Starting a business is never easy, and it comes with a lot of challenges and obstacles along the way. Perhaps the biggest of those is always having to be the bad guy, but that is what it takes to run a business.
One thing that is of the utmost value to any employer is time, and it makes all the difference in the world in how successful you’re going to be. The most challenging part when it comes to this particular point is overseeing how your employees spend their time and keeping track of their attendance. Let’s take a look at some ways to help you keep track of when your people come and go.
Automated Tracking Systems
While a paper attendance sheet was a thing until not so long ago, it doesn’t make sense to keep using such an obsolete approach with all the advancements around us. This is why you need to automate this entire process, and fortunately, there are a lot of ways to do that. This is the easiest way through which you can keep up with your people’s attendance, when they leave, and even how many hours they spend working on a task.
The great thing about these automated attendance tracking systems is the fact that they do everything faster and much more efficiently than most other means. An employee logs at the time they arrived at work, and the software makes it possible for management to access that information as soon as possible if they want. These systems also cannot be easily fooled or manipulated like traditional attendance tracking approaches, and there’s even less chance of human error, which makes the compliance process much easier for everybody working in the company.
Card swipes or fingerprint attendance systems
If you want a middle ground between the fully automated systems and the rather traditional approaches, using a wall-mounted card swipe or a fingerprint attendance system always works, and it’s a pretty effective way to keep track of employee attendance. They’re basically newer versions of the outdated punch-card system, and they do have their merits.
In the first category, an employee swipes the machine using their ID to register time in and out, while in the other, they use their prerecorded fingerprints to log into the system and clock in and out––though the latter is known to have quite a few glitches every now and then, and it’s far from perfect. The data is then transferred to a computer software that automatically calculates the working hours of each employee.
Online timesheets
As mentioned earlier, paper timesheets are a thing of the past, but that system was flawed for many different reasons. Forget manipulation; those sheets could have easily been lost or damaged due to any outside factors, which made it much more difficult to bill employees based on their working hours that you don’t even know.
Then came online Excel sheets. They completely changed the game in how they have become very helpful for managing many different employees at the same time. It goes without saying that using paper sheets for huge companies was a nightmare on so many levels, but those online ones made it extremely easy to keep track of thousands of people and in an organized manner. There are even ready templates that you can find online, no matter how big or small your business is, so you don’t really need to go out of your way to create a new, innovative timesheet or something.
Cloud-based solutions
Cloud technology is by far one of the most sophisticated out there, and recently it has been utilized to help companies keep track of their employee attendance in a very efficient and affordable way. Those solutions automatically upgrade themselves all the time, so you’ll always have the latest version.
Perhaps the best feature of cloud solutions is the fact that they allow you to access that attendance information from anywhere you want and at any time. You could literally be in Hawaii enjoying your vacation, and all you’d need to do is use your phone to find out if that tardy employee of yours has been coming on time or not while you’ve been away.
Video surveillance
While a bit time-consuming, there are actually video surveillance technologies available to help you keep track of employee attendance. The people’s movements are recorded during the day, and the data is automatically stored. The problem with this approach is that there’s often too much data to analyze, which can take a lot of time, and it might not be comfortable for all people to work under tight supervision. Nevertheless, it is an effective method that some companies use with great success to monitor employee attendance.
Computer monitoring software
Now, this is a clever bit of technology, and it’s one that is actually effective. The premise is simple, really. The employee’s computer is monitored for the first time they start using the device and the last time during the day. That way, you’ll know when the person actually came, fired up their computer, and started working, and when they shut it down and left. Then, reports are generated based on that data to help you figure out the punctuality of your people. The reports are automatically created, and it is very convenient for supervisors since it doesn’t really take too much time on their end.
At the end of the day, you’re not trying to make your employees’ lives more difficult than they already might be, but monitoring attendance is an integral part of running a business, and things just won’t work without doing it. However, you can make things a bit easier for your people by choosing the right approach. For instance, if you’re going to an automated software, make sure it is a simple one with a seamless interface––because those can really be complicated at times. And most importantly, choose a system that can be integrated with other applications in your company, like those of the payroll department, so you could make it much easier for them to calculate salaries.