Time and attendance is a common topic in the workplace. Occasionally, a situation will arise beyond our control, and businesses want to allow flexibility for events that happen in life and not have employees feel punished because life happened. However, what happens when the “I’m going to be late” call becomes a chronic occurrence?
How Do You Keep Track of Employee Time and Attendance?
A few minutes here and there can quickly add up. Before you know it, your employee gets paid for a whole 40 hour week when they worked less because they were five minutes late every morning.
If you rely on handwritten time cards, and the employee arrived late but wrote 9:00 AM on their timesheet even though they came at 9:05 AM, how could you prove they were not on time? Logging time inaccurately on a timesheet is also known as employee time theft. According to an article written by smallbizgenius, employee time theft statistics indicate that clocking someone in when they aren’t clocked in can cost a US company up to 7% of its gross annual payroll.
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Let’s look at the example of logging 9:00 AM instead of 9:05 AM and how those five minutes impact your profit.
If an extra five minutes is claimed each day, five days a week, for 52 weeks:
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| In one week, the company would lose 25 minutes. |
| (5 min/day x 5 days/week= 25 minutes) |
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| In one year, the company would have lost 21.667 hours. |
| (25 minutes/week x 52 Weeks = 1,300 minutes; 1,300 minutes / 60 minutes = 21.667 hours.) |
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| If you were paying $15/hour, the company would have lost the equivalent of $6.25 a week, which results in $325.00 for the year. |
| ($15.00 x 21.667 hours =$325.00) ($15.00 x 0.41667 hours= $6.25) |
As a preventive measure to control the above scenario, you have a manager scheduled to arrive before everyone to ensure that the employees arrive on time. The employees start to notice that management is watching them. All of this can affect the workplace environment for both management and employees. Being monitored so extensively can lead to stress and tension between your employees and management teams making the work climate less enjoyable.
If the above story sounds familiar, not to worry. There are better ways to track employees without feeling so invasive. An online time and attendance software can help alleviate the added stress of monitoring employees’ punctuality by offering reports and various tools that allow management to observe employee attendance patterns. Access to a web-based system will aid in determining if attendance issues are widespread or just occasional occurrences.
What Types of Features in a Software Solution Make Time and Attendance Tracking Effective?
There are many features to consider when deciding on which time and attendance tool will offer the most value to your business. Below is a list of features to think about when deciding to move to a web-based solution.
Scheduling
Creating schedules helps organize the workflow and holds employees accountable for arriving at work on time.
Daily Clock In Statuses
A resource that allows a management team to receive daily notifications showing the current status of an employee for the day. Example: “Currently clocked in” or “Currently clocked out.”
Attendance Reporting
A report that highlights if an employee was present, absent, in early, in late, out early, out late, or on time.
PTO (Paid Time Off) Tracking
The ability to track PTO requests as they come in and see a summary of time used, remaining balances, and accrual rates.
Security Restrictions
The ability to set up punch restrictions for where and when an employee can clock in and out.
SMS Alerts
SMS text messaging alerts to notify managers when chronically late employees clock in or out.
Communication Tools
The ability to communicate with employees through the software.
Timecard Reports
Having a way to access time cards as an employee or employer daily at any time.
How Can Time Tracking Software Features Assist in Tracking Employee Attendance?
It is essential for a time and attendance tracking solution to have powerful reporting options. Identifying your specific needs and matching them with the system’s reports is vital for successfully tracking employee attendance.
A critical point of interest is knowing when employees clock in or out for the day. Receiving daily clock-in reports showing employees’ in/out status for the day is one way to monitor employee presence actively. Having this type of resource for reference (administered via email or text) makes it easy for your team to quickly observe whether employees are absent who shouldn’t be.
Another tool that can ramp up communication is live messaging. With a feature like this included in your time and attendance software, you will be able to send a message to the employee and notify them and others if someone is not in at their scheduled time, opening up availability for someone else to fill in the shift if needed.
A question to ask yourself in your search process is, “can paid time off policies be implemented with this solution that will streamline the attendance process effectively?”
Tracking paid time off (PTO) is another excellent way to check employee availability. Allowing managers and employees to check used and available time off can ease the hassle of tracking down requests. Information is available right when you need it by simply logging in to your time and attendance software.
Reporting that can highlight whether or not employees were punctual is another benefit of moving to a web-based solution to track attendance and time. Tying this type of report in with a schedule that should take place is a bonus for teams. An attendance report will show if an employee was on time, early, or late. The utilization of this report over time can help establish if there are chronic attendance issues.
The assurance of having accessible timecard data for managers and employees is critical. It will allow managers and employees to easily track their own hours or a team’s hours depending on their role inside the time clock software. Specifying user roles helps to add security to your account and ensure everyone has the appropriate level of access.
Each business will have different needs based on how they manage their time and attendance. The features mentioned here are resources and tools that will modernize and speed up the tasks that take away time from your team's day.
Learn More About Attendance Tracking in OnTheClock
Time and attendance tracking have an overall positive impact on both employers and employees. It eliminates seeking out paperwork to determine when an employee will be out–whether they were scheduled or made a request–or even whether they have clocked in today. Having one system in place that can handle your day-to-day tasks can bring together processes and procedures to flow better and ultimately streamline your routine.
Contact us at 888-753-5999 for more information about OnTheClock and how our time and attendance software can help you and your business, or schedule a demo with our customer experience team!
