WHY CONTRACTORS AUTOMATE TIME AND ATTENDANCE

Transcription

1 WHY CONTRACTORS AUTOMATE TIME AND ATTENDANCE FROM A LEADER IN WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

2 INTRODUCTION Labor costs are the largest controllable expense for most contractors. Contractors seeking to manage their workforce and track services effectively are increasingly turning to automated time and attendance solutions. Automated systems enable contractors to reduce costs related to staffing, compliance, billing, and payroll. Key differences in solution and functionality will cause benefits to vary. To maximize the benefits of an automated time and attendance solution, contractors need to consider the following: AUTOMATION Complete automation of the workforce management process including scheduling, timekeeping, attendance, and leave management enables contractors to increase visibility into and control of labor costs and mitigate compliance risk. MITC provides real-time validation and processing to increase accuracy and simplify work for managers. INTEGRATION Traditional systems often restrict data to different departments or programs (e.g., schedules, timesheets, HR, payroll, financials or other systems) with little or no real-time integration. This delays workforce management processes and leaves them prone to error. Costly validation efforts, unmanaged employee absences, inaccurate or late payroll or billing, and a general lack of management oversight and control can result. These error-prone un-integrated systems lead to increased costs, compliance issues, and the inability to respond quickly to changing conditions. Implementing an integrated MITC solution can eliminate such workforce management issues to improve a contractor s administrative operations and its overall performance. Traditional systems often restrict data to different departments or programs with little or no real-time integration. This delays workforce management processes and leaves them prone to error. COST OF OWNERSHIP The degree to which a time and attendance system meets or exceeds the needs of a contractor has a direct impact on the cost of deploying the system and maintaining it over time. MITC is a flexible, modular contractor time and attendance solution that enables contractors to keep pace with ever evolving needs to keep costs low and ensure that the workforce management process is accurate, efficient, and compliant. MITC is designed for contractors. Its ease of use means that ther eis no need for contractors to make significant investments of time or money to train managers to use the system. Managers can quickly be trained on MITC because the system is easy, intuitive, and deployed out of the box for contractors. From 1

3 having no system to moving over to MITC, the ROI payback period can be less than six months. For many contractors, if workforce management processes for scheduling, timekeeping, and absence management exist independently and/or disconnected from payroll and HR processes. Typically with contractors, the payroll or HR department has primary responsibility for handling workforce management processes, often using manual, paper-based processes or legacy software. MITC is designed for contractors to be easy to use, intuitive, and deployed out of the box. legal consequences associated with those errors) and improves productivity. MITC is designed to work with existing systems by integrating with HR, payroll, billing, finance, and other applications. Data collection can be carried out through telephone, time data terminals, or internet. CONFIGURABILITY AND FLEXIBILITY MITC is modular and configurable. MITC can accommodate a contractor s unique and changing requirements. This can reduce training needs, support costs, and implementation headaches. MITC helps ensure consistency and ongoing support as contractor-specific upgrades are applied. MITC solutions are designed to reduce the time, effort, and costs managers expend on the basic administration of scheduling, documentation and tracking employees. Using real-time information provides the mean to control costs and manage employees better. INTEGRATION ACROSS PROCESSES AND SYSTEMS MITC enables automation and integration among timekeeping, absence management, and scheduling/labor tracking applications, and it works with existing payroll and financial systems. Manually entering time and attendance data for employee payroll or billing purposes is by its very nature an error-prone process. MITC eliminates manual entry of timekeeping and billing data, as well as manual validation of entries for errors and discrepancies. It thereby eliminates errors (and the potential 2

4 MITC is highly affordable. MITC can be cost-effectively deployed at a small contractor, perhaps identifying one program where problems are particularly acute and payback is most obvious. It can also be used across all jobs at a large contractor, providing a completely integrated time and attendance, scheduling, workforce management, HR, and payroll solution. MITC helps contractors get a better handle on overtime. Accuracy and control are always lacking with manual processes. MITC tightens labor tracking so that contractors have better control. Paper-based systems are very inefficient. Employees often record their own hours on paper, supervisors sign the paper and hand it over to a payroll clerk who collects all such documents and may then enter the data onto a separate timesheet or spreadsheet. Days can be spent just entering the data into payroll or billing. Manual systems are marked by inaccurate pay and billing; inconsistent policy enforcement in areas such as pay differentials, holiday pay, and PTO accruals; and an inability to identify where overtime really occurred. If a query arises, hours can be wasted recreating this same information. MITC can record employee attendance at multiple jobs and pay differentials. MITC integrates with existing systems, reducing the data entry of timecard information from days to minutes. Supervisors have immediate access to time recording and labor tracking. Contractors can see where money is being spent for labor and overtime, who is approving it, how it is happening, and who is using sick and vacation time. Managers will now have much more information at their disposal. This access to information helps managers identify problems and take corrective action before they snowball into larger issues such as the need to correct payroll checks. The information made available through MITC enables the contractor to enforce many workforce rules that were not applied consistently. Managers can access MITC from anywhere, any time using any internet-enabled device, such as a smartphone. Managers can check attendance at any job, quickly fill open positions by searching the database for available and qualified employees, Manual systems are marked by inaccurate pay; inconsistent policy enforcement in areas such as pay differentials, holiday pay and PTO accruals; and an inability to identify where overtime really occurred. and more using Managers Mobile Work Center. Those managers who used to be responsible for collecting timecards are able to spend their time on higher-level tasks. REAL-TIME DATA COLLECTION Real-time data collection means immediate validation of all time entry. This can prevent problems such as unnecessary or unplanned overtime, overlapping shifts, missed billing and unauthorized attendance. Avoiding these types of problems dramatically reduces the need to make corrections later and helps ensure accurate payroll processing. Ideally, MITC time and attendance is fully integrated into the workforce management process to enable employee selfservice. Self-service provides employees access to telephone voice messages, PC text messages and their own timesheets. 3

