Vizual conducted a survey with 357 SME business owners during May and June this year. Our intention was to discover how many of those surveyed considered electronic recording of employee attendance and absences important.
We also wanted to highlight the benefits of installing an electronic time and attendance system compared with those businesses who continue to use a manual method of recording attendance and absence data.
Our conclusions from the survey are below and you can download a full version of the results here;
Conclusion from Workforce Management Survey
Absenteeism in the workplace remains a challenge for employers, with the average cost of absence per employee rising to £692 in 2008 from £666 in 2007 according to the 2009 survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
It is apparent from our survey that 214 (60%) of the businesses choose not to automate the recording of their employee attendance with 123 (34%) still opting for a manual process.
Of the companies that do not currently have an electronic Time Management System 67 (31%) say it takes 3 days at the end of the month to calculate hours for payroll with 9 (4%) saying it can take as many as 5 days.
When asking the 143 companies who do electronically monitor attendance whether the system has improved their payroll process 141 (99%) of them believed it had by as much as 75-100%. This clearly illustrates one of the main benefits of a time management system being the reduction in administration time which can offer a huge return on investment.
The survey shows that absence management is not only important to the employer in terms of helping payroll and cutting administration but also for spotting patterns and trends in an individuals working life. 10 (3%) of the companies surveyed didn’t know whether lateness was an issue for them and 50 (14%) were not aware of whether absence was a problem within there company. If these companies opted for an electronic Time and Attendance system they would be able to accurately monitor absence and lateness and produce reports at the touch of a button.
An average of 221 (62%) businesses have experienced problems with employee lateness and sickness however 179 (50%) businesses do not use a specialised system for recording those issues. 98 (27%) of businesses who took part in the survey have average employee sickness levels of between 5 to 10 days.
It is encouraging to see that 198 (92%) of the businesses who currently register employee attendance manually would consider an electronic system in the future. Through the analysis of absenteeism employers will be able to recognise if a member of their workforce is persistently absent and use this data to help the employee work through their absence ensuring that they are happy, working productively, reduce HR admin time and save the company money.
These results prove that businesses who do use an electronic system for managing attendance and absence see significant improvements in their payroll process, reduction of administration and see real cost savings.
Survey undertaken by Vizual Management Solutions © 2010