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Improving employee attendance with a computerised time recording system
Time and Attendance explained
Time and attendance systems are used by companies of all sizes use to record working hours of employees primarily in order to pay their wages. Some companies have a requirement to record the number of hours spent on specific tasks in order to cost jobs accurately. This is referred to as job costing.
A time & attendance system enables an employer to have full control of all employees working hours right at an operators fingertips. It is also invaluable for ensuring compliance with labour regulations regarding proof of attendance.
Companies with large employee numbers might need to install several clocking points in order to speed up the process of getting all employees to clock in or out quickly or to record activity in dispersed locations.
A Time & Attendance System protects a company from payroll fraud and provides both employer and employees with confidence in the accuracy of their wage payments.
Manual versus Automated
Manual processes such as timesheets can prove both time consuming and costly to business. They rely not only the employee to ensure that they input times correctly but also on the payroll department who need to manually calculate all these hours and input them into there payroll system. This can prove both laborious and open to abuse.
Although in a recent survey by visual Management Solutions on Workforce Management 60% of companies still opt for a manual system such as timesheets or punch cards, larger organisations have moved onto more automated Time recording systems in order to cut down on administration costs and reduce chances of human error.
Of the remaining 40% of companies that opted for an automated systems 99% stated it has significantly reduce the day-to-day administrative burden associated with time recording, analysing attended time, managing absence reports and preparing data for payroll. The data can be collected in various ways with employees clocking in via Biometric or Proximity Terminals, from their PC using software based packages or a combination of the three.
The benefits of a computerised system
The main benefit of installing an effective T & A system is improved operational efficiency. This translates into direct and indirect financial savings far in excess of the cost of the investment.
There are also important non direct financial benefits, such as those provided through an accurate fire roll-call and improved safety and security afforded through integration with access control. Finally, there are benefits relating to staff morale that ultimately aid staff retention.
Reduction in Payroll Administration
The time currently spent analysing clock cards or timesheets is dramatically reduced, likewise the risk of errors in the calculation of attended time. Overtime can also be calculated automatically which saves time and guarantees accuracy of payments. (insert graph for question 3 on the survey)
Informing Management by ‘Exception’
Automated systems can provide notifications to line managers and or HR team of ‘exceptions’ to agreed business rules. These notifications can be decided by you for example an employee with more than four lates in a rolling 6 months or more than 4 sicknesses in a rolling 12 months.
Absence Management
A full history of all individual, department and company absence is constantly available and able to be reported on. Along with this systems can provide reports on absence, holidays, holiday entitlements and balances remaining for each employee which helps to avoid the ‘cramming’ of untaken holidays towards the end of the year.
Comprehensive Reports
Comprehensive sets of reports generated as standard, and can usually be scheduled to run at any time you wish and is most cases emailed directly to you if required. This feature saves time and improves efficiency. (possible insert chart for question 6/7 to show reports)
Fire & Emergency Roll-Call Production
Automated Time & Attendance systems can be connected to your company fire alarm system and provide real-time accurate fire roll call reports when your alarm is triggered. This report can be sorted by assembly point and / or department. If an employee goes off site they automatically get removed from the fire roll likewise you can register your visitors so that they are included in the report when ‘Clocked In’.
Monitoring of the Working Time Directive
The working time directive exists to protect employees in the workplace, by ensuring they do not over work therefore expose themselves to dangers associated with tiredness in the work place. Time & Attendance systems can pro-actively inform line managers of WTD violations by email, ensuring action can be taken to protect the employee and the company.
Benefits for the employee
Employees are treated equally. Electronic, rules driven software will record attendance according to your business rules. Employees do not observe the demoralising effect of some line managers ‘turning a blind eye’ to select indiscretions, such as office staff lateness. Feedback from a terminal can provide employees with the status of each transaction e.g, ‘Clocked in successfully’; ‘clocked Late’ etc. Further more employees will know that in the case of an emergency they will be accounted for through the roll-call procedures.
Time Recording Options
There are a multitude of Clocking In options available with the vast majority of suppliers moving away from Punch cards and other manual methods. The three main types of Terminal option are Magnetic Swipe Cards, Biometrics and Proximity Card/Fob.
Magnetic Swipe Terminals use cards similar to Credit cards in design; these cards have a magnetic strip which holds particular employees details. This card is then ‘swiped’ down the terminal and that employee is effectively clocked into work.
Proximity Terminals work in much the same way. Unlike the magnetic swipe option this can be operated via a card (this time with a microchip inside) or a key fob. The employee simply needs to wave the card or fob in front of the terminal in order to be recognised and clocked in. These terminals are among the most popular on the market at the moment.
