For any business, the workforce is its biggest asset since they form the core of every business operation. Similarly, every business leader has the right to know when their employee comes to work and when they leave the office. Therefore as a business manager, attendance tracking of your employees is crucial in ensuring employee time is managed effectively.
The following are the reasons why tracking employee attendance in the workplace is important.
. Compliance And Attendance
In some cases, it is not a matter of choice since employers have to adhere to compliance regulations, in keeping accurate records of employee working hours. For instance, the EU regulates this through the EU work time directive, while in the US, the Fair Labor standards achieve the same objective. Additionally, the passing of the Affordable Care Act meant that attendance and insurance became tied together. This federal mandate stipulated that any business with more than 50 employees was required to offer health insurance. As a consequence, therefore, the HR department has to continuously monitor employees working hours so that they can produce more accurate reports in compliance with these regulations.
. Increases Employee Morale
Tracking employee attendance helps in dealing with imminent staffing issues. For instance, there can be a great resentment towards an employee who often comes to work late, forcing others to cover for their work. This may lead to some individual projects being delayed while covering up for the responsibilities of the absentee staff. In the long run, this continued absence can negatively impact the morale of other employees, and they may end up feeling that the management is not putting necessary effort to curb such a growing concern.
Ultimately, you will end up with a disengaged workforce, who knows that there are no consequences to being absent at work. Others may even start to look for new opportunities. So it is very crucial that the management put necessary measures in place to track employees’ attendance, which is the only sure-fire way to prevent resentment and agitation among the workforce.
. Improves Accuracy Of Labour Costs
Monitoring employees ensure that the HR department can see the time everyone is locked in, such that employees are only paid for the time they have worked. It helps in giving an accurate picture of the labor costs, preventing cases where some disgruntled employees come to work late and leave the office early but still get similar pay to their colleagues
Additionally, tracking employees can prevent errors in manual employee attendance records, especially with automated systems. This will lead to faster records keeping while still maintaining the accuracy of the records, enabling your company to save money that might otherwise be lost from unforeseen errors.
. Enables Remote Work
A number of employers are often reluctant to embrace remote working because of the lack of supervision. And the fact that undisciplined employees can get morphed into non-job related activities, reducing their productivity. However, monitoring the attendance with a remote locking system, for example, helps you achieve accountability without being overly restrictive. It, therefore, enables remote work to be a success for both you as the employer and the employees as well.
. Make Better Hiring And Scheduling Decisions From Real-Time Analysis
Up up-to-date attendance data will enable you as an employer to promote workforce productivity. A more realistic understanding of every employee’s productivity level informs better hiring decisions as well as job scheduling within departments. A window into employee productivity also enables you to identify specific employee trends that may reveal savings for your payroll. Furthermore, if you can optimally align business goals and objectives with employee monitoring data, it will help the company to stay on target, reducing any imbalance in hours worked by employees.
. Necessitates Vacation Scheduling
Even the most workaholic employees would prefer to have some time out for vacations. By consolidating vacation schedules, facilitates employees in choosing preferred vacation times. This can be efficiently managed with proper monitoring of employees at work to help in making decisions on the requisite number of days off for each employee. This kind of planning gives the managers advance notice to prepare for such planned absences. So employee attendance tracking accords the business several benefits like providing the right data for making informed decisions in vacation scheduling
. Reduces Absenteeism
Absenteeism can greatly and negatively impact employee productivity in an organization. Being able to control absenteeism in the workplace is the only way to mitigate such impact. In some cases, employees may collude in absenteeism through buddy punching, where one deliberately signs for an absent employee or covers for their daily tasks. The best remedy is that all absences are recorded such that line managers and HR are well acquainted with this information. In this regard, any unusual absenteeism can be addressed promptly. Otherwise, if the business has incomplete records, it will be challenging to keep track of how often employees are absent from work.
Conclusion
For the reasons stated above, it now goes to show how important it is to track employee attendance in the workplace. Some of the said benefits include: improving compliance and attendance within the workplace, increasing employee morale, improving the accuracy of labor costs, enables remote work, and facilitates the business leadership in making better hiring and scheduling decisions. Moreover, it necessitates vacation scheduling and reduces absenteeism.
