Whether it’s a startup, enterprise, or any multinational business, maintaining good employee attendance is vital to the company’s success. On the other hand, employees being tardy and absent from work frequently leads to additional burden on the other staff members and degrades the overall efficiency.
That’s the reason why employers should consider the significance of employees’ attendance and use a system to keep a tab on it. To help you understand how this can be done, this blog will shed light on how employers can use time and attendance tracking to improve employee productivity and efficiency.
What is Employee Attendance Tracking?
Employee attendance tracking is the practice of monitoring and recording employees’ working days and time in hours. The data obtained from attendance tracking helps determine absenteeism, work days, overtime, and productivity of employees.
Companies can track employee attendance using any tool, such as spreadsheets, card swipes, biometrics, or attendance software applications.
How to Use Attendance Tracking to Improve Productivity
Identifying and Resolving Absenteeism
“According to a CDC report, absenteeism due to five chronic diseases (high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity) in employees costs US employers $36.4 billion a year.”
Attendance tracking helps employers find out the frequency of time off and absenteeism patterns of employees. Equipped with this knowledge, they can check with employees about the reasons behind their absence, such as illness, family issues, or stress. Accordingly, the organization can offer support to help the employees deal with their situations.
This way, by reducing absenteeism, they can improve employee attendance and, thus, productivity at the workplace.
Increasing Accountability with Attendance Tracking
When employees are aware that their attendance is being tracked, they become responsible for their work and show up on time. Time and attendance software keeps an accurate record of the work hours and days employees worked, making them accountable for their work during that particular shift.
Improving Workforce Management
When employers track employees’ attendance, they can have an insight into how many employees are working and who is on time off on any particular day.
Suppose a time-sensitive task needs to be delivered by a close timeline, but the employee allocated for that task has to go on time off. By having visibility into attendance data, employers can delegate that work to another employee who is working and has the bandwidth so that it can be delivered on time without overburdening the entire staff.
Rewarding Employees with Highest Attendance
Maintaining good attendance is an integral part of work ethics. An employee’s attendance tracking helps employers identify employees with the highest attendance and punctuality. Employers can recognize and reward such employees as it can improve their morale as well as motivate others to improve their attendance.
Enforcing Discipline and Punctuality for Better Productivity
Tracking employee attendance can help employers establish discipline in the workplace. Employers can learn about those employees who usually come late or leave early. They can also identify employees whose attendance is below the mandatory minimum.
Thus, employers can address and send reminders to those employees whose attendance is below expectations or who are frequently unpunctual at the workplace. They can also set guidelines and maximum absenteeism limits to better deal with such punctuality issues that will eventually help maintain discipline and improve workplace productivity.
Preventing the Time theft
Time theft refers to the phenomenon when employees are paid for the time they don’t work. They can steal the time by filling the timesheet with extra hours (during which they didn’t work), taking long breaks, engaging in personal work during work hours, using the phone or social media in the office, etc.
In order to prevent time theft and improve resource utilization, employers can track employees’ attendance using efficient attendance tracking software that can capture actual work hours when employees clock in or clock out.
Besides, one of the most common forms of time theft is buddy punching, in which employees punch in and out for each other. Employers can eliminate this issue by leveraging a biometric time clock system.
Optimizing the Schedule Creation for Maximum Profitability
The data from attendance tracking can help employers schedule shifts better. For instance, if an employer finds that employees are more absent and tardy during certain days/shifts/times, they can create a schedule and allocate resources, keeping this pattern in mind.
Reduced Administrative Work with Employee Attendance Tracker
Leveraging the right tools for tracking employee attendance can reduce administrative work. Employers can leverage any efficient attendance tracking software that can record employee attendance automatically without requiring manual intervention.
This way, administrative staff can get the time to focus on more productive tasks, such as recruiting the right people for different roles, training and onboarding, conducting wellness programs, etc.
How to foster the culture of maintaining good attendance to stay productive
- Employers should provide paid time off (PTOs) for different purposes that employees can use as per their needs. They can create stipulated time off for vacations, emergencies, festivals, and other purposes. Employers can also create guidelines and rules to apply for specific types of leave.
- Employers can improve productivity and attendance by adopting a flexible work culture, such as flexible workweek schedules that provide flexibility of work but require working certain work hours on a mandatory basis.
For example, in the Flexitour schedule, employees must work 8 hours daily and 40 hours a week, but they’re free to choose and determine their shift start and end times. Such a work culture helps them meet their personal and professional commitments on time.
- The HR department can conduct wellness programs so that employees have a better work-life balance. There can be an open door policy for them to reach out to the management for any concerns. Such an open line of communication will help build trust between employees and employers.
- Employers can have a rewards program in which they can provide certain perks, prizes, or bonuses to employees who exceed attendance expectations and are punctual throughout a particular period. Employers can set them as examples for others to be regular and punctual at the workplace.
Bottom Line
Organizations use different methods to manage attendance tracking and timekeeping, such as spreadsheets, paper records, electronic records, swiping cards, etc. However, maintaining copious amounts of attendance data in spreadsheets requires a lot of manual work and is also prone to errors.
As a solution, employers can leverage a time and attendance management system that automates the attendance tracking process, provides accurate attendance data for employees, and frees up the administration from this tedious job.
Author Bio:
Sonika works as a Content Writer with Replicon. She is a bibliophile person and loves to write compelling content on a multitude of niches that can add value to the readers.
