It’s important to find a solid way to track employee attendance. Without a reliable attendance and time tracking solution, you may find it difficult to control labor costs, reduce human error, and even avoid unnecessary employee turnover.
In fact, around half of all workers will look for a new job after receiving an inaccurate paycheck twice.
To avoid these issues, you need to adopt creative and modern ways to track employee attendance. Let’s break down some of the ways now.
Electronic Photo Verification Systems
An electronic photo verification system takes the antiquated punch or key card system and brings it into modern times.
Instead of using only a timecard, electronic photo verification requires team members to verify their identity when they punch in or out. What does this mean? You can avoid at least one version of employee time theft by reducing the possibility of one employee clocking in and out for another employee.
Keep Reading: 10 creative ways to reduce labor costs
Fully Integrated Attendance Software
An easy way to track employee attendance is through an automated, fully integrated software solution. This can reduce hassles in a variety of areas, including payroll, attendance tracking, HR requests, and more.
What can the right attendance software do?
Allow employees to clock in and out
Give managers the ability to create and publish schedules
Provide employees with a portal to view and request vacation days
Integrate with payroll processes and HR
Grant employees access from personal devices
Automate time tracking and reporting
Keep Reading: The top 3 features of business intelligence tools
GPS Tracking
If your employees aren’t on-site when they perform job duties, then you’ll need to find a new way to monitor employee attendance. A mobile app installed on company devices is a great way to accomplish this.
GPS tracking can help you figure out where employees are (or aren’t) and make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing when they’re on the clock. As an added benefit, location tracking can also be used to optimize routes and service calls – improving productivity and the customer experience as a result.
Keep in mind, you’ll want to be very clear with employees that you’re using GPS tracking apps on company devices. Crafting a document that details what the app is and why it’s being used can go a long way in improving the relationship and trust between you and your employees. Print out the document, ask employees to sign it, and store it in a safe place.
Keep Reading: 5 tips on how to manage a remote team
Overtime Tracking Alerts
Overtime costs can substantially inflate employment costs. This being said, it’s important to adopt an effective method for tracking overtime hours in real-time.
You’ll want to look for a software or customized integration that:
Provides you with historical data on overtime hours
Sends you an alert when an employee is about to enter into overtime territory
Details who is at or nearing overtime thresholds
Shows you what employees are available to step in and help you avoid overtime
How Not to Track Employee Attendance
If you’re still using old-school methods to keep track of attendance, it’s probably time for an update. Even if you’re not going to adopt a fully integrated time tracking solution, anything is better than punch cards and timesheets.
Why are punch cards bad? This used to be one of the best ways to keep track of attendance – that is, until buddy punching became a thing and business owners saw labor costs creep up. With punch cards, employees can easily clock in or out for another employee without getting tracked or identified. Employees can get paid for unworked hours, take longer breaks than they're supposed to, and lie about being late to work.
Why are employee timesheets bad? This is the original method employers used to keep track of employee attendance, and sadly, it’s a method that’s still widely used by small businesses to this day. However, attendance sheets are time-consuming and very unreliable. With timesheets, employees are responsible for manually filling out and tracking their own time worked, which can ultimately result in some seriously costly errors.
Improve time tracking and you improve your business
Accurate, automated, and reliable time and attendance tracking can do a whole lot of good for your business. And the best way to track employee attendance is with a modern, customized, and fully integrated software solution. If you’d like to learn more about how to find, implement, and manage a time tracking solution, we’d love to help. Give us a call or reach out to us online.
