The difficulty of managing employee time and attendance is lessened with a good reporting system. The importance of having an employee attendance reporting method is to have an accurate graphical depiction of everything related to hours worked and time off.
Essential to supervising the workplace is being able to manage attendance. Managers need to know which employees are working, when they are working and when to anticipate scheduled time off. Employers have many factors to consider because the cost of absenteeism has a greater impact than the direct cost of wages and benefits.
Things that have an indirect impact on the company’s costs include:
- Staffing
- Scheduling
- Re-training
- Lost productivity
- Diminished moral
- Turnover
Collection of attendance data serves a purpose beyond knowing the number of hours employees work. This information is useful for understanding labor needs, vacation trends and having an audit trail for regulatory compliance.
Types of Employee Attendance Reporting
An efficient way to use reports for tracking employee attendance is with a workforce analytics and reporting system. This type of software works in conjunction with information that employees and their supervisors enter. Reports based on employee attendance records should reflect data inputs and come from a system that makes it easy to automate and create different types of reports.
- Timecard – tracks clock in and clock out patterns of employees, exceptions, edits by supervisors
- Scheduling – review of employee work schedules, shift coverage, actual/scheduled hours comparison
- Workforce management – collection of specific exceptions, benefits, wages, historical data
- Cost tracking – dollars, hours, historical pay, gross dollars
- Budget forecasts – track labor budget and planning
A good employee attendance reporting system will also include a customized module. This feature allows management to create reports specific to their company’s needs. Customized reports also provides instant analysis of labor and payroll information.
Reasons to Use Employee Attendance Reporting
Attendance management is an important aspect within every company that has employees. Information collected through this style of reporting can determine whether the business is on the right track, and if it is headed for future success. Employees are a primary asset and companies need to know how to keep track of their time and attendance.
By monitoring attendance, companies can determine which employees arrive early, on time or consistently late. Reporting also helps to identify who has the most absences without providing a valid reason. This type of information helps in decisions about which employee is a suitable match for the company. Employees who arrive to work on time, prepared to fulfill their duties, means that daily tasks will be fulfilled.
Thorough employee attendance reporting can increase productivity and lead to higher profits. The flip side is a company that does not have supportive information to help it establish and assess goals and objectives. Information in this reporting strengthens the case for current and future needs.
Information Included with Employee Attendance Reports
Information that is included in attendance reports allows management to view details for an employee on any given day. Generally, these reports can be viewed onscreen, printed for meetings, emailed and exported to other software applications to vary formatting and display details as graphs.
Attendance reports can display the following categories:
- Absentee hours, including costs of absences
- Bradford Factor Report Options Screen to view frequency and duration of select absences
- Departmental hours variance
- Individual or department overtime hours
- Length of service
- Percentage of absence
- Time allocation (TAS) breakdown
- Timecard/Hours worked
- Vacations, including costs of outstanding vacations
- Worked hours, including costs to employer
This presents a snapshot of the unlimited ways management can view employee attendance information. Accurate collection gives managers, HR administrators and employers a full scope of what is happening within the company and how attendance affects business decisions.
A good reporting system will include settings that allow individual report creation through filter or customized columns. Information can be easily shared within and across departments, as well as global locations. This becomes easy when managers can choose export options such as CSV or ASCII files.
For scenarios where managers may need to return to the data, the system will also include a feature to save reports for future access. Decision-makers can access the reports on their own or have them emailed whenever needed. Running data reports on a standard format makes attendance data accessible through other tools such as Microsoft Access and Crystal reports. Most useful is the ability to integrate data with other time management systems.
How the Report Data is Used for Management Decisions
Report data from employee attendance reporting systems assists with efficient management of labor resources and report accuracy. This is one of the most powerful tools for time tracking systems to collect data for attendance patterns, projects and other details for payroll and other aspects directly related to attendance.
Report data enables management to make cost-effective decisions and determine best practices for optimizing the workforce. By supporting different methods of collecting data, e.g. biometrics fingerprint scanner, time clocks, web login/out and mobile phone clocking, there is flexibility to ensuring nothing is missed for reporting details.
Employee attendance reporting systems that automate data from time tracking software eliminates duplication and errors. Instead, management receives useful data to analyze hours worked, authorize leave requests, make hiring projections and schedule shifts. Comprehensive data reporting and analysis improves labor management decisions.