5 It allows them to submit PTO requests and receive training and other HR-related alerts. Schedule prompting helps reduce absenteeism by automatically reminding employees of their next shift by text or , and can even include helpful work instructions. By enhancing visibility of data in real time, MITC enables managers to make better decisions regarding scheduling, managing absences, ensuring payroll and billing accuracy, and ultimately controlling costs. In addition, real-time processing can eliminate validation efforts that are typically conducted well after the fact. If an employee fails to show up, MITC can notify management within five minutes of the shift start that an employee has not clocked in. This kind of real-time notification allows managers to take appropriate action quickly rather than react to a complaint well after the fact. In addition, check call systems can be deployed to ensure staff at 24 x 7 locations stay awake and onsite. Using real-time data, MITC even provides advance warning of potential problems, such as an employee approaching overtime or ACA entitlement, in need of training or license renewal, and more. MITC eliminates the need to use reports, manual s, and to-do lists. MITC scans your database in search of discrepancies and changes. When a discrepancy or change is identified, it sends an alert via text or to the manager assigned to that employee or job. EASE OF USE By enabling employees and managers to enter data and review information easily via an intuitive user interface, MITC speeds accurate data collection, facilitates employee self-service, and lightens managers administrative burdens. In addition, MITC is designed for contractors, easy to use, and more engaging for all employees. MITC can help contractors eliminate manual intervention, reduce fraud, and increase payroll and billing accuracy. These issues typically arise when the timekeeping processes are largely manual and nonintegrated. Ultimately, such benefits result in bottom-line benefits to the contractor, including reduced costs, increased productivity, and better compliance. Self-service provides employees access to telephone voice messages, PC text messages and their own timesheets. Delivering real-time voice messages and alerts to staff by telephone or PC when they clock in helps improves communication with multiple remote locations, and eliminates the need for multiple efforts by managers to communicate customer requests to hard-to-contact employees. Many contractors are hampered by manual and non-integrated processes that restrict insight into workforce management. MITC real-time integrated automation offers a number of benefits, including more efficient processes, ease of matching labor to work to optimize use of resources, reduced human intervention to minimize errors and improve administrative productivity, and increased compliance. 4

6 MITC offers an integrated solution with products for scheduling, absence management, time and attendance, labor management, human resource management, and data collection devices. MITC provides complete automation and offers contractors a single source of truth for employee data. The modules are designed to eliminate redundant data entry and consequently reduce errors and administrative costs. By providing centralized and integrated tools that collect data in real time, MITC aims to reduce costs and improve productivity related to workforce administration tasks. MITC has the following capabilities: CONCLUSION Workforce resources are a strategic asset. Even in a down economy with high unemployment, contractors have to manage these resources wisely. Contractors that use MITC to efficiently and effectively manage their workforce can achieve real benefits in terms of cost savings, increased billing, productivity gains, compliance efforts, and alignment between employees and company goals. MITC is designed to offer automation, ease of use, integration with existing HR, payroll, billing and financial systems, and realtime data processing for quick validation. Time and attendance applications that enable the elimination of paper-based systems Automatic application of policies regarding overtime, differentials, holidays, etc. Electronic timecard edits and automatic recalculation to facilitate correct payments Scheduling applications Automate eligibility requirements for paid and unpaid leave Manager alerts for exceptions and potential violations Capture billing and accounting ABOUT MITC MITC provides modular workforce management solutions and services to support all the needs of contractors time and attendance, advanced employee scheduling, payroll rules and reporting engine, workforce analytics, payroll and billing integration, and more. For 25 years, MITC has grown to serve over 1,500 organizations (with anywhere form 5 to 10,000 employees) in the USA, the UK, Africa, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. They have selected MITC to help control costs, save time, improve productivity and ensure compliance. Visit to learn more. 5