Despite creating weekly or monthly work schedules well in advance, anything can happen in an employee’s life that changes everything. A child could get sick or need to be picked up.
A relative’s funeral two states over could happen on the same day an employee is expected to work. Generally, you have one of two ways to deal with unexpected absences. First, employees could call out at the last minute and cause disruption to your perfectly planned workday.
Second, you can have a time change system to deal with planned and unplanned absences. With the Mitrefinch time management program, you can have a system that allows employees to request changes to their schedule. Additionally, you can also give employees self-service options to view:
- Available sick days
- Paid time off allowance
- Available shifts to swap
Employees can initiate change requests that do not require management involvement until it is time to approve or deny such requests.
Instead of spending time editing work schedules, managers can devote more time to building the organization. With Mitrefinch’s timecard scheduling change feature, Employees have freedom to control some decisions about their work schedules.
Save Time, Gain Efficiency
Managers can spend time answering questions and updating work schedules. However, a better way is to have a self-service timecard system that saves time by enabling a more efficient way to track changes. It is good for payroll and good for employees.
With a self-service tool, employees can:
- Gain access to their attendance information without asking managers or HR
- View their schedules, PTO allowances and archived attendance records
- Request changes to their timecard
- Communicate with managers
Proactive email alerts also keep managers in the loop about employee timecard change requests. Managers receive an email only when action is necessary. They can approve employee edits and handle absences.
Critical attendance matters can be handled in a timely and accurate manner. This ensures that managers take immediate action and make better decisions about requests for timecard changes without disrupting the entire department’s workflow.
Requests for Timecard Changes
While managers maintain control of scheduling changes that may impact a department’s workflow, employees enjoy the autonomy of a self-service option.
Using this feature, employees make requests to change their current or future scheduled hours via a self-service module in Mitrefinch’s time management program.
The process is simple. An employee selects a date and makes changes to:
- Clock in times
- Standard or basic hours
- Overtime hours
- Absence
Once the employee submits his or her change, the manager automatically receives a notification of the change via the proactive mail alert feature.
The request to make a change to an employee’s time is either approved or disapproved. This is done without making manual changes to the timecard, which could delay payroll.
Change Request Submissions and Approvals
Upon receiving the timecard change request, your manager can view details in the time management system. An employee receives an automatic status update after the manager makes a decision.
The process is a win-win-win scenario. An electronic system for timecard entry approvals will speed up payroll and guarantee fewer, if any, errors with employees’ pay.
There is no need to re-type changes to work hours; the manager’s disposition of a request automatically updates to add or subtract employee time.
Ultimately, managers are responsible for ensuring their departments are adequately staffed. After timecard changes are made by employees, managers make the final decision, which is based on doing what is best.
Mitrefinch’s employee self-service module does so much more than give employees’ access to their timecard data. With one or two clicks, the system completes several steps in a process that could take days if done manually.
Employees have greater control over their work schedules. Managers can still monitor that control to ensure business goals and objectives do not suffer. At the same time, managers are free to focus on other functions that are important for the organization’s survival.
Adding this feature to the employee time management process helps to improve productivity, boost employee morale and prevent hiccups with processing payroll in a timely manner.
