Time is money’, the old adage goes. Whilst organisations certainly vary in terms of how tightly they need to track it, there is no doubt that all need to keep an eye on the hours their staff are totting up, and what they are achieving within them.
How this keeping an eye is achieved, however, caries enormously. Many office-based organisations do little more than maintain managerial oversight over when each employee arrives and leaves, stepping in when there is a vague sensation that someone is regularly arriving too late or leaving too early. Even in organisations where staff are paid by the hour and therefore need to be more closely monitored in terms of the time they arrive and leave, manual signing in and checking out processes are common. In a digital world, such approaches look increasingly old-fashioned.
Attendance software, which automates the allocation and tracking of both hours worked and money paid to employees, as well as automating wider payroll processes and offering intelligence and analytics on all of these processes, is the future. Here are just some of the benefits your business could harness by deploying it:
Drive efficiencies
Manual management of hours worked and money paid is time-consuming, which ultimately means it costs your organisation money. Staff from payroll and HR, and potentially wider teams and departments, have to create and maintain their own information sources, taking up time that could be better directed to more strategic tasks. Creating staff timetables, authorising leave and overtime, manually processing analogue timesheets and generating payroll all takes time and effort – attendance software manages the lot automatically.
Then there are efficiencies in terms of maximising the productivity of those employees whose time you are tracking. Automated attendance software greatly reduces incidences of time abuse, ‘buddy punching’ whereby colleagues clock in on each other’s’ behalf, lateness and overpayment.
Reduce errors
Human error is an occupational hazard of any manual process. Manual attendance and time management, which involves a great deal of transporting data from one format to another, deciphering different information sources and even handwriting, is particularly error-prone – and particularly costly when errors occur. Automated software drastically reduces these incidences of error.
Meet internal and external regulations and frameworks
A complex set of internal rules and broader, external laws and regulatory frameworks are likely to govern employee attendance and time management within your organisation. Whether in terms of managing shift patterns in line with employment law, or fulfilling the organisation’s own flexible working policy, setting appropriate employee working patterns and accurately tracking them attendance software simplifies and automates a set of otherwise complex processes.
Remember, also, that inaccuracies in attendance management which then leak into payroll can ultimately result in costly claims for missed overpayment and even lawsuits, which are (obviously) best avoided from the outset.
Offer more flexible working
Because attendance software can be accessed anywhere, employees who are working remotely or on the road can track their hours worked with the same accuracy as those in the office, making it far easier to run flexible and personalised working arrangements. This, in turn, makes it easier and more cost-effective to offer highly valued employee benefits, and build a positive working culture.
Generate invaluable business intelligence
Attendance software provides a powerful lens into vital business data, allowing you to drill down into both the productivity of different members of staff, and the money spent on different facets of the business. Snapshots of everything from planned and unplanned absences, to overtime associated with a particular project, to the uplift in staff costs caused by hiring temporary staff over the Christmas period can be generated at the click of a button. Time is money – and knowledge, as they say, is power.
What is attendance software and why does every business need it?