Since their inception, businesses have required employees to arrive and depart in shifts. Systems for tracking employee movements evolved as the business world developed.
In the 19th century, companies standardized clocks and watches. In the 20th century, companies implemented clock-in timesheets. A 21st-century solution fulfils this role for modern businesses, called time and attendance systems.
These systems use software to track employee comings and goings efficiently and effectively. Between employer and employee, clocking in and clocking out has long been a point of contention. Problems often arise in the tension between slacking off and overworking. Modern businesses look to time and attendance systems to resolve this tension.
Here are six key reasons why time and attendance systems help businesses streamline and strategize, building from within and looking to the future.
1) Simplicity and Standardization
Time and attendance systems form a crucial part of the inevitable workplace digitization. Gone are the days of teetering piles of paperwork or loss-prone key-cards.
Effective time and attendance systems use straightforward, intuitive digital interfaces to make clocking in and out simple. Employees can use clear, color-coded rota systems to log their progress in the palm of their hands.
Such systems save time and reduce stress for employees, HR managers, and bosses alike.
2) Ethics and Ecology
In reducing paper, ink and plastic required for rota-forms or punch card systems, time and attendance software conserve precious resources. In doing so, it protects the environment and the budget simultaneously.
As cloud solutions aid remote work in a corona-restricted workplace, they also facilitate low travel costs and provide greater accessibility to a broad spectrum of colleagues.
3) Streamlined HR Procedures and Labor Costs
Handwritten or memory-based rotas always prove vulnerable to human error and abuse. By digitizing shift information, time and attendance systems make unequivocal records of employee behavior.
Modern systems also use biometric scans to prove which workers are working and when. In aggregating and logging this data, new systems recognize “buddy punching” (or fraudulent clock-ins), overtime, and absenteeism.
They also save HR and payroll managers the time and effort of compiling tiresome spreadsheets or trawling through employee details to make calls and emails. At every rung of the business ladder, time and management systems save time and money.
4) Time and Attendance Systems Ensure Audited Legality
When time and attendance systems first arrived, unions pushed back against them as they reduce overpay and wages. Recently, however, unions are their biggest advocates, and the European Court of Justice mandated the use of time-tracking systems in EU businesses.
Time and attendance systems ensure that employees get paid for what they earn, no more and no less. They thereby safeguard employee rights to fair pay.
The data also proves that employees work at regulated rates for regulated hours and ensures the regulated variety of employees work on each project. In this sense, such software proves mutually beneficial for everyone involved.
5) Employee Satisfaction
While businesses need employees to work, employees need holidays for their health. In turn, this health adds to the business by sustaining productivity.
Time and attendance systems log holidays in advance while making sure that attendance and punctuality are rewarded fairly. Employee satisfaction and time management form the basis of a firm’s success, as happy companies run smoothly and productively.
6) Digital Strategy
In the 21st century, we live in the information age. Information drives the economy, and knowledge is power. Detailed insights into project progress and employee behavior fuel strategy for the smartest and fastest-growing companies.
Businesses succeed when they invest in themselves and implement tools to improve their procedures. Using project duration data and employee behavior charts, firms use time and attendance software to streamline their strategies and see the results in real-time.
As the information becomes more accurate and effective the longer it is recorded, such systems prove more powerful with every use.
For dynamically growing businesses, time and attendance software tools are a modern solution to an age-old problem. Self-investment and internal development often prove fruitful for such businesses, but in the case of time and attendance systems, companies like Egress Systems provide free trials. The results speak for themselves.