“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”
– Abraham Lincoln
This quote by Abraham Lincoln applies to your business organization too! Every business organization spends time expanding their company, increasing revenues, and decreasing costs. Employers spend hours searching for the right workforce that can take the organization to the next level. However, every company stays prepared for any economic downturn, deposing employees, or cutting expenditures if required to finance their business.
Unfortunately, the above solutions are not the best way to show your preparedness. The workforce is the axe for your company, and chopping any tree is faster when the axe is sharp. Without employees, there is no potential for productivity or sales. That is why you shouldn’t overlook the importance and application of time collection solutions.
The first aspect of effective workforce management consists of time and attendance. Rather than turning to protective measures such as letting employees go, scheduling fewer hours, and cutting expenditures, working on employee attendance and reporting, and more efficient time collecting can help businesses financially. Employers often overlook issues such as time theft and buddy punching, costing companies much more than they realize. 43% of hourly workers surveyed admit to exaggerating the amount of time they work during their shifts. One-quarter of respondents say they report more hours than they worked 76 to 100 percent of the time. Consequently, implementing a time and attendance system becomes necessary to avoid these issues.
A time and attendance system plays the role of time collection of your employees for your organization, providing a stream of benefits;
Benefits of effective time collection:
Spend less time on payroll
With time & attendance software, clocking in for attendance is done instantly and efficiently. Employees and the HR department have fewer conflicts concerning payrolls and can spend time doing their respective jobs instead. As much as 70% of your organization’s time calculating payroll decreases with time & attendance software.
Error-free payroll
As mentioned above, clocking in and clocking out is subject to employee activity. By automatically tracking time & attendance, employers can make sure employees adhere to their contracted hours. Any time & attendance software can identify and calculate overtime based on company policies. Consequently, the system automatically calculates staff pay and overtime based on the company’s pay rates and overtime rates. As a result, you can reduce any manual calculations, mitigating the risk of human error in your payroll.
Prevent time theft from buddy punching
Buddy Punching is the act of clocking another employee’s timecard on their behalf. Hereby, employees exploit a loophole within the clocking-in and attendance system and receive pay for hours they didn’t work. The American Payroll Association estimates that over 75% of businesses lose money from buddy punching. This, along with other forms of time theft are more likely with outdated clocking-in or time & attendance systems. Time theft can be costly, and having the most effective time collection system makes time theft very difficult.
reduced human error in bookkeeping
Every company has heard the word ‘error’. In bookkeeping, transposition errors are one of the most common mistakes due to manual data entry. While they are unintentional, such transposition errors have the ability to be very costly for the company. Firstly, they make it difficult for the accountants to identify the error if it’s single-entry bookkeeping. Secondly, any transposition error takes much more time to be fixed than any other data entry problem. Using the right time & attendance software, such errors are eradicated as data is automatically entered.
Spend less time on paperwork
Paperwork is time-consuming. Most employers and employees alike hate to see stacks of paperwork pile up. Unlike Celayix’s time and attendance software, paperwork is often disorganized. The time and paper consumed is very costly in the long run will frustrate employees. Unlike this outdated time & attendance system, what Celayix offers is less time and energy used on paperwork for your organization.
Effectively follow legal requirements and monitor breaks.
Following legal requirements can be challenging when monitoring time for every employee is problematic. Legal requirements usually include providing overtime pay, record keeping, and scheduled breaks. A manual time and attendance system would not keep track of all these requirements for all your employees. This opens your organization to various lawsuits in the future. To stay on the right side of the law, you have to monitor these breaks effectively and follow legal requirements. An adequate time & attendance system can let employers identify any such issues with the touch of a button, making it less likely for any potential lawsuits.
Now that we know the benefits of effective time collection, let’s find out the different mediums or methods by which an employer can collect every employee’s time.
Methods of Time Collection
Mobile Apps
Target audience: Employees with familiarity with technology. Beneficial for employees working in remote locations.
Purpose: Mobile Apps provide a quick and convenient solution to access work schedules as well as clock in and out without any hassle.
Benefits for the company:
Provides real and accurate shift details for the employers, unlike the manual traditional logging system. Managers automatically see each employees’ hours worked, which helps them export the data for their payroll system with ease.
A 2017 study by Pew Research Center, found 77% of Americans have a smartphone, up from 35% in 2011. The same survey found 88% of Americans used the internet in 2017 compared to a 52% level in 2000. The access to smartphones and the internet is only growing, meaning this option will likely be helpful in your organization for years to come.
Extra perks:
- Available 24×7 via the app as well as the browser
- Highly reliable (no errors in time collection)
- No inaccurate data resulting in no time theft
- Administrators can access the stored time & attendance data to discuss time and payroll disputes.
- Option of using geofencing technology: Through GPS, the app makes sure the employees are at the right place at the right time,
- Having a smartphone is not mandatory; providers have web versions available too!
Time Clocks
Target audience: Employees working in static locations. Devices are placed where each employee can clock in manually.
Purpose: Helps collect the time of each employee consistently. Appropriate for companies that do not require other additional features for employee scheduling and communication.
Benefits for the company:
Time clocks are available in various models, from a cheap and simple model to the newer, slightly more expensive yet reliable model. Companies can decide on which time clock fits perfectly for their organization.
New biometric time clocks decrease the possibility of buddy punching and time theft by using facial scans to verify attendance.
Dial-in Systems
Target audience: Companies where access to the internet or smartphones are not possible; employees generally find smartphones unnecessary or too expensive.
Purpose: A simple system devised to clock in and clock out from work through voice commands. The system instantly sends the time to the managers to ensure all shifts are checked into and on time.
Benefits for the company:
Employees can check into shifts without needing to call the administrator. This saves a lot of time for checking in and out.
Check-ins are collected, ensuring easy payroll and billing information is collected quickly and efficiently without room for error.
Online Timesheets
Target audience: Employees that want autonomy and control in confirming time attendance.
Purpose: Online timesheets are perfect for organizations that want employees to confirm the time they worked and have managers approve the time.
Benefits for the company:
A better alternative than traditional timesheets by reducing any opportunities of time collection data to get misplaced.
Supervisors are required to approve the submitted hours that employees spend—less time consumed by supervisors on attendance and payroll than needed.
Time and attendance are critical business functions. Employers who do not track or manage time and attendance activities are vulnerable to unnecessary costs. By investing in the right time and attendance system, you invest in your company in more ways than one. The money you save from effectively managing your employee time and attendance activities will more than cover the investment cost. Celayix’s time and attendance solutions can help you reduce payroll error, save money & time, and keep your employees safe and happy. If you’d like to hear more about our solutions get in touch with one of our Solutions Advisors today!
