After the short recession that lasted from about 2007 to 2010, Ireland is back on track. There has been major growth in the commercial and industrial sector. Many companies are enjoying a resurgence, which has led to increased hiring. Businesses in various industries are flourishing and looking to bring on more staff.
If you are in a position to begin hiring new employees and wish to expand the size of your company, there are a few obstacles to consider. This includes the methods that you use for handling attendance and payroll, along with the policies that you have in place for employee hiring and training.
What method do you currently use for tracking employee attendance? If you still rely on manual time cards and antiquated systems, you may want to consider upgrading to electronic time and attendance solutions. There is no need to depend on outdated methods, when more cost-effective solutions are available.
Human error and employee attendance fraud can be a major challenge to any growing business. Even if your company only has 50 employees, human error related to inputting and calculating payroll can be costly.
In fact, human error has been found to be the number one cause of accounting mistakes. This is incredibly common when inputting data manually. Not only might someone make a mistake when inputting information, but the use of incorrect spreadsheet calculations, forgetting to include employee incentives or benefits, and neglecting security issues can become costly.
As your business grows, ensuring that you have an efficient attendance system becomes increasingly important. Find out how you can increase efficiency with the use of time and attendance software.
The Dangers of Inefficiency for a Growing Company
When your business comprises of a few dozen employees, it is much easier to create schedules and keep track of everyone’s attendance. As your business increases in size, the process becomes much more difficult. When you depend on the manual entry of hours worked, your business loses efficiency.
For example, if you were to suddenly grow from a small company of 30 employees to a medium-sized company of 200, would your HR department be capable of handling payroll and other HR tasks? Your HR department could easily become overwhelmed with the amount of work required.
Between handling payroll, dealing with employee training, and hiring new employees, your HR team could become overloaded with work. This results in an inefficient process, which causes a drop in productivity. It would not take long for your business to stagnate and your growth to become a major burden.
Understanding Time and Attendance Software
What is time and attendance software? As the name suggests, time and attendance systems are modern methods for recording the arrival and departure times of your employees. They provide an accurate solution for logging every single minute that an employee does or does not work.
There are multiple options available for tracking your employees time, including biometric clocking terminals and proximity terminals. You can even setup a system that allows employees to clock in or out via a PC, laptop, or smartphone. Depending on your needs and the structure of your business, this can go a long way towards streamlining the way that you track attendance.
You can use this software to limit the time that your employees spend clocking in or out, improve employee morale, and improve the productivity of your business.
Electronic attendance software is not just a smart idea, it may make the difference between success and failure as you attempt to expand the size of your business. Make sure that you consider all of the advantages that time-tracking software can provide.
The Major Advantages of Time-Tracking Solutions
There are numerous advantages of using time and attendance systems. As you grow from a medium company to a large organistion, you want to the process to go as smoothly as possible. Attendance software can streamline this process
- Reinforce your attendance policies
- Prevent costly human errors
- Advanced clocking terminals
- Web-based clocking
- Land-line clocking
- Automate and improve employee scheduling
- Increase employee morale and productivity
- Focus on training and hiring
Explore these advantages and find out why you need time and attendance software to help your business grow.
Reinforce Your Attendance Policies
One of the biggest threats you may face as a growing Irish business is absenteeism. As mentioned, it is much more difficult to track attendance when you have a large business. It becomes difficult to reinforce your attendance policy. This may eventually lead to increased absenteeism, which impacts productivity, financial costs, and administrative costs.
When absenteeism is an issue, other employees are then forced to take on extra work. This leads to stress, employee burnout, and a drop in employee morale. Additionally, you may end up with increased financial costs. As you spend more of your payroll on replacement workers and overtime, your payroll costs can skyrocket. Administrative costs may also increase, if you need to hire new employees or find replacement workers.
With attendance software, you can reinforce your attendance policies and reduce absenteeism. When you have a strict, clear policy in place, your employees are more likely to avoid showing up for work late or skipping shifts. The attendance software will also provide your employees with real-time access to their schedule. They can view their scheduled shifts and make time off requests more efficiently.
Prevent Costly Human Errors
Requiring your HR department to manually enter payroll information and hours worked for thousands of employees is not only inefficient, it will cost your company major losses. Manual time-tracking systems are outdated and not intended for a growing business.
Time sheets and punch cards have been shown to be an inefficient option for tracking employee hours. There are two major reasons for this. Firstly, when entering the information from the time sheets or punch cards into a payroll spreadsheet, there is a good chance of human error. This is unavoidable with manual entry.
Again, this may not be a major deal for a business with a dozen employees. But if you were to waste one dollar, on average, for each employee per paycheck, this could quickly add up. While losing 12 dollars per week to cover payroll for 12 employees is not a major burden, wasting 15,000 dollars each week on the payroll for 15,000 employees could break your company.
The other issue with time-sheets and punch cards is the opportunity for time fraud. There is a practice known as “buddy punching”, where one employee punches in for another employee, so that they will get paid for not showing up. Electronic time-tracking software prevents this type of fraud. Even if you wholeheartedly trust your employees, you can never be 100 percent sure that an employee will not abuse the system.
