Managing Employee’s Time and Attendance at Work Place

Improving attendance and managing unplanned absenteeism and time steeling is one of the most common issues faced by employers. Although, absenteeism is sometimes unavoidable and employers also realize this fact, persistent and excessive non attendance can negatively impact the productivity of a company. According to a study conducted by Kronos Inc. and human resource consulting firm called Mercer in 2010, the unplanned absences cost approximately 5.9 percent of a company’s payroll in United States.

Some of the steps that can be taken to manage employees attendance are:

Clear leave policies: To manage attendance in an organization, it is important to have a clear leave policy and PTO (Paid Time Off) policy defined and easily available to the employees. A leave policy ensures that the rules are same for all the employees of an organization and gives the impression of fairness and justice.
In addition, to improve attendance and manage unplanned absenteeism, a leave application guideline should be used, according to which an employee should personally talk to their managers about their leave. The managers listen to the reason and approve the leave if possible, else if leave could not be approved, the managers personally tell the employees about how the employee’s non attendance will affect the company. It is important to maintain a personal touch between employees and their managers. Each absenteeism should end with the supervisor personally welcoming employees back to work and encouraging employee attendance in future.

Flexibility of schedules: The flexibility of schedules allow employees to manage their urgent and important tasks such as appointments with doctors, parents teachers meetings in schools of children and other household tasks that need to be completed on working days. In addition, compensatory offs and work from home facilities allow working women to manage their work life balance efficiently.

Rewards and Recognition of positive attendance: The recognition of high attendance allows to convey your appreciation and respect for the positive attendance of employees. Monitory awards can be build and added to company’s attendance policy. In addition, there should be strict rules against excessive and persistent unplanned attendance of employees.

Keep detailed attendance records: A detailed attendance record should be maintained of employees mentioning what time they reach office, why they were late (if they were late), and what reason they give for their absenteeism. These records may be useful in managing employees, in case a disciplinary action has to be taken against them. Sometimes, the absence patterns may also emerge if an employee is a culprit of absenteeism.

Use of biometrics attendance devices: To track hourly attendance and to stop buddy punching and managing time theft, biometric devices can be used to track the attendance of employees. This data can then be sent to an integrated employee time and attendance software for processing. The biometrics time clocks are the best ways to track the time of hourly workers.

Try Empxtrack Time and Attendance software module, to track the attendance of the employees of your company. The Time and Attendance software module allows you to manage shifts efficiently and regularize attendance records on a day-to-day basis in case of travel, trainings or client visits. The Time and Attendance module integration with external attendance marking devices allows you to manage time theft.