According to research from Salary.com, in the modern business world today, over 85% of employees waste at least some form of time at work on their day to day. Moreover, in terms of a specific breakdown of time wasted, over 30 % of employees waste half an hour of company time and the top 10% of employees waste three or more hours each day. Collectively, this translates to not only pain points in lost time (over 15 hours per week of lost productivity) but also major pain points to a company's budget.
An organization’s budget is a representation of their continuous investments - investments in infrastructure, equipment, and of course, employees. And, in link, with this investment, should employees be diminishing their value in time (either by failed processes or intentionally), this reduces the value of said investment. Within a company setting, time is an ever precious resource that all management teams can easily agree to be an element that should be optimized continuously. Establishing operations on the day-to-day that allow a firm to be more efficient and effective is necessary in order to push an organization towards continued growth.
As such, every firm should understand and be mindful of the obstacles that present themselves in relation to managing the time and attendance of its employees. In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at the three elements that distraught the notion of saving time and money by creating an imbalance within an organization.
1) Time Theft & Tarnishing Credibility
Why should an employee who shows up late for work and who leaves the office early be paid the same as an employee who follows his schedule consistently?
Employee credibility today, unfortunately, is at a serious threat.
This is so as punching in and out of work for a colleague, also known as “buddy punching”, if done regularly, can cost a company big time. As such, implementing processes or technologies that combat the risk of time theft not only protects your firm’s operations from dishonesty but also saves some money as well.
From an analytical standpoint, according to the American Payroll Association, a minimum of 15% of participants within a 1000 employee study have admitted to punching in for another co-worker. As a whole, it is estimated that buddy punching affects 75% of businesses as employees admit to stealing an average of 4.5 hours on a weekly basis.
To put this into application, within a calendar year (52 weeks), if a company has 100 employees and their minimum salary per employee is $15 / hour, that company is losing a minimum of $350,000 per year.
So the big question: how do you stop this?
Having personalized punching in / out systems that individualizes each employee is a great start and ensuring that the solution you will be using is secure is key as well. The more individual the employee’s login will be, the lower the risk of foul play.
Additionally, the implementation of biometric technology can substantially add to the individualization of punching in and out per employee.
Seeing that these systems are highly accurate and are immune to many of the errors, biometric time clock systems can significantly assist in eliminating glitches, such as buddy punching, all while simultaneously stabilizing your payroll system.
Whether this technology represents itself in the form of fingerprint scanning, face-recognition, palm print or iris recognition, identifying behavioural characteristics are at the core of differentiating punches per person.
FaceTime recognition, a prime example of biometric technology, among other biometric tools are represented through the following article:
2) Time Wasted in Payroll Processing
Within the scope of managing administrative tasks associated with time and attendance, major conflict and obstacles continue to be a waste of time.
Of course, as it is well known to business owners and management teams, there are many elements to take into consideration associated with employees' time and attendance. It is significantly a waste of time to have to perform these tasks at a manual rate or with a software solution that is not efficient enough to manage all these responsibilities on-the-go.
From a management standpoint, it is crucial to see what needs to be done to make immediate improvements. “Moving from paper sheets to an online time tracking method has saved me 4 hours a week.” says Operations Director Thomas DeLadurantey of the moving company You Move Me. These 4 hours a week do really add up in the grand scheme of things on a daily / weekly/ and annual basis.
In more specific terms, taking payroll as an example, its processing is one-of-the most important tasks present within the continuous operations of a company.
As companies continue to change their staff and adapt to new methods impacting their business, it is essential to be able to implement change accordingly – whether that change is associated with employee's regular pays, weekly schedules, or exceptional overtime shifts.
To combat this issue, centralizing and dividing information by employees and storing their key elements associated with time and attendance is fundamental. As such, having an employee profile that has all the necessary information within it, which includes their schedule information, their hourly rate, and more, this will save a lot of time and headaches for management.
The best was to stop losing time is to ensure that you are using a solution that concentrates on many facets of managing it correctly. As such, this would include tossing manual entry out the window and focusing one’s attention on a tool that has functionalities related to not only optimizing Time & Attendance, but also Human Resources and Payroll as well.
3) Running the Risk of Human Error
Using a manual system to manage employees' time and attendance or a system that operates in a sub-optimal way will force Human Resources departments to spend more time on organizing information, categorizing information, with the continuous risk of human error.
Moreover, gathering stacks of paper and matching each timesheet up to the corresponding employee is tricky enough in itself, not counting other obstacles such as illegible handwriting or double data entry.
From a statistical standpoint, according to the American Payroll Association, it’s been estimated that approximately 10% of gross annual payroll can be attributed to timecard computation errors, which, within the long-term, can be severely costly and detrimental.
Managing risk is an important element in avoiding errors, and with manual entry and sub-optimal solutions, the chance of a mistake presenting itself becomes much more likely than otherwise.
To expand further regarding this statistic, let’s look at how it would affect an organization as a whole. From a minimalist standpoint, let’s say that 1% of a company’s staff is making these evitable errors. Should your average employee be making $15 per hour, should your company have 100 employees total, with each employee working 40 hours a week, this all adds up to wasted monetized time on an annual, weekly, and daily basis.
Although an employee may not intend to misrepresent their hours, they may forget what their actual starting and ending times were. Or, always in the link of organization, if an employee has illegible handwriting, it could make it difficult for payroll to determine their actual hours worked.
Collectively speaking, employee time (and employee attendance) is of the essence.
It is clear that to properly manage the time and attendance of employees within a company, a software solution that can process data effectively and efficiently through automatic processing is necessary.
The best way to stop buddy punching, internal wasted time due to organization, and human errors is to invest in a software solution that manages these risks accordingly.
Software solutions, particularly those based with artificial intelligence, have a significant advantage over others through their automatic tabulation of numerous time and attendance calculations so that all type of complex time and attendance (such as Overtime, Premium, Rate changes) are properly calculated without human intervention.
Issues in HR affect many organizations on the day-to-day. However, just because these issues exist, does not mean that they should be accepted - particularly over the long term. Whether time is wasted by employees, Human Resources teams trying to sort out employee information, or management teams having to fix their human errors regularly, should a company want to optimize their day-to-day, investing in a platform that helps them do that is key.
A software solution that enables for smoother communication and organization, clearer centralization of information within distinct employee profiles, all tied to distinct individualization of login will be a major step forward for a company currently in the dust of mismanagement. Therefore, by implementing these proactive strategies assistant to minimizing wasted time, this will enable for companies to optimize their efficiency in Human Resource functions, save money, and maybe even a few headaches along the way.