Have you calculated how many hours you’re wasting on your current time tracking system? Whether you rely on pen and paper or internal spreadsheets, you are probably spending way more time than necessary on your time tracking system. Below, you can find three ways your time is being wasted with your current time tracking system and how your employees' productivity could be improved with an automated time and attendance system.
Lost Productivity
If you’re still relying on paper time sheets and spreadsheets, you probably have someone or multiple people who spend a good part of their work week ensuring those schedules and time sheets are up to date. They need to gather employee time off requests, find coverage for gaps in the schedule, and spend time each day checking that schedule and adjusting as needed due to absences. In total, that adds up to serious time loss that could better be spent on managerial duties or activities that result in increased company productivity. With an automated time and attendance system, employees and employers can both access the system to request and grant time off from a central hub. When gaps are identified in the system, managers are alerted and they can be corrected prior to the start of shift. In addition, employees can access their schedule from work or from home, ensuring they always are able to see their up-to-date schedule.
Time Spent Deciphering
One of the biggest drawbacks to a paper timekeeping system rests in the hands of your employees. While you may not employ a team of doctors, most signatures and records will resemble those same scribblings. Payroll employees can spend countless hours tracking down employees for a quick explanation of a time or signature. With an automated time and attendance system, employees use employee numbers, card swipes, or biometric means to clock in and out during a workday. This eliminates confusing notes and illegible time recordings as well as reducing the incidence of buddy punching and time theft. While it may only take a few minutes to find an employee to decipher his or her written time record, those minutes add up fast.
Addressing Regulatory Inquiries
No matter how diligent your timekeeping personnel are, there will inevitably be a time where regulatory inquiries will be made regarding payroll. Whether it’s a disgruntled employee or a scheduled audit, businesses that use a paper timekeeping system will experience the fear and panic of trying to unearth old records and decode illegible entries all while having a regulatory agent breathing down their back. Often, audits can take hours or days longer because finding specific records requires accessing stored boxes or searching large filing cabinets. An automated time and attendance system makes it easy for payroll employees to show specific records and reports at the touch of a button. Since information is either stored on a cloud or backed up to a secondary system, employers can recover years’ worth of time and attendance information without searching for archived records or explaining gaps in records.
While it may not seem like a large time expense, written timekeeping can cost companies a huge amount in lost productivity and time theft annually. These are just three of the many reasons that companies that want to succeed need to take their timekeeping efforts more seriously with automated time and attendance software. Don’t lose another hour to inefficient timekeeping by switching to an automated system today.
