds).
Make sure you specify yourself as the manager for each person you invite.
Everyone you invite will receive an email with a link to set up their accounts. If they need help, you can point them to the video below: “Setting Up Your Account.”

Videos:

Inviting New Members - 96 seconds
Setting Up Your Account - 90 seconds

Step 5: Assign the card “Daily Requirements” to employees.

Now you’ll assign the card and set it to repeat daily so employees will be able to check off their tasks each day.

Select “Learn” from the main menu.
Select the “Daily Requirements” card.
Click on “Enroll.”
Scroll to the person you want to develop the habit and click their name.
Click on the toggle for “Recurring Enrollment.”
Set “Next card starts on” to the day you want the first card to be completed.
Set “Days until due” to “1.”
Then set the repeat for every 1 day.
Check the “New card priority” box. (This means if an employee is out sick or cannot complete the card, the unfinished card will automatically cancel and a new one will start for the next day.)
Click “confirm.”

Here’s what a daily recurring enrollment looks like:

Your employee will receive an email notification that they’ve been enrolled in a new card.

Repeat this process for all the people you want to sign off these activities. If people aren’t sure how to check off a task once it’s done, share this link with information on what to do.

Video: Assigning Recurring Cards - 60 seconds

Step 6: Get progress reports.

Now that you’ve got your program up and running, you want to get regular reports on whether everyone has completed their daily requirements.

You can track progress two ways:

View your manager dashboard.
1. Select “Manage” from the main menu.
2. You’ll see a list of employees on the left.
3. If you click on an employee, you’ll see the cards they are enrolled in and the progress they’ve made.
4. If they fall behind, you’ll see a red flag.
Get an email report.
1. Select “Profile” from the main menu.
2. Select “My Reports” on the left.
3. For the “Manager Status Report,” you can click the paper airplane to get an instant report or you can set the parameters for an automated report.
4. Play around with other reports for other kinds of information.

When you see people fall behind or struggle to complete tasks, you or an experienced employee can step in and coach them. This is an effective way for you to help people over challenges and keep them focused on priorities without micromanaging.

Video: Getting Progress Reports - 52 seconds

Other ways to enhance your program

You’ve very quickly set up an accountability program to improve business processes, safety, and compliance. However, there’s much more you can do. Here are a few ideas.

Create cards for weekly, monthly, or quarterly tasks.

To easily set up cards for different time frames, just create the new tasks you want done. Then create a card for those tasks with the appropriate title, e.g. “Monthly Requirements.” You can model your tasks and cards on the daily requirements you’ve already set up. The videos below will show you how to create cards and skills from scratch.

Video: Creating skills from scratch

Video: Creating cards from scratch

Create cards for project requirements.

If you have projects which require specific reporting or processes, you can create skills for each requirement and put them into a card. In this case, when you assign the card to employees on the project, don’t select the “Recurring card” option. Simply set a due date for this one card since it applies just to one project.

Add resources.

You may want to provide people with resources they can use to complete their tasks. These could be best practice documents, reference documents, how-to videos, etc. You can add these resources to any skill by creating “References.” The video below will show you how.

Video: Creating References - 33 seconds

Add mentors or quality assurance.

All the tasks in the Daily Requirements card are self-sign-off. So employees are on the honor system to complete the work and maintain standards. However, you can add a layer of quality assurance and coaching by including a mentor on your skills. Mentors can check that a task is done correctly, help employees improve their work, or answer questions.

Review this video on creating cards to see how to add mentors to a card.

Video: Creating cards from scratch

You may want to share this document with your mentors if they aren’t sure what to do.

Mentor’s Guide

Add learning and habit development to your accountability.

If you want to set up a program that gives employees the opportunity to learn important business skills and practice them until they become second-nature habits, check out our full accountability program here.

Enjoy your program!

You’ve just scratched the surface of Pract.us. The application can do much more toward creating a culture of accountability, learning, and improvement in your organization. If you’d like to learn more, contact us.