“The average worker is productive for only 2 hours and 53 minutes a day” – Hubstaff.com
Accurate employee time tracking is critical to managing labor costs, ensuring adherence to staffing schedules, and maximizing productivity. However, employee time tracking can be challenging, primarily when manual methods are used. This blog explores the benefits of accurate employee time tracking and demonstrates how automated solutions simplifies the process.
What is Employee Time Tracking?
Employee time tracking is the practice of monitoring and documenting each employee’s hours worked. Employers track work hours by requiring employees to clock in and out at scheduled times, such as at the beginning and end of a shift.
What is a Shift Worker?
Shift workers work non-traditional hours in rotating or fixed schedules, including days, evenings, nights, weekends, or other periods outside the regular 9-to-5 workday. Shift workers are often found in industries that operate 24/7, such as healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality, transportation, and customer service.
What is Time and Attendance?
Time and attendance is the area of workforce management that tracks and monitors when an employee starts and stops work.
How Does Time Tracking Improve Shift Worker Productivity?
“You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.” — Gary W. Keller
Improves Time Management
Time tracking helps shift workers stay focused on their tasks. Knowing that their time is being tracked encourages them to stay on track and complete their work within the scheduled time frames. It minimizes distractions and promotes responsible time management.
Promotes Employee Accountability
Time tracking promotes accountability among employees. Employees who know their time is being tracked are more likely to stay focused and productive. Time tracking also provides visibility into employees’ work patterns, allowing managers to identify areas for improvement, provide timely feedback, and enhance overall productivity.
Helps Employees Set Priorities
Time tracking allows shift workers to prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance. By tracking the time spent on different tasks, workers can identify which tasks require more attention and allocate their time accordingly. This practice helps them manage their workload effectively and complete high-priority tasks on time.
Ensures Employees Receive Accurate Pay
Time tracking ensures that shift workers are accurately compensated for the hours they work. It provides transparency and fairness in payroll management. By tracking their work hours accurately, shift workers can ensure that they are paid for their time, including any overtime or additional shifts. Accurate pay promotes employee satisfaction and motivation.
How can Time Tracking Support Business Operations?
Helps to Optimize Time Usage
Time tracking helps businesses understand how employees use time and allocate labor hours accordingly. By analyzing time-tracking data, companies can identify areas of inefficiency, and optimize workflows. This leads to better resource allocation, improved productivity, and reduced costs.
Provides for Data-Driven Decision Making
Time-tracking data provides valuable insights for data-driven decision-making. By analyzing time-tracking data, businesses can identify trends, measure performance metrics, and make informed decisions to optimize operations, improve efficiency, and drive business growth.
Supports Employee Performance Management
Employee time tracking data can be used for performance management and employee development. Managers can review employees’ time-tracking records to assess performance, identify areas for improvement, and provide targeted training and support. Time tracking also helps recognize and reward high-performing employees based on their productivity and contribution.
Helps to Improve Workflow Efficiency
Time tracking provides valuable insights into the workflow and processes of shift workers. It helps identify bottlenecks, delays, or inefficiencies in the workflow. With this information, managers can make adjustments to streamline processes, remove obstacles, and optimize the workflow. This leads to increased productivity and smoother operations.
Ensure that Management is in Compliance with Local Labor Laws
Time tracking helps businesses comply with labor laws and regulations regarding working hours, breaks, and overtime. By accurately tracking and documenting employees’ work hours, businesses can ensure compliance with legal requirements, mitigate risks, and avoid potential legal issues.
How TimeWellScheduled Can Improve Employee Time Tracking at Your Business
TimeWellScheduled’s scheduling software enhances employee time tracking by providing accurate capture, real-time visibility, streamlined approval processes, support for overtime and shift differentials, and seamless integration with payroll systems.
Accurate Time Capture: TimeWellScheduled’s scheduling software allows employees to clock in and out quickly, ensuring precise time capture. This eliminates the need for manual timesheets, reducing errors and improving the precision of employee time tracking.
Real-Time Visibility: The software provides real-time visibility into employee schedules, allowing managers to track attendance and monitor employee hours as they happen. This ensures that time tracking is up-to-date and enables prompt intervention in case of any discrepancies or issues.
Streamlined Time Approval Process: TimeWellScheduled simplifies the time approval process by automating it. Managers can quickly review and approve employee time entries, reducing administrative burden and ensuring timely and accurate payment for hours worked.
Overtime and Shift Differentials: The cloud-based scheduling software has built-in functionality to track overtime hours and calculate shift differentials accurately. This ensures that employees are compensated correctly for their extra hours or work during specific shifts, improving fairness and compliance with labor regulations.
Integration with Payroll Systems: TimeWellScheduled seamlessly integrates with payroll systems, facilitating the transfer of accurate time data for payroll processing. This eliminates manual data entry and reduces the chances of errors, saving time and improving the efficiency of the payroll process.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln
Accurate employee time tracking is an important business tool that offers valuable insights into teams and processes. It saves money on labor costs, reduces payroll errors, and maximizes productivity. With an accurate time tracking system in place, like TimeWellScheduled, companies can identify workflow inefficiencies, establish more robust accountability systems, and evaluate team and individual progress. Recognizing the full range of benefits that accurate time tracking brings can help managers ensure their businesses thrive.
Thank you for reading our article!
TimeWellScheduled is a secure online time and attendance software 100% tailored to meet your employee scheduling needs! In addition, our cloud-based solution facilitates attendance tracking and payroll processing and enhances workforce management capabilities. Plus, our service is free for up to 10 employees.
Click: here to download our (Excel) employee scheduling template: it’s free!