With biometric terminals, your employee does not require a card or key fob and instead uses their fingerprint, Face or palm to identify themselves at the terminal. Biometric terminals are a foolproof solution for companies with a possible “buddy clocking” issue, where employees could be clocking in their colleagues to cover for lateness, etc. Clocking with biometrics proves without doubt that the employee using the terminal is indeed who they say they are.
Reporting
Most automated Time and Attendance systems provide standard reports such as holidays, lateness absenteeism etc as standard with there software. These reports enable payroll to calculate wages correctly and company management to spot patterns and trends in an employees working life.
In the 2010 Workforce Management Survey undertaken by Vizual Management Solutions 67% of companies recognised that they have a problem with absenteeism in their organisation and 50% of them used specialist Time and Attendance Software to record and monitor this.
Reports from systems can illustrate not only when an employee is absent but also reasons for absence and how often that reason is used. For example over 54% of companies that were asked in the Workforce management Survey stated The ‘Flu’ as the most common cause of absence with stress coming in second with around 39%.
The results of the 2009 CIPD survey showed that employers believe 15% of absence is not genuine, costing the economy £2.52bn a year, they also recognise the importance of dealing with genuine absence. This is particularly true of work related absence. Illustrating the need for accurate reporting as it is important for employers to recognise if a member of their workforce is persistently absent so that they can use the data they have to aid in identifying what the key-drivers are. Helping employees work through their absence can ensure that they are happy, working productively, reduce HR admin time and save the company money.
Flexitime and the work life balance
Flexitime is being more widely used than ever before, it has become a particularly popular option in the past 12 months for employers who need to reduce costs but don’t want to have to make redundancies during the recession.
Manually recording people flexi allowance is time consuming open to human error and not very cost effective, hence a lot of Time & Attendance companies now offering system which will track balances for employees reducing admin significantly.
PC based Time &Attendance software is particularly popular in office working environments. Employees can clock in, clock for breaks lunch etc using there own PC. The advantages of this being are not only that they are usually a more cost effective solution than needing terminals but also that Flexi workers will be able to track their own balance at the touch of a button.
Job Costing
Job Costing software modules allow you to record the time employees spend on jobs and tasks over the course of a working day and cost jobs. creating an unlimited numbers of jobs, with each of those jobs containing specific operations.
There is no limit to the amount of jobs an employee can book on over the course of a working day, meaning you get complete visibility (by both time and cost) of each employee’s activity costing while they are at work.
Job Costing data is available to view both on-screen and via a reporting function. Data capture takes place via the use of special Job Costing terminals, each having a barcode reader attached. The software allows you to produce bar-coded “job sheets” using the standard reporting function within the software. These job sheets are then used by employees to move between jobs over the course of the day.
When an employee approaches a terminal they first have to identify themselves using the built-in proximity reader and their card or keyfob. Once an employee is identified they simply have to select the relevant job sheet and scan the appropriate process. The single, scanned bar code is a composite item that includes both the job number and selected process within that job.
Job Costing Modules give you the ability to enter budgetary figures for each process of the job and give real-time feedback on what stage the job is at, along with a breakdown of time spent and costs incurred at that point in time. You even have the facility for the appropriate
person(s) to be notified by email once a process has gone over budget.
Access Control
An Access Control system is a tried and tested solution that helps an organisation to protect its employees and property. The Access Control feature can be included as standard within aTime and Attendance System and allows you to control employee access from within the same software, using the same proximity cards or keyfobs. This further improves the ease-of-use from both an employee and administration point of view. The system can be configured with specific access rights (on both a group and an individual level) based on which areas your employees’ are permitted to access and at what time of the day.
Using Access Control means that every instance of access gained is recorded against that employee. This means that, if necessary, an individual’s access activity can be monitored. Systems can also record attempts at unauthorised access. In such a case, the software can deliver an automated email notification of an attempted access violation.
Link to Payroll
Time and Attendance systems can often provide a link to Sage, Pegasus and other major Payroll packages via the use of optional programmes such as PayLink.
This enables the relevant fields in a Time & Attendance system to be mapped to the corresponding Payment & Deduction codes in your payroll software. Pay profile templates can be set up for individuals or groups of employees whereby only those payment and deduction types that are relevant to each employee are transferred.
If you do not run one of the major Payroll packages data can usually be imported via a CSV file into your chosen payroll software (subject to your payroll version supporting this feature).
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