Every employer wants to have control over their employees so that they work efficiently instead of daydreaming at their workplace. That’s no wonder, seeing how control is one of five fundamental functions of management. Today we’ll talk about popular tools of recording the hours your employees worked. Let’s begin with the reasons why you simply need them.
We have at least 5 solid arguments in favor of such services.
The legislation of many countries states that the employer is obliged to record the amount of working hours of people who are employed in their company.
Maintaining attendance records, notes with days off, sick leaves and days when the employee simply didn’t show up at work – all these positions are an obligatory part of document flow, which can be quite useful. For example, in case the employee has been fired and they go to the monitoring body, such as Labor Inspection, prosecutor's office, etc., the employer will firstly have to present the attendance records of that employee. If this document is being filled out automatically and thoroughly, the inspections will have a successful outcome for the employer.
There is a simple pattern – the weaker the punishments are for small violations, the more often the serious offenses happen. If you don’t pay attention to your employees being late, even if they are 5-10 minutes late, soon people will start coming into work later and later. And that will quickly become a problem.
Back in 2015 AffinityLive, a large company that specializes in automation of professional services, conducted a large-scale research regarding working hours. Statistics that they collected clearly showed that USA economy loses $7.4 billion on the daily basis just because people can’t keep track of time, monitor their schedule and instead they get distracted from work. Speaking about particular companies, it can be said that transition to the automated services of recording the amount of working hours brought $18,338 a year on average.
Similar researches had been carried out in Russia, and the results of these studies didn’t differ that much from what we’ve described above.
Reports on what people do during their work hours are an important element of controlling the company. As a leader, you need to know:
The more data you obtain and the more detailed these data is, the simpler it will be to make correct decisions.
Modern tools of recording the amount of working hours are complex systems that are closely connected with control of access and tracking of location of the employee. Therefore, if for some reason you have doubts regarding the integrity of an employee, you’ll be able to check everything quite easily.
Let’s say it’s the norm to work 40 hours a week – for example, a person has to work for 8 hours 5 days a week. But what if that person worked 9 hours on Monday, and 7 hours on Friday – how do you calculate their salary, what do you consider their overtime? That’s when the combination of several types of accounting of working hours can become quite helpful.
Many companies stick to a simple plan – they record the amount of time an employee worked each day. Therefore the salary is calculated based on each working day. That’s your ideal choice if you have a set schedule and your typical working hours don’t change.
That’s when the time an employee worked during the week is recorded and then checked whether it’s within the weekly norm. That could be a good choice if the employee has to work with flexible schedule – for example, for 9 hours on Mondays, but just for 3 hours on Fridays. In that case it’s more convenient to calculate the payment on a weekly basis based on the norm of 40 hours a week.
In that case working hours are calculated for the specified period of time, for example, for the duration of the contract or the project. It can be helpful to use this approach if the employees aren’t tied down to a certain number of hours in a day or a week that they have to work – for example, this can come in handy for security companies.
It’s most convenient to keep track in a way that would make it possible to look at statistics on each employee for any period at any time – by days, weeks, months, etc. That’s when modern options come to the rescue.
Let’s begin by talking about the simplest options, for which you almost don’t need investments of capital, but which at the same time demand your constant attention.
A simple table, where you write down statistics on each employee: when he took sick leave, when he was late, etc. Very simple; it’s absolutely free of charge, but it does take a lot of time, and it demands your personal monitoring. It’s only suitable for very small companies.
Apps such as SAP S, QuickBooks, Dynamics 365 and so on. Most likely, your HR specialists and accountants already use similar software – all you need to do is add the option of recording the amount of working hours. It will be the same table we’ve already talked about, but you’ll be able to create sheets for payroll, add graphics, etc. all at once.
Additional tool that allows the supervisor to watch each employee without even leaving their office. You’ll always be able to learn who was doing what during working hours, but you’ll still have to monitor everything personally.
These are the first steps toward automation: systems like Bitrix24 collect some of your of statistics without your involvement. They record the time an employee turned on the computer and/or logged into CRM, and then they create convenient reports based on these data. It’s a nice intermediate option, but it only shows whether the employee is present at work. They don’t report anything on the actual activity of the employees.
Now let’s talk about automatic tools of recording the amount of working hours – the programs and complexes that save your time and seriously simplify your control over the schedule of your employees.
That’s simple: every room – and the entry to the company – has a special electronic lock. If you don’t have a card with certain access level, you can’t enter the perimeter of the building. Cards are personal, so you can always look exactly where and when your employees have been. All the data is being closely monitored by the Access Control System (or ACS). The ACS helps monitor smoke breaks, increases safety, works together perfectly with video surveillance.
Those are similar systems, but instead of the card the program identifies you by the retina of your retina or by your fingerprint. They can be useful if you have serious reasons to believe in possibility of breaches of safety of the company. You can give your card to somebody else, but you can’t exactly lend anybody your fingerprint.
Now we’re talking about serious programs like computer monitoring software for employers Kickidler that do screen monitoring of each computer in your organization. These programs not only monitor the time your employees came to work and left it, including all the smoke breaks, but also monitor internet usage and take into account what websites and programs were used by the employees during the working hours, dividing these apps into categories of productive and unproductive. Pc monitoring software provides the most useful information:
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