Advanced Clocking Terminals
You can choose from multiple options for allowing your employees to clock in or out. This includes advanced clocking terminals, such as biometric or proximity terminals. Both options will help prevent employee fraud, as described above, while streamlining the way that your employees clock in or out.
With biometric clocking terminals, your employees can simply clock in or out by holding their finger up to the clocking terminal. The system stores user fingerprints using an algorithm, which increases security and prevents time fraud. These systems are highly accurate and are capable of storing as many fingerprints as needed. Once the fingerprint is stored, your employees will be incapable of “buddy punching” or abusing the system.
Proximity terminals are another option to consider. This allows your employees to record their arrival and departure times using various input methods. Choose from PIN entry, swipe cards, ID badges, and key fobs. You can even incorporate different options, for increased security, such as combining biometric fingerprint scanning with key fobs.
These same clocking terminals can serve other purposes as well. For example, you could use one of these clocking terminals to restrict access to various departments, floors, or offices within your company.
Web Based Clocking
If your entire staff works from a computer, then an employee self-service module may be a better solution. With web-based clocking, employees can manage their own time and attendance through a web-based application. From the convenience of their PC, laptop, or smartphone, your employees will be able to access their schedule, request time off, and complete other time management tasks. You could even incorporate the clocking onto other tasks or projects.
Not only will employees have access to their schedule, so will your HR department and your managers or supervisors. View attendance in real-time and avoid overstaffing or understaffing. Ensure that you always have enough employees on hand. Since this software is web-based, there are no deployment costs, as there is no software installation needed.
Land-Line Clocking
Yet another option for clocking in and out is the use of land-line clocking. Providing some of the same benefits as the other clocking systems, land-line time and attendance systems is one of the most cost-effective methods of tracking attendance, without the need for any additional equipment.
Automate and Improve Employee Scheduling
Time and attendance software is just one solution for simplifying the way you handle attendance and time-tracking. Advanced roster scheduling is another option that will allow you to move your business into the 21st century. Scheduling software gives you the option to automate or streamline the process that you use for employee scheduling. Create schedules based on pay rates, employee availability, and skill sets.
Increase Employee Morale and Productivity
By clarifying your attendance policies, improving scheduling, you can expect to boost employee morale. A happy worker is a productive worker. Time-tracking solutions can increase employee engagement. Your employees, managers, and HR department will enjoy the improved efficiency that time and attendance software provides.
Increasing employee morale can lower your turnover rate. Every time that you have to hire a new employee, it is going to cost you in time and resources needed to train the employee. Even if you plan on expanding your business, you do not want to have to constantly deal with the hiring of replacement workers.
Studies show that improving employee morale is key to increasing productivity. When you are able to keep your employees engaged and satisfied with their job, your chances of success increase.
Focus on Training and Hiring
When you free up the time that would be otherwise spent entering payroll information, your HR department has more time to devote to employee hiring and training. As you begin looking to increase the size of your staff, hiring and training policies are important. Improving the efficiency of your hiring process will help ensure you are hiring the best people for the job. With more time spent on developing proper training procedures, you can cut down on the time spent on training individuals.
Hiring and training are an added cost that many business owners do not think of. You cannot hire an employee and simply expect them to understand their responsibilities and expectations. You should take the time to create a hiring and training process that promotes a productive and efficient workforce.
The Bottom Line on Time-Tracking Software
Every business is concerned with efficiency, productivity, and financial or administrative costs. The larger your business, the important these aspects become. Before your business grows beyond your control, you should consider implementing an electronic method for tracking employee attendance.
There are multiple systems that you can choose from. From biometric clocking terminals to land-line clocking, there are solutions for any business environment. Each of these systems stores employee data, the second that an employee clocks in or out. This prevents human error, which is one of the most common areas where businesses regularly waste money.
Along with preventing human error, these systems reduce the amount of time spent clocking in, evaluating schedules, and requesting time off. This frees up resources that could be put to better use. By reducing the burden placed on your HR department, they will be able to focus more on the hiring and training of your new employees.
Do not let the growth of your business get in the way of maintaining efficiency. In the modern world, there is no reason for you to depend on manual solutions, such as time sheets or punch cards. With an electronic time-tracking system, you can ensure every minute is logged correctly.
Take Advantage of Time and Attendance Solutions Today
Whether your business is already increasing in size or you anticipate growth in the near future, start taking advantage of this software today. Advance Systems provides businesses of all sizes with the most effective attendance solutions.
In addition to the benefits already discussed, Advance Systems can help you move into the next phase of your business. Some of the other solutions available include HR management software, mobile attendance tracking, rostering software, and absence management.
Make the transition from a small or medium-sized company to a larger business much easier. Easily enter new employee information into the system and enjoy the increased productivity provided by time-tracking systems.
If your business is growing, then now may be the time to switch from your existing time-tracking system to a new time and attendance solution.
If you are looking for some more information on Time and Attendance, check out the latest Guide below.
