If you’ve implemented a time and attendance system, you may notice that the data keeps piling in. From how your employees take breaks to how they ask for time off, there’s almost no piece of time keeping that can’t be tracked and measured.
But how exactly do you use this data to benefit your business? Don’t let this valuable data go to waste. Start analyzing your time and attendance data using these tricks.
Let it Accumulate
If you’ve just started tracking your time and attendance data, you need to start by letting it accumulate. It’s only once you have three or more months that your data starts being valuable. If you’ve been tracking your time and attendance, gather up a minimum of three months but ideally more like six or twelve, for assessment. Data analysis simply isn’t accurate with only a few weeks or a single month. Having a large bank of data can help make more accurate predictions and reasonable goals.
Identify Your Goals
Before you really start looking at your data, think about the goals of your analysis. Do you want to ensure employees are consistently clocking in and out? Reduce sick time? Eliminate time theft? Before you being analysis, have an idea of what goals you want to target and how the data can help you achieve those goals.
Establish a Baseline
Once you’ve gathered a backlog of data and identified what your goals are for that data, it’s time to establish a baseline. Your baseline will simply be your current success rate. If your goal is to eliminate overtime, you would want to establish how much overtime is currently used, in what departments its used, and during what times of the year or month it peaks. By looking at the data from several different angles and establishing a baseline, you can set a starting point for your business.
Set Benchmarks
Rome wasn’t built in a day and making the most of your data doesn’t come from a single day of work. One of the most effective ways to analyze data and use it to optimize your workplace is to set benchmarks between what you currently achieve and what you wish to achieve. These benchmarks allow businesses to track progress on a monthly basis and ensure that everyone is striving towards the same goal.
Compartmentalize
When you look solely at company-wide data, you may be missing some key nuances. When analyzing time and attendance data, make a point to compartmentalize that data, looking at different departments and teams for trends that are impacting your workflow. Many times, employers find that company compliance with timekeeping or attendance is being heavily impacted by one particular department or workgroup. By looking at your data on a smaller scale, you can better identify areas that need improvement.
Change Your View
Time and attendance systems often make it very easy for companies to collect and disseminate data and for some, that can be a problem. Rather than critically analyzing their data, they fall into the trap of looking at the same reports and parameters month after month. Even with the most well conceived reports, businesses should continually come up with new ways to look at their data.
Rather than simply looking at the percentage of manager clock ins, look at those numbers by shift or group. Instead of just reporting sick time, consider what environmental factors led to that increase. Have a quarterly meeting to find new ways to analyze your raw data to gain more from your time and attendance software.
