New ways to manage employee time and attendance

Time is money, and managing your employees’ attendance can take a lot of hours that don’t go anywhere towards your bottom line. Still, properly tracking your employees as they clock in and out goes a long way towards providing valuable metrics that can tell employers how their resources are being spent, and who’s providing the best return for their wages. And when workers know that they’re being closely monitored, they put in extra effort to prove they’re earning that paycheck.

More and more, companies are deciding that paper time sheets simply aren’t worth the hassle. Switching over to an automated time machine goes a long way towards reducing inefficiency caused by human error. For starters, these newer systems eliminate paper waste, but they also cut down on the resources wasted by manually filling out time cards, catching a supervisor to sign off for individual employees, hand-keying every card, and then correcting the mistakes made when the information was manually entered. Automated systems also store more accurate records in the event of an audit with significantly less clutter.

Automated time and attendance machines eliminate multiple areas of human error like mistyped information and sloppy handwriting, but they also keep employers from worrying about whether or not employees are being honest about how much time they worked. They can also track overtime more accurately, and manage any complicated labor regulations or workplace policies that are required for certain industries.

The benefits don’t only extend to tracking hourly employees– even companies that manage salaried positions can benefit heavily from newer time management systems. The metrics on physical attendance can always be valuable, and it’s important to track employees who are working over or under their contracted time. Some management systems can account for hours spent project-by-project, which allows for extensive data showing what projects are getting the most attention and what’s getting left behind. Furthermore, an automated time clock can track all of the above on one system– hourly employees, salaried employees, specific projects, and exemptions and regulations, all in an easily manageable database.

So the trick is to process all that time clock data and get the most out of it without getting caught up shuffling and deciphering timecards. Companies that know how to handle this have far lower time tracking error rates in general, and they spend that much less time correcting payroll mistakes. This gives them lower labor costs and better overall workforce efficiency.