Time & Attendance Software and Its Impact on Employee Experiences

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1 Time & Attendance Software and Its Impact on Employee Experiences

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3 Table of Contents Employee Experiences Matter...4 Study Reveals Positive Employee Experiences Matter...6 Different Pay Rates: Paying Employees the Right Rate at the Right Time...9 Prevent Timesheet Fraud with Secure Time Data Entry and Collection...10 They re Not Always Thinking About Work...11 Mobile Workforce? Let Your People Go...12 Easy-to-Read Time and Attendance Reports: Making Sense of Workforce Data

4 Employee Experiences Matter As business owners, managers, and employees we all know one truth: the heart and force of a business is its people. The more motivated and engaged the individuals are in your company, the greater the success of the employee s career and personal well-being, and the greater the success of the business. Creating an exceptional work experience for employees is the start to this success. It begins before you hire them. That s right. Creating a great employee experience means providing a great experience for individuals looking to join your business. Start by creating an easy to navigate website and application process. When applications begin to roll in, follow up with each job candidate by acknowledging that you have received his application and will contact him. Conduct an efficient interview, and be straightforward regarding when you will let him know whether or not he is offered the job. If you have to communicate that he will not be offered the position, give specific areas that would need to be improved in order to have offered him the job. These individuals will either enter the onboarding program completely engaged and excited by the great experience you have provided, or they will continue on their job search with respect for your company.

5 You ve got the people, how do you provide a great experience? Encourage the team aspect of working. Not everyone will always get along, but if everyone is motivated they can find common ground and work toward the same goal. Perks. We re not saying everyone needs to be like the big tech companies offering in-office bowling alleys, endless free food, and free concierge services. But casual Fridays, extra PTO in exchange for exceeding a goal, or a company-sponsored event can go a long way. And last, make administration tasks easy. From clocking in and out, and submitting expense reports, to accessing co-workers schedules, and requesting time off, the experience that these tasks provide can impact your employees days. Creating a great employee experience doesn t only contribute to developing a happy, productive employee who is proud to work for your business. It creates a stronger brand. Consumers are looking to support businesses they believe in businesses that do the right thing. All of this helps to attract and retain top talent, bringing us back full circle to the employees you haven t hired yet. Are you providing a great employee experience? Sit down with your employees, or send them an anonymous survey, and ask each of them, What makes you happy to work here? What makes you unhappy? What would make you happier? Gain insight from your employees to improve their experience. 5

6 Study Reveals Positive Employee Experiences Matter According to the latest survey we conducted here at nettime solutions, 76.5% of respondents reported that their employers are actively working to create a positive employee experience. This is outstanding news. The fact that not only are employers trying to create great employee experiences, but that employees themselves are recognizing this activity should be celebrated. The employers who are actively working to create positive employee experiences already know that the more motivated and engaged the individuals are in their company, the greater the success of those employees careers and personal well-being, and the greater the success of the business. 76.5% of employers work to create a postive employee experience 6

7 Of course, there is always room for improvement. Many organizations focus on perks such as extra paid time off, company outings, and free food, but two of the top concerns among employees were better technology & simpler HR processes. Better technology doesn t always mean having the fanciest hardware on the market. Often, it has to do with easy access to the latest software updates, and sometimes reliability and support can also be a big factor. Meanwhile, great technology can actually make even the most complicated HR processes seem simple to an end user by removing as much manual input as possible and allowing the technology to support the process (and not the other way around). Our study showed that while 91.3% of employees felt that their organizations sick day policy was fair, almost 15% of those respondents shared that it was difficult for them to access those sick hours. Meanwhile, despite an overwhelming 92.2% of employees who feel that their organizations PTO policy is fair, over 10% of respondents reported that it was difficult for them to access their PTO or vacation time banks. 7

