Pencil Whipping Meaning, Impact and Prevention Tools

In this post, we’ll highlight different aspects of pencil whipping, meaning the definition, the impacts to operations and how you can eliminate the practice without impacting your team’s morale.

Pencil Whipping Meaning For Beginners

Also called pencil whipping, or ‘to pencil whip,’ is forging work to near or 100% completion when it hasn’t even begun, or it is barely halfway through.

The activity has become so common now, especially in the frontline workforce management sector, that the experts have derived a particular term for it. They call it ‘Pencil Whipping.’ The phenomenon also reflects lazy supervisors’ tenacity to sign off on deliverables, whether it’s intentional or not.

In the latter case, if pencil whipping is unintentional, then pencil whipping meaning would imply that the person responsible for actually cross-checking the work, deliverables, or whatever that needs to be inspected didn’t actually do it and just signed off on the checklist.

The most common and subtle example of pencil whipping meaning in real life would be to click the ‘I Agree’ button at the bottom of EULA Documents. Also known as End User License Agreements, we see such agreements upon software installations, game installations, and vice versa. Since these agreements are pretty lengthy, 99% of the users just scroll down and click the ‘I Agree’ button without bothering to read the fine print.

The aforementioned is the most basic version of pencil whipping meaning in real life at a personal level. We’re not saying that scrolling past EULA’s is a good thing, but it doesn’t harm anyone to read them. At most, you’ll only be spending 10 – 15 minutes reading something that might protect you from liabilities in the future.

What Is Pencil Whipping Meaning In the Maintenance World?

Moving on, let’s talk about the impact of pencil whipping on maintenance management, hotels, and other industries where customer service is super-important, but also the health and safety of on-site workers.

In such industries, pencil whipping can have serious adverse results, often inciting legal issues that are easily preventable with the right technology.

Pencil Whipping In Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance can be a potential hot spot for pencil whipping, meaning employees think they can get away with lazy and partial work due to lack of oversight. When tracked properly, preventive maintenance activities are interlinked with checklists to ensure that tasks and sub-level inspections are performed per a certain standard regarding performance and overall work quality.

Frequently, pencil whipping starts to occur when checklists have tons of steps or they begin to get long. The employee may follow step by step for the first few completions, and then determine processes are “repetitive” or “mundane" and complete the task based on memory. When finished, they dash through the checklist marking all as complete with out a worry in the world. This seemingly harmless decision by the frontline team could have large implications on management's ability to make tough decisions.

For example, what if a tragedy occurs to an on-site worker or an essential client who are in direct contact with the equipment with pencil whipped inspections?

If legal investigations are made in such cases, it is usually the company’s fault. Such investigations reach a quick closure, whereas the company or the department responsible for planned/ preventive maintenance is held accountable.

A heavy fine and irrevocable penalties are imposed, and there is no stepping back!

Pencil Whipping Vs. Safety Inspections

Pencil whipping in safety inspections follows the ‘no harm, no foul’ mantra.

As long as the person signing off on checklists or cross-checking work performance is “assuming” that everyone is safe, the company won’t have to deal with OSHA fines anymore. Similarly, if no one has reported any injuries, pencil whipping continues to happen and becomes part of managers’ habits at some point.

Industry Example: Car Rental Inspections

Car rental companies are obligated to inspect the vehicle after its turned over by the customer.

Usually, such inspections follow a checklist where it is ensured that the vehicle is returned in the same state as it was handed over to the customer.

However, depending on the high business volume, car company inspectors simply shrug off those checklists and “okay” everything without any second thought.

Meanwhile, top management or department heads are oblivious to pencil whipping until an accident happens where a customer is severely injured. By then, it is already too late to make reprimands.

Are There Any Dangers of Pencil Whipping?

As a matter of fact, yes, there are dangers of pencil whipping.

The term: pencil whipping meaning gets a darker shade of tragedy when loss of life and life-threatening injuries occur.

For instance, boiler room inspections are critical to ensuring that the equipment continues to perform optimally. What’s more important is the fact that those boilers are not supposed to malfunction at any point.

Poorly maintained boilers are like time bombs, slowly ticking to blow without any prior warnings. The same goes for inadequate inspections leading to faulty cut-off switches, a safety mechanism that’s supposed to go off upon accidental human contact, and other disruptive failures.

The good news is that all of these incidents can be avoided because a vast majority of machines start giving subtle signs of much-needed maintenance long before it is due.

However, when dealing with on-site pencil whippers, those inspections, preventive maintenance, and other actions never happen.

Inventory Inspections are another example of pencil whipping where large warehouses need to be inspected for signs of depleted inventory. Since the volume of these warehouses is gigantic, the mere thought of doing a scheduled inventory check seems daunting. Facilities managers must understand the dangers of pencil whipping in this situation.

As a result, an inaccurate stock position is reported as “accurate” on paper. Under normal circumstances, things continue to work, but what if those inventory items are critical to preserving human life?

Training certifications are next on our agenda for defining pencil whipping meaning.

Training certifications are probably the largest area where pencil whipping is more likely to occur. When companies are held responsible for training a massive number of employees for any certification, or a badge of trust, these training sessions are often escalated for that reason.

Employees are handed over certificates without actually completing the training on a whim. A plausible explanation from anonymous company reps for doing so is because of the employees’ previous knowledge of completing those tasks that are part of the training process.

It happens, and it can be avoided. However, pencil whipping continues without anyone batting their eyes.

Is Pencil Whipping a Criminal Activity?

In some cases, it is criminal. Period.

Ideally, there is no acceptable criterion or a bare minimum level where pencil whipping is okay. In real-life situations, it shouldn’t be happening at all.

But if we only talk about industries that directly impact human lives, whether they are client-side or on-site personnel, pencil whipping should not occur. If it continues to happen, it can hurt clients, employees, and companies in various forms.

a. Prosecution

If someone is hurt directly due to gross negligence and pencil whipping, the company can be prosecuted. The paper trail can always lead to the person who signed off on the checklist. When this happens, the faulty item or the responsible person is held accountable.

b. Sudden 3rd Party Legal Liabilities

If someone is hurt or highly expensive equipment breaks down despite giving off prior signs of maintenance, the business can be sued. On the same note, financial penalties in such cases are imposed to the fullest extent of the law.

c. Sudden Employee Termination

Employers can fire employees without prior warning if there are signs of pencil whipping. If someone is found signing off on checklists, important documents, or inspection reports without due diligence, employee termination is inevitable.

Identify and Correct Pencil Whipping with Xenia

Pencil Whipping can be difficult to identify and correct when using pen and paper or excel based work tracking solutions. Xenia is a low cost alternative to stop pencil whipping in it's tracks. Xenia is a software platform that helps businesses manage both their facilities and their frontline workers. The platform combines work order management, checklists and SOPs with messaging and people management tools to drive company wide data collection and work completion.