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👋Let’s talk about ‘time-theft’! (Yes, it really is a thing)

Most conversations about time theft start with:
“Who’s padding their hours?”
“Who’s taking long breaks?”

Yes, individual choices and circumstances matter. People get disengaged, feel disconnected from goals, or work within outdated 9-to-5 structures that don’t fit project work at times.

But the behavior usually sits on top of a systems problem: unclear expectations (hello communication debt!), weak workflows, misaligned incentives, and time tracking setups that invite “creative” timesheets. And that quietly wrecks project performance. So this is what we will talk about in this issue.

Also, exciting news! We just launched our own Reddit community - a space to talk about all things project management, project performance, and operations. Join us to get advice, share experiences, and connect with other PMs.

Time to dive in! 

Business.com’s State of Workplace Theft in 2025 found that:

• 67% of employees admit to at least one form of workplace theft.

• 54% say they do personal tasks during company time (laundry, cooking, errands, etc.).

• Around 24% admit to manipulating reported hours, adding an average of 4.5 “extra” hours a week. That’s nearly six weeks of paid time a year that didn’t move work forward.

Those numbers aren’t just an HR headache. For PMs, they mean:

• Your capacity is overstated.

• Your actuals vs. estimates are distorted.

• Your utilization, velocity, and margin reports are lying to you.

You can’t run a predictable project portfolio on bad time data.

🤝 It’s not (just) about integrity. It’s about the system

Yes, there are bad actors. But most time-theft is enabled by gaps in the system:

• Manual or loose time tracking that’s easy to fudge.

• Late or bulk Friday time entry based on fuzzy memory.

• No clear rules on breaks, edits, or submission deadlines.

• No approvals, no locks, no budget alerts.

• Inherent weakness from work itself. 

People respond to the environment they’re in. The good news: system problems are fixable 

🧐 A 30-day systems fix (that is not surveillance)

Here’s a simple rollout you can run as a PM without turning into ‘Big Brother’:

Week 1 – Pilot clarity

• Pick one team or project.

• Define who approves whose time (project lead, manager, finance).

• Set clear rules: when timesheets are due, what “done” looks like.

Week 2 – Add guardrails

• Introduce edit windows and period locks so people can’t quietly re-write last month.

• Require key fields (project, phase, billable vs. non-billable) so data is actually usable.

Week 3 – Turn on controls

• Add budget alerts, overtime/threshold alerts, and basic audit trails.

• The goal isn’t to catch people out, it’s to catch patterns early.

Week 4 – Measure and iterate
Track a small set of metrics:

• On-time timesheet submissions

• Approval cycle time

• Billable utilization

• Estimate vs. actual variance

Then adjust configuration, not culture: tweak approval flows, reminder cadence, and lock timing.

The principle: Make it easy to log time accurately and hard to log it inaccurately, without spying.

✅ Where tools come in 

Here are the key things to look for when choosing a project time tracking tool that actually reduces time theft instead of creating surveillance fatigue:

• Multi-level approvals, so time is reviewed before it hits reporting

• Period locks that stop quiet retro-edits and “I’ll fix it later” padding

• Role-based permissions so only the right people can edit, approve, or view costs

• Transparent, privacy-first data practices (no screenshots, no keystrokes, no spyware)

• Real project and cost reporting so you can catch inconsistencies early

• Budget alerts + audit trails for predictable cost control

Here at Beebole, we built a tool more on the system rather than to monitor individuals. While digging into time theft for this issue, we also took a closer look at the tools that actually plug the leaks without sliding into boss-ware. You can read that breakdown here.

This month’s can't-miss resources:

📥 Recommended read - 7-day sleep and recovery program for busy project and ops managers (For those of you who are struggling to maintain your mental energy throughout the day!)
Nicholas @OptiMindInsights

🗣 Discussions from Reddit - Why does "let’s use AI" always come before "let’s clean our data"? 

🗓 Event - The future of AI in project management @11th December 2025, 7 pm CET

Thank you for reading! See you next month

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