8 This is where we know a cloudbased time and attendance software solution can help. In both instances, whether employees wish to access sick hours, vacation days, or any other accrued time benefit they are offered, cloud-based technology with real-time data makes it easier for employees to take advantage of these benefits. Access to real-time data is key here. Perhaps you have a simple way of requesting the time off, but as an employee you don t have access to your most upto-date balances. 11% of our respondents felt that an increased awareness of a PTO bank would improve their ability to use their accrued PTO. You provide your employees with PTO for a reason, and it s critical that they are able to use it. The lack of a break from work can cause stress, a decrease in productivity, a poor attitude, and diminish creativity and innovation. It s no surprise that technology and HR processes go hand-in-hand when it comes to managing a remote workforce. If you ve ever worked from home or travel frequently on business, you know how essential technology is to ensuring your success as a remote worker. The same is true for the managers of those workers. Of the individuals who participated in our survey, nearly 30% are currently managing remote employees. And, according to trends from Global Workplace Analytics, the number of telecommuting employees has jumped nearly 80% over the last 10 years. Besides essential business technology tools such as VPN and video chat, time and attendance software can play a positive role in the experience a manager has with his or her remote employees. Our study found that the two biggest challenges remote managers faced both involved the concept of time: What time is my employee arriving and departing (starting/stopping work)? Is my employee managing his or her time well? How much time is spent on individual tasks, jobs, clients, etc? It s clear that technology and HR processes play a key role in the overall employee experience. Whether an employee is requesting paid time off or is checking sick leave balances, or a manager wants to evaluate workloads for teams in different parts of the country, these everyday HR and management activities need to be accessible and intuitive. Technology and HR processes play a key role in employee experience. 8

9 Different Pay Rates: Paying Employees the Right Rate at the Right Time The workplace is often depicted as a monolithic stereotype. On TV and in movies, we frequently see workers moving across the screen performing a set role. But the inner workings of a business are more nuanced than that. From manufacturing to professional services, there are usually multiple tasks assigned to a single employee. These tasks can be divided within a project or spread across the organization touching multiple projects. As a result of different tasks, some employees have different pay rates. An advanced time and attendance system is an automatic solution to make sure you are paying employees the right rate at the right time. With a cloud-based time and attendance system, project managers and shift supervisors have instant access to an employee s timesheet. Tasks can be added/removed. As the employee clocks in/out of one activity, the list remains updated with other eligible assignments and the different pay rates. Easy-to-access assignment information and pay rate transparency are the bedrocks of employee satisfaction. An advanced time and attendance system is an automatic solution. Yet some companies continue to use paper timesheets for recording of time and attendance. But even the most careful calculators can have a misstep on overtime. That s no way to keep employees happy. To provide a great employee experience, an advanced time and attendance system can be configured to make sure employees are paid the overtime salary and wages allowed by local, state, and federal law. 9

10 Prevent Timesheet Fraud with Secure Time Data Entry and Collection Your time is your money. And when you fill out a timesheet, it s a private matter shared with your supervisor for authorization and the payroll department for compensation. It is not for all eyes to see. Yet, many businesses keep employees on a paper-based timesheet. In doing so, you may be putting employee privacy at risk. That s because timesheets are a treasure trove of personal information. The number of hours worked are logged there, including approved overtime hours, and possibly salary indicators for different hourly wages (depending on the type of work performed). No one wants this personal information viewed by an unauthorized person, or worse, fraudulently altered against the employee. With business occurring at lightning-speed these days, paper timesheets do slip through the cracks. Supervisors know this and worry about the porous nature of paper timesheets. clock can be customized with secure data entry options such as biometric fingerprint, magnetic stripe, bar code, and proximity badge. Employee confidence is automatically increased. The real-time time and attendance system accurately records time right down to the second, and the extra layer of security verifies employee identity and keeps personal information secure in the process. A cloud-based time and attendance system gives supervisors a verifiable means of secure data collection. This centralized information is easier to approve and pass on to the payroll department for processing. With the elimination of unnecessary steps, managers and supervisors can focus on value-added activities that can help drive increases to the bottom line. In fact, managers and shift supervisors spend large swaths of their time not innovating, not increasing productivity but mundanely verifying the hours logged on a timesheet. That s no way for a business to succeed in today s competitive environment. Secure timesheet data is a sensitive issue that touches everyone in the company. Everyone wants it, so how do employers provide it? A cloud-based time and attendance system is a solution to secure time data entry and time data collection. An easy-to-use time 10

