What are the Benefits of Tracking Employee Attendance?
Would you like to know the benefits of tracking employee attendance? Read on to learn everything that you need to know on the subject.
Tracking employee attendance is a practice that can have a phenomenal effect on employee morale, worker productivity, and company performance. That’s good news, too, as retention is an issue expected to cost businesses over $430 billion annually by 2030, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the following article, we’ll be exploring how the simple act of empowering employees through time tracking can help. First, however, let’s attack a few myths about the practice.
Myths of Employee Time Tracking
Before we get to the benefits of employee time tracking, let’s address the common myths surrounding it. This is important because there can be some negativity surrounding the practice. It usually takes the following forms:
Employees Will Feel Like You’re “Big Brother”
Is there a more often-quoted book these days than George Orwell’s 1984? The idea of a “Big Brother” that invades every aspect of our lives can seem a little suffocating at work.
Employees can start to feel like you don’t trust them. At least, that’s how the myth frames it. We’ll see in a moment that that is not at all the case!
Employees Will Mess It Up
On purpose or via user error, there is this idea that employees will not accurately record their hours, often to the detriment of the company. As it turns out, employees are quite capable of using technology without abusing it.
Tracking Will Hurt Morale
If employees feel like you’re watching them or like you don’t trust them, they’re going to start hating their jobs. This assumes that micromanaging is at the core of the practice, which isn’t at all the case.
Now that we’ve covered the myths, it’s time to look at how employee tracking time helps not just you, but the employee as well. It does so in the following ways:
1. Avoid Micromanagement
Attendance tracking software has the opposite effect of micromanagement. Instead of you being the arbiter of your employees’ time, you put them in control of reporting attendance.
The more tools that you can give employees to track their attendance and do their jobs, the less you’ll have to manage them. It’s really that simple.
2. Incentivize Attendance
When you track employee attendance, you also incentivize them to show up for work when they’re supposed to.
How do you do that?
For starters, your employees always know how much time they have left. They can easily coordinate days off with the built-in calendar to ensure they get the days they want.
This eliminates the intimidation factor that can go along with asking a supervisor for time off. It also increases the likelihood of planned time off rather than burnout-induced callouts.
3. Ready Access
The quick access that an employee has to their time negates any type of dig through print materials. It also eliminates communications with the HR department or benefits management. That accessibility is empowering and makes employees feel they are managing themselves.
4. Help With Business Management
Employee attendance tracking gives managers a single location they can turn to for managing their employees. They can plan for upcoming days off or shift resources when they know an employee will be attending training or out sick.
5. Ease Stress On Your Employees
Employees have enough on their plates. They have jobs to do, errands to run, families to raise, retirements to plan for, and lives to run.
It can be tough to keep up with paid time off. Being able to check in and see at their convenience, even from outside the office, allows them to more easily manage their banks.
They can easily handle a doctor’s appointment, get their children early from school, or handle any type of emergency without worrying about if they have enough time remaining. That removes a lot of the stress that accompanies the administrative side of employment.
6. Facilitate Remote Work
One of the big employee attendance tracking benefits is that the employee no longer has to be in the office for you to know they’re doing their jobs. The pandemic forced many organizations, at least temporarily, into a need for more remote labor.
Employees are looking too. In fact, there is an increase of around 460 percent for remote work opportunities.
Using attendance tracking software helped that transition become seamless. It paved the way for a new way to work.
7. Two-Way Accountability
Employees are held accountable for not managing their time responsibly. At the same time, employers are accountable for ensuring they have enough people scheduled. Approving too many time-off requests at once, for example, shouldn’t penalize the employees who received approval.
In that sense, you are showing employees you believe in accountability for yourself as well. (And, in all likelihood, those types of messy mistakes can be avoided altogether.)
8. Avoid Payroll Issues
Another of the employee attendance tracking advantages is that you can avoid payroll issues. Some of the common ones include taking time out of the wrong bank (vacation for sick and vice versa) or logging holiday pay.
9. Wean Yourself Off Outdated Management Systems
What types of time management systems are you currently using? Print forms are hard to keep up with and difficult to keep storing year after year. Spreadsheets go only so far in their functionality and how they integrate with payroll systems.
Using software that’s specially designed with attendance tracking and ERPs in mind, sets you up for smoother integration. As a result, the company stays technologically sound.
10. Improve Employee Morale
An employee attendance tracking system places more power at the fingertips of your employees. It’s not saying, “We don’t trust you.” It’s saying the exact opposite.
The result is an employee who feels more attuned to the position they are in. They take ownership and pride in what they do because there’s a sense that you trust them to manage themselves.
Employees who feel trusted by their employers are likely to work harder and more effectively for them. That’s a win-win.
Tracking Employee Attendance Can Be Freeing to Employer and Employee
Tracking employee attendance is liberating for every party in the employer-employee relationship. At least, it can be if it’s with the right product.
What specific needs does your business have? You can contact TimeTrak Systems today with a number of questions, from time and attendance to biometric-based systems. We’re happy to help with whatever you need.
