By using employee geofencing technology, companies can digitally set boundaries for their employees, which makes the job of tracking employee time and production easier for both the employer and the employee.
Businesses that have employees working remotely on job sites have always faced challenges when it comes to not just tracking their workers’ time, but ensuring they are where they actually say they are. Today, businesses are lucky in that they have technology at their disposal that can simplify this process.
What is Geofencing?
Geofencing is technology that allows employers to set a boundary or perimeter for employees using GPS. By using satellites and coordinates for latitude and longitude, you can draw an invisible circle around a job site, for example. This boundary can then be used for a number of items, including:
- Knowing whether employees are within the boundary when they are supposed to be
- Letting employees know whether they are in the right location for a job
- Starting and stopping the time clock when employees enter and exit the boundary
The obvious use for an employer is that geofencing allows them to know where each of their workers are at all times. This wasn’t possible without this technology in the past, as companies had to rely on their workers telling them the truth.
This not only keeps employees accountable for their whereabouts, it also allows managers at the company to not have to constantly be checking in with their employees to make sure they are where they’re supposed to be. This is extremely important especially for larger companies that have multiple job sites at multiple different locations.
How Geofencing Benefits Employers
Employers get a variety of benefits from geofencing technology. In addition to being able to monitor all their employees’ location, they can also set permissions and access for specific employees. For example, the employer can grant access to specific job sites to specific employees or a group of employees through geofencing. This would prevent unauthorized people from accessing the job site.
In addition, geofencing makes time clocking and time management super easy and efficient. Because the geofencing uses mobile technology, it also integrates with a company’s time management software. When employees enter or exit the geofenced area of their job site, they are either automatically clocked in and out of work, or they are sent a reminder to do so on their own.
Geofencing also cuts down on fraud when it comes to time clock management. For example, your company may be able to set a radius of, say, 100 feet from the geofenced area for time clock management. This means employees wouldn’t be able to clock in from home, 20 minutes before they arrive on the job site, or clock out when they return home after work. They could only perform those functions in this case if they are within 100 feet of the geofenced area.
Finally, because this time management component of the software can connect to a company’s payroll system, it’s a hassle-free way to translate that time collection data into flawless payroll processing. This cuts down on the time and energy spent on manually processing payroll from timesheets, and significantly reduces the possibility of human error.
How Geofencing Benefits Employees
Geofencing isn’t just a tracking technology that benefits only employers, though. In fact, it’s a technology that makes it super simple and convenient for employees to know where they’re supposed to be and get paid for the time they put in.
If your company’s time management software has an automatic clock in/clock out feature, then your employees won’t have to do anything to track their time. All they’ll have to do is enter the geofenced job site, and their time will be tracked properly. When they leave the job site for the day, they will be automatically clocked out as well.
If the time management software doesn’t have this automatic feature, it’s still super easy for employees to clock in and out of work using mobile time management components. The geofencing component can even remind employees to clock in or out when they enter or exit the boundary.
While the payroll benefits of this for employers are to prevent fraud and mistakes in payroll processing, employees benefit, too. No longer do employees have to remember the exact hours that they worked in a day, because they will either be clocked in and out automatically, or reminded to do so when they enter and exit the geofenced area. This reduces the number of errors employees make on their timesheet, streamlines the payroll process and ensures that each employee is being properly compensated for the work they complete.
For employees who are compensated for their travel time to and from job sites, geofencing technology can also be a huge benefit. Geofenced boundaries can also be set and tracked from, say, one job location to the next, or from an employee’s home to a job site location. The GPS technology can automatically track the miles that are driven and the time that it took to get from Point A to Point B.
Time Management Software Can Benefit Your Company
The advanced technology of time and attendance software makes it easy for businesses to create a more efficient workforce. Geofencing is just one of the many features of time tracking and attendance software. And the best part about it is that it integrates seamlessly with a company’s other main offerings, including time tracking, production timelines and payroll systems.
