Status Report Template

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Overview

At its heart, a weekly status report is a communication device. Communication is the single most important requirement for any type of project management. A status report improves the organizational support for an employees work by maintaining tight communication and ensuring all goals and objectives are met. 

If you want your employees to be effective and transparent, ask them nicely to fill out a detailed status report. Managers, it’s recommended you fill a report out yourself as well. The benefits of weekly status reports are numerous: from better resource management, project health, accountability, to identifying and avoiding risks, and being more aware of your budget.

How the Weekly Status Report Template is used?

The Weekly Status Report Template is filed out at the end of each work week by the employee and either sent or placed in a private file sharing folder for their manager to review their accomplishments and results for that week. It allows a safe and effective space for an employee to visually see how they are spending their time. Employees can leave comments or questions for their managers, and the manager in return will review their work, leave comments, and if necessary, coach the employee to correct any oversights in their work or time management.

Why use a Weekly Status Report Template?

• Helps mangers become better team leaders. One of the biggest roadblocks to managing a team is a lack of visibility. Being able to review and comment on weekly reports allows managers to:
  • Monitor the pulse of their team
  • Build trust and a better understanding of employees
  • Provide better, detailed, constructive feedback, correcting mistakes and mentoring employees
  • Identify and solve issues before they become bigger problems for the company
• Creates happier and more efficient employees. Persuading employees to reflect on and understand how they spend their time will help them plan ahead and schedule their days more efficiently.
• Records of these reports can be used to defend termination of a low-performing employee.
• Provides bona fide criteria to defend against claims of discrimination or mistreatment by employees who have received a poor performance review.

What you risk not using a Weekly Status Report Template?

If you don’t use a weekly status report template:

• Without detailed records of an employees accomplishments it may be difficult to defend decisions to reward or terminate employees. For example, if an employee is rewarded for ‘exceeding expectations’, the status report records along with the completed job description template - that serves as a minimum standard of expectations - can be successfully used to differentiate between high and low performers.

Weekly Status Report Template