For years, time and attendance software has been the least sexy cousin of the work-force management family – a humdrum tool lacking payroll's sense of urgency and analytics' flair for number crunching. But that's slowly changing.
These days, time and attendance software is quickly gaining a reputation for generating more accurate data, boosting revenue and cutting labor costs. In fact, according to "Evolving Time and Attendance," a report by Aberdeen Group Inc., the best-in-class companies surveyed were able to improve the accuracy of time data by 65 percent and decrease overtime costs (as a percentage of payroll) by 59 percent by using time and attendance solutions.Corporate America's rekindled interest in this age-old HR technology is understandable. More and more companies are now struggling to manage an increasingly mobile, culturally disparate and geographically scattered work force. "A lot of the renewed interest in time and attendance systems has to do with the changing demographics of the work force," said David Weldon, an Aberdeen analyst and author of the "Evolving Time and Attendance" report. "Companies are trying to capture, analyze and measure data from a lot of different locations for a lot of different people. That's getting harder and it takes more work to do it right."
Figuring Out Paychecks
But just as the work force is changing, so too are the uses for time and attendance systems. Once a means for replacing Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to better schedule employee lunch breaks, time and attendance solutions are now helping companies calculate pay based on a worker's actual start time – not including the minutes spent grabbing a coffee and mingling with co-workers. Said Weldon, "What companies are really hoping to do is prove payroll accuracy by better capturing the precise time that workers are working, not just physically being on premise, but paying for productive work time."This approach to time and attendance technology is also helping reduce time theft by employees intentionally clocking in early or taking extended lunches and breaks. According to studies by the Robert Half Finance & Accounting and the American Payroll Association, time theft per employee typically exceeds 10 minutes per day. For a large organization, this can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of unnecessary expenses.
Employee Scheduling
Another evolving use for time and attendance software is staff scheduling. Aberdeen reported that 34 percent of its survey participants cited the need to respond to changes that impact scheduling as a top pressure driving time and attendance. Strict government regulations on employee workloads can also come into play. Said Weldon, "Companies need to know when they're starting to encroach on compliance restrictions during the workweek." Fortunately, Weldon noted, companies that set up alerts within a time and attendance system and integrate with an employee-scheduling solution "can take steps to change an employee's schedule rather than go into overtime."
Satisfaction Guaranteed
Preventing employees from becoming overworked isn't the only way time and attendance is putting a smile on the work force's collective face. The Robert Half Agency reported that computation mistakes made manually can cost a company 1 to 8 percent of annual gross payroll. A time and attendance system, on the other hand, safeguards against human error and boosts payroll accuracy. As a result, said Weldon, "If you're doing a better job of paying employees accurately, you're going to make them a lot happier. Nothing really irritates a worker more quickly than screwing up their paycheck."
But for all of time and attendance's new uses, the challenges of introducing such technology remain the same: driving enterprise-wide adoption. "When you start to really meticulously measure precise work time, employees can have a hard time embracing the system. They feel like it's Big Brother watching them," warned Weldon. But by communicating the perks of time and attendance technology (i.e. increased payroll accuracy), and with the proper training, even skeptical employees will part with their punch cards.Article Written By Cindy Waxer – www.hrworld.com
