Labour costs can quickly turn a robust financial position into a more tenuous one, and can make an already strained situation even worse. It is vital that you control your costs, particularly with regards to compensating your employees. While keeping everyone on task is certainly vital, it can be just as helpful to employ software that ensures that workers are paid properly. This saves time and money.
Organized Payroll
Keeping payroll organized is an issue that every business has to contend with, and that never stops. Traditionally, one method of keeping this together was to have your own internal payroll department staffed with full-time people. Of course, this does not keep tabs on what is actually happening on your "shop floor." In the same vein, outsourcing payroll operations to an outside company also does not handle the issue of making sure that everyone's hours are properly accounted for. Labour cost tracking software handles this issue beautifully because it can simultaneously keep track of when people are working and what their overall compensation should be. Then it feeds this information into a display that you can easily review, so it does not take up most of your time.
Strategic Planning
One of the traditional jobs of management has been to oversee the workforce and ensure that everyone's times are accurate. With software handling the bulk of this, management now has an expanded ability to do what it rightfully should -- strategic planning. When you no longer have to spend the bulk of your work day handling employee timing and payroll issues, you can focus on moving forward and taking your company to the next level in all the ways you did not have time for previously. Getting back time in your workday is perhaps the largest problem that labour cost tracking software can partially solve for you.
Distant Employees
Employees do not always work in a centralized location. In fact, many employees, such as technicians and salespeople, are often far away doing work that simply cannot be done in the office. For them, clocking has always been a gray area. Do you want to pay them to commute back to the office in their own vehicles just to clock out? Do you want to have to hound them from afar to make sure they have clocked in? Generally, the answer to both of these questions is no, and proper software solves this problem. The software can provide reminders on both ends of the clocking spectrum, in addition to tracking costs.
Paid Time Off
Paid time off can be a tricky situation. While employees tend to enjoy time off, it is uncommon for anyone to track it effectively unless they are extremely careful. Keeping track of a mid-size office's worth of legally mandated time off and ensuring that employees are not working during this time has typically been a full-time job in and of itself. Fortunately, with tracking software employees and you as management can be informed with plenty of time in advance that time off is required, as well as any additional time off they may have accrued due to your company policies.
Lateness Tracking and Litigation
Employees who are fired can feel as if they have been treated unfairly, and can even sue for wrongful termination. In these cases, labour tracking is vital to ensure that not only are you treating employees fairly, but you can prove in court that you are doing so. Naturally, this is an extreme scenario, but there are certainly morale and productivity benefits to it being well known that all employees are treated equally.
