In today’s business climate, it’s so essential that you stay on top of your workforce with attendance management tools that help you get it done. With so many different classifications of workers as well as workers at multiple locations, using attendance management software that utilizes best practices is essential in ensuring an efficient outlay of staff that you’re able to track and manage properly.
Employees are the key ingredient to a successful professional organization. Good people working for you will do everything in their power to get the job done right, which will ultimately result in top-notch production and higher financial performance.
But, your workforce is also most likely one of the costliest line items on your list of expenses. While you probably don’t have any issue with paying for the work that you’re receiving in return from your employees, there is a large margin for error when it comes to tracking the time employees have worked. It’s easy to incorrectly track employee time, or lose track of how many hours your employees have worked entirely.
Such a scenario can be disastrous for any professional organization. Not only could it result in overpaying or underpaying workers, but it could result in your company violating contracts with labor organizations or even violating laws regarding workers in your location.
Here are the top 5 best practices of attendance management. These are compiled from the Labor Management Institute to help executives “control labor costs with time and attendance and scheduling automation.”
-
Limit the overtime of your workers
The Labor Management Institute suggests that all overtime worked should total less than 5 percent of the total hours worked in your organization. By using a time and attendance management software system, you’ll be able to easily track this data in real time, and make on-the-fly adjustments if you see overtime totals getting out of hand for an individual, a department and/or your entire organization.
-
Integrate tracking into one seamless scheduling system
The most efficient and effective way to track time and attendance is to obtain one system that integrates everything into one seamless scheduling system. By having your scheduling, time tracking, vacation tracking, absence tracking, etc., all in one system, you’ll be better able to gain a complete overview of your business in real time. Too often, businesses have separate systems for each task, which not only creates redundancy, but increases the likelihood of human error.
-
Limit planned time off
To create an efficient department, you’ll need to properly manage the planned time off for your employees. This includes vacation or leave time that they plan for and request in advance. The general rule of thumb is to make sure that planned absences don’t exceed 10 percent of the total hours worked, by department.
Of course, you may have to make slight adjustments to your expectations here depending on the amount of vacation time the employees in your department are allocated. If you have a group of long-tenured workers with excessive vacation time accrued, you may need to push this limit up a percentage or two.
-
Limit unplanned time off
Having to deal with unplanned time off is just the nature of the beast when you’re running a department. Unplanned time off can be anything from a worker calling out sick to a worker simply not showing up for work. No matter whether these unplanned absences are OK by you or not, you want to try to limit the total amount of them to 5 percent of the total hours worked in your department. If your number exceeds that, you know there’s an issue that needs to be addressed.
-
Limit vacancy
Every department in every company has a certain need for hours to complete their jobs. This need for hours comes with a budget to ensure the work is completed. Every department will have to deal with vacancies or shortages from time to time — from absences, to an employee quitting or getting fired, to an extra need for work.
The measuring stick here is to ensure your vacancy rate doesn’t exceed 10 percent of the total hours worked. This will keep your department running smoothly and efficiently, and reduce the number of costly overtime hours you’d have to give out.
These are just a few of the best practices for attendance management that the Labor Management Institute recommends for all organizations, regardless of the size or industry. By following these guidelines, you’ll be better positioned to properly manage your staff, from a scheduling, tracking and attendance perspective, which will ultimately result in higher levels of productivity, greater levels of revenue and lower levels of cost.