11 They re Not Always Thinking About Work Managers may be shocked to learn: employees are not always thinking about work. This is a good thing. Studies show that downtime helps a person be more focused when returning to a task. So what s the secret to keeping top talent? Give them the tools they need to help them schedule that much-needed downtime. A real-time time and attendance system can help you do just that. Yet, as we,ve mentioned most organizations still work with a paper-based system. Other organizations have a hybrid: paper write-ups that get transferred into spreadsheets or payroll databases. These approaches may work fine at times for calculating payroll, but your employees are left in the dark. Your employees wonder: Have I accrued enough time to take a vacation? You ve heard the phrase at the click of a button many times. Well it s not a cliché; it s actually a mindset. Whether or not your employees are computer savvy, the Internet has changed everyone s expectations, and this carries over into the workplace. Employees expect instant, unimpeded access to their information just like checking their bank account balance online. And you can give this to employees through a cloud-based system that tracks and calculates time and attendance in real time. Your payroll manager is not the only one who will get excited about a cloud-based time and attendance system. With the functionality to transmit PTO and accrual information in real time, this type of system can actually help your company provide employees with a great work experience. For example, employees can automatically view their PTO (vacation or sick) days on-screen, and accrual calculation tools can help employees determine if they will have enough accrued time off. Furthermore, with real-time access to this information in the cloud versus a sticky note on someone s desk employees can also see who has requested off for those same days. With cloud-based time and attendance, employees are empowered with information. They can confidently request time off, instead of worrying if management will reject it. Doing things right the first time is a key goal in efficiency. Help your employees seamlessly manage their time off so they can stay focused on the mission-critical work at hand. 11

12 Mobile Workforce? Let Your People Go Everyone seems to be on the go these days. But for some people, it s actually their job. You may be in an industry that has sales reps visiting clients, or technicians visiting job sites. Or maybe the very nature of your company s business is conducted outside of your offices, such as construction or event catering. In the late 90s, the nascent use of cell phones made access to a remote field force possible. But now, mobile devices have evolved to the point where they are a total game-changer. And that s because the whole point of a mobile device surpasses basic communication. Mobility is about conducting nearly all aspects of business at anytime, from anywhere. With a cloud-based time solution, for example, field employees can clock in from their mobile devices once they are officially on the job or at the job site. The same goes with clocking out. No more driving back to the office which may be miles away from a job site just to make sure they get paid correctly, or scribbling down times in a notebook that may get lost or damaged. But an advanced time and attendance system is about more than clocking in and out. On a mobile device, employees have the flexibility to do additional tasks, such as take a break and request time off. Unless your company provides mobile devices, your field team members are free to use their own. This means any business solution you instill must be cross-platform. A truly cloud-based time and attendance system should be compatible with every operating system and any mobile device. Apps are the in thing in technology today, but your organization will have much better results with a software solution that offers a mobile website. 12

13 Easy-to-Read Time and Attendance Reports: Making Sense of Workforce Data Data is like hidden money. When we stare down a spreadsheet, somewhere in those columns is an indicator on how to make money or save money. But data, unto itself, is brain-dead. Take time and attendance data as an example. Your employees clock in/out. Your supervisors sign off on time sheets and pass the information onto payroll for processing. There s a lot of information in those steps: number of hours, time to approve, and payroll costs. Yet, many companies lack the capability to mine that data. An advanced time and attendance system can bring gold nuggets of information to light. An advanced time and attendance system compiles data and turns it into easy-to-read reports. This includes color graphics such as pie charts and bar graphs, as well as other visual indicators (such as icons) that appear on screen. Let s say a large number of employees clock out early on the day a big order comes in. Or conversely, the day a big order comes in, everyone clocks out late pulling in gobs of overtime. Are you overstaffed or understaffed? If your managers have easy-to-read time and attendance reports, they can better identify patterns in the workforce data analysis. Additionally, an onscreen visual scheduler can help your shift supervisors see at a glance that breaks and meals are being taken. This intuitive reporting helps your company comply with regulations and increase employee satisfaction. But a key performance indicator for one company may be meaningless to another shop. Which is why an advanced time and attendance system is also customizable. A real-time time and attendance system captures quality data and transforms it into easy-to-read reports empowering your managers to make better decisions. 13

14 Do employee experiences matter? Yes, they do. Can time and attendance software help you improve your employees work experiences, making them more productive, motivated, and engaged? Yes, it can. The first step is truly assessing your current process for capturing time and labor data. Where do you see areas of disengagement? Do your employees consistently complain about the time and attendance technology they are required to use? An honest understanding of your current situation will make you better equipped to engage with time and attendance software vendors so you know the right questions to ask, ensuring you and your team will get the tools that you specifically need for your organization. If you d like to continue the conversation with a time and labor specialist, call (800) or visit 14

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