It’s estimated that the average employee steals about 4.5 hours of time every week from their employer.
Most companies pay employees a set rate for the time that they work, but when employees use some of this time for themselves and avoid their jobs, it results in losses for the business. The more time your employees steal, the less profitable your company will be. You may want to take action to keep time theft to a minimum, and employee attendance tracking can help with this.
To find out more about employee attendance tracking, keep reading.
What Is Time Theft?
Time theft describes any time a company pays an employee when they’re not working. This typically relates to hourly employees, and it can quickly add up to make a significant impact on your business profits.
There are cases where people have stolen thousands from their employers, so it’s essential to work to prevent this from happening. Ideally, you won’t experience anything too bad, but managing employees isn’t always easy, and people may try to get away with it.
How Do Employees Commit Time Theft?
Time theft is almost always deliberate. There are several ways that employees may try to do this, and depending on how your company operates, some of these might be easier than others.
Falsifying Time Cards
Manual timekeeping systems aren’t as common as they used to be, but many companies still use them. These often rely on a degree of honesty from employees as they should be tracking their time appropriately.
Some employees may submit timesheets that claim they’ve worked more hours than they have – for example, saying they’ve worked 40 hours in a week when they’ve only actually done 35 hours. In some cases, employees may claim they’ve worked entire shifts when they haven’t
Buddy Punching
Older time-tracking systems involve punching in and out at the start and end of shifts. This can be difficult for people to falsify themselves, as they would need to turn up early or leave late, which is unlikely (and essentially defeats the point).
What some people do, however, is get a friend who works on a different shift to help them. They can punch them in/out at a different time to make it seem like they’ve worked longer. For example, someone may work from 8 am to 5 pm, but then get their friend who works until 9 pm to punch them out.
Unauthorized or Extended Breaks
All workers are entitled to breaks, and these are essential to help people stay well-rested and focused. With that in mind, all employees should know how many breaks they get and how long they are.
It’s not uncommon for people to deliberately take longer breaks – or more breaks – than they should. This can be more of an issue among smokers, as they may take frequent smoke breaks.
Excessive Social Media Usage
Social media has become a huge part of people’s lives, so it’s now very common for people to use it while working. If this is only in small amounts, it’s generally not an issue. It can become a problem, however, if it’s affecting how productive an employee is.
Some companies have policies in place to prevent this, such as restrictions on phone usage. Businesses that have employees working on computers can also use blockers so that their workers can’t access specific websites.
Personal Activities During Company Time
There are all kinds of personal tasks that people might do while working. Taking personal calls is one example, and most businesses are ok with this (within reason). People may end up using up a lot of time, however, with other things like running errands, online shopping, and simply socializing.
What Is Employee Attendance Tracking?
Employee attendance tracking uses specialized software so you can keep a better eye on how your employees are spending their work hours. You can monitor your employees to ensure they’re starting and finishing at the right time, and it offers various other features.
Regardless of your business size, you can track your employees’ time worked. This will help you ensure no one is committing time theft. This can help with overall productivity, leading to higher profits.
Employee Attendance Tracking Solutions
TimeTrak Systems offers various time-tracking solutions. Depending on your business needs, you can choose the solution that would be best for you.
TimeTrakGO
TimeTrakGO is our most basic option and it’s ideal for small businesses. It’s web-based and allows you to keep track of employees’ work hours.
It’s easy to set up so you can start using it almost immediately. We offer a free 14-day trial for TimeTrakGO, so you can try it out first to see if it meets your needs.
TimeTrak Cloud
This is a cloud-based system that monitors working hours. Your employees can track their work using physical items such as fingerprints or keycards. TimeTrak Cloud is generally best for medium-sized businesses.
TimeTrak On-Premise
You can go with this if you want our most advanced solution. It’s comprised of on-site software with enterprise-level functionality. This is most suitable for larger organizations with 50-10,000 employees.
Your Employee Attendance Tracking Solution
Many companies don’t realize how much money they’re losing to time theft, and how much they could be saving with employee attendance tracking. It can be very beneficial – you just need to determine which solution would be best suited to your company.
TimeTrak Systems provides high-quality employee attendance tracking solutions that are suitable for businesses of all sizes. Once you have an idea of what you want, you can get a free quote for your solution.
