Automated Time Attendance Tracking - An Overview

Many small businesses still operate on an honesty-based system for time attendance tracking, where employees are simply trusted to have the right amount of breaks daily, and that they are working every minute from the time they clock in to the time they clock out. What these companies probably don't realize is that they can have a much more reliable attendance tracking system, at a very comparable cost to the honesty-based system. And that any investment will actually save money in the long run ... as timecard creep can affect even your most honest employees! Here we take an overview of what makes phone time clock systems such a blessing, even to small businesses.

Advantages of telephone time clocks

Compared to either time-punch cards or manual recording systems, there are several inescapable benefits of phone time clocks with a big influence on the bottom line. These include:

• Enabling pay calculations on a minute-by-minute basis, but without increasing payroll complexity or costs
• More accurate time recording
• Reduction of human error- even honest employees are prone to seeing the wrong time on a clock occasionally
• Easily accessible activity data for employees
• Fast and simple report generation
• Exportable data can be moved to payroll systems without manual re-entry in many telephone time clocks

Components of a phone-based attendance system

Your telephone time clock works on an interaction between the following elements:

• Employee ID number
• Reader (which you would pay an access fee for)
• Communication interface - usually your PC
• User interface - which allows you to access data
• Data storage, which may be on a server, or your own platform

Security elements

There are also optional elements such as voice recognition services, GPS location and caller ID. Few people realize that voices are like fingerprints - they are completely unique - and there is no possibility of forging attendance in a system that checks that caller ID of the phone, pinpoints its location with GPS tracking, and ensures that the person calling is the person being paid.

Extra features available with some time attendance tracking programs

Time attendance tracking systems have been advancing just as rapidly as the rest of the technological world! They are now much more than expensive ways to look over your remote employees shoulders. You can:

• Decrease HR's workload by having employees enter project codes for activity tracking
• Check employee status from any smartphone, using interfaces that are designed for mobile devices
• Use manual voice verification techniques
• Get text alerts at check in and check out if necessary
• Send voicemails to remote employees to ensure that everybody receives critical business information.

Employee Motivation: Removing the Need for Time and Attendance Tracking?

Business profitability is a very tangled, highly interdependent web of different factors. One of the major contributors to either a ballooning bottom line, or a cutback in costs for the same output, is your employee motivation. A mixture of positive and proactive measures to help your employees want to be more productive, as well as 'controlling' strategies that help keep costs tightly reined in, like telephone time clocks for time attendance tracking, seem to work best. Today we check out some simple tips on both the motivating, and the cost-controlling sides of your labour budget.

"The same holds true for work!"

Employee motivation: Simple strategies and home truths

There are seven broad policies and managerial strategies that can help boost your profits, above and beyond the impact that controlling strategies can make. You'll need to do some work to identify how well your business already implements these; however this is a more concise and all-encompassing way to think about motivation.

• Positive reinforcement and high expectations: Let your employees know that you expect the best from them ... but make sure you recognize both their achievements and efforts.
• Effective discipline: If employees see somebody else getting away with doing the wrong thing, they lose their own motivation to do the right thing.
• Treating people fairly: Obviously this one needs some subjective interpretation. The letter and spirit of the law are good guides!
• Satisfying employee needs: These can be safety-related, comfort-related, pay-related and recognition-related
• Setting goals: It is far easier to motivate someone to work towards a concrete eventuality than to just 'do better'.
• Restructuring jobs: Endless restructuring won't necessarily boost profits - but can be a necessary first step before other strategies will work
• Instituting performance-based pay: Extra money is a massive motivator for many people to do extra work!

Controlling labor costs: Easy methods

It can be amazing how much difference simple tools for controlling labour costs can make also. Ensure that you:

• Require medical certificates for sick leave pay
• Institute a telephone time clock system to ensure that employees are paid only for the exact hours they are at work
• Always aim to keep existing employees rather than train new ones
• Ensure that supervisors have the power to note people not working, and that there is some sort of penalty.