For many companies, employee attendance and time tracking is a significant concern. The collection and management of attendance data can be cumbersome, particularly for those companies that rely on manual methods.
There are some clear and evident advantages to implementing an employee attendance tracker in your company. Here are just a few of our favorites.
Whenever human intervention is involved, there is a higher probability of errors occurring. Keystroke errors and typos can result in costly mistakes. A time and attendance tracker will greatly reduce the probability of human errors in bookkeeping.
An automated time and attendance tracker that is fully integrated with your payroll system will result in significant time savings. Some companies have reduced the time spent on the payroll calculation by as much as 70%.
Time theft comes in many forms, including extended coffee and lunch breaks, and clocking in for a coworker (also known as buddy punching). Buddy punching is a significant problem that affects the majority of businesses in the US. With an automated time and attendance tracker in place, time theft can be virtually eliminated.
With an employee attendance tracker, you can rest assured that your company will not run afoul of state and federal labor laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act that regulates overtime pay and recordkeeping, among other matters. With manual attendance tracking practices, your company can be exposed to potentially costly lawsuits resulting in employees being awarded large sums in back wages.
Employees often approach HR to find out how much vacation time they have remaining or how many sick days they have used. Discrepancies between what employees believe they have used and the records from your manual tracking can lead to disagreements and a great deal of time spent trying to clarify the situation. With a time keeping system in place, employees can look up their time records by themselves. There’s no room for argument or disagreement since the entire system is automated.
As your business grows and the number of individuals you employ also expands, an employee attendance tracker can grow right along with it. On the other hand, if you use manual tracking, the amount of data to be processed will continue to grow exponentially making it increasingly difficult to stay on top of everything.
If you have an employee attendance policy in place that is aimed at reducing absenteeism and tardiness, an automated time and attendance tracker will be invaluable in identifying problem areas that should be addressed.
If you’ve been struggling with your manual or outdated methods of tracking attendance and these advantages seem appealing to you, you may want to look further into getting an employee attendance tracker for your business.
While ATS is passionate about time and attendance and excited to support organizations navigate workforce dynamics around timekeeping, we recommend you reach out to your regional and/or local HR chapter for more information on common workplace advice and procedures.