Cost cutting and profit making are high on the agenda of most companies the world over, and while much effort is put into seeking ways in which to encourage both these aspects of a business, tracking time and attendance is often overlooked.
One of the primary functions of any business is to track the time and attendance of its employees, and doing so can also help your business to cut costs and boost its profits, here’s how:
Time and attendance tracking ensures that employees only get paid for the work they do:
You may trust your employees and want to show them this by not asking that they clock in, and by relying on them recording their hours on a timesheet and handing it in to you before their wage is calculated, but no matter how trustworthy you believe your staff to be, this is not the most effective way of monitoring the time that they have spent working.
Even if your most hard working member of staff turns up a few minutes late every now and then, these minutes can all add up and will mean that you’re paying this person for being present at their workplace, when they weren’t. This may seem trivial, but yours is a business and not a charity, and why would you pay someone for not being at work? Not only that, but every minute that they’re not at their workstation, means less productivity and potentially less profit. Most businesses, no matter what their size, can’t afford to be losing out in such a way.
The same also applies to any salaried staff that you may employ; just because someone is on a salary so receives the same regular payment, doesn’t mean that they are working effectively during their shift. Perhaps a member of your salaried shift has a quota or target to meet, and when they’ve met that, they may feel less inclined to continue working at a consistent rate right up until the end of their working shift. They may even leave the premises early, feeling that as they’ve met their target for the day – and will be paid the same whether they’re present or not – they may as well get home an hour early.
Wouldn’t time and attendance tracking be a burden for the management staff?
It doesn’t have to be a burden by any means, there are plenty of companies out there offering time and attendance tracking systems that will make things easy for you and your management team. They will have software that they can install to take care of this for you, making calculating hours and over time for each employee, so much easier and far more accurate.
Costly mistakes are avoided and the potential for saving you money is greatly increased. Your employees may still be able to enter their own hours into the online payroll system, but since they can only do so whilst being present at their place of work, you have the peace of mind that they are being paid only for what they deserve.