Tracking Employee Time and Attendance

For a successful business, workforce management is essential. Rising labor costs can be a trouble that can spiral out of control, fast eating up profits. How to track employee time and attendance to handle workforce expenses better?

You need reliable attendance tracking that can provide data to get an overview of the expenses to stay within budget, maintain accurate records, and remain compliant with labor laws. Whether a small business or an enterprise, there is a need for taking time and attendance for smooth workplace functioning.

We have put together this guide to give you an overview of available options to track employee time and attendance.

Five ways to track employee time and attendance:

1.Attendance lists or time recording sheets on paper

Attendance lists or timesheets are the oldest form of time recording for employees. With modern tools, paper-based time tracking is an outdated method that is counterproductive. HR managers spend hours maintaining attendance records, which is not a productive use of their time that could be better spent on action-oriented work.

Given the changing work environment and the increasing popularity of different forms of work, such as: hybrid remote work, paper-based time recording forms are no longer up to date. The daily manual calculation of employees' working hours also increases administrative effort, which can easily be avoided with automated attendance systems.

2.Manually record employee hours in a spreadsheet

Most small businesses use spreadsheet programs such as Excel to manage employee attendance. While this is an improvement compared to paper systems, in 2022 the technology is obsolete. Compared to modern software tools, spreadsheets are categorized as manual entry systems.

They require manual entry of employee time and attendance data, which is time-consuming and error-prone. Manual time tracking is a repetitive task that can lead to employee burnout. Another problem with manual time recording is the lack of data security.

With increasing cybersecurity concerns, any online attendance system introduced into a company must be fully secured.

3.Swipe an employee ID card, key card or name tag

Another way to record time is to use time clocks, key cards and employee ID cards. In the 80s, punch cards were popular for time tracking. It's not hard to imagine a line of workers queuing at a manufacturing facility to start their workday.

Punch cards are still used in some industries, but their disadvantages, such as: B. "buddy punching" and other forms of time theft cost employers too much money. A modern equivalent to punch card machines is the time recording clock with card swipe. Such a time tracking system requires employees to swipe a scanned badge or ID card to automatically load the data into the system.

While these systems are not as secure as biometric time and attendance systems, they still offer a degree of automation and may be a viable option for some businesses.

4.Biometric systems for time and attendance recording

The most widely used time tracking hardware is the biometric system, which detects and records attendance based on employees' biometric data. This greatly improves physical IDs that can be lost or forgotten. These systems use employee fingerprints, retinal scans or facial recognition to ensure security and accurate time tracking.

Biometric time tracking systems prevent time fraud and human error, which can contribute to a safer work environment.

5.Software based attendance systems for employees

The pandemic forced companies to adopt attendance systems that are easy to manage and enable touchless operation. The software-based employee attendance systems are designed to provide cloud-based, centralized control over employee data. This offers you unmatched security and scalability.

Today, software-based employee attendance systems are used in several industries for workforce management. IceHrm is one of the best software-based employee attendance systems. It is a cloud-based attendance system that also offers features such as leave management, GPS tracking, and easy data integration into payroll.

To run a profitable business, you must manage your labor costs and other personnel expenses efficiently. Modern HR management software like IceHrm can provide tools to help HR make data-driven decisions. It is an essential step in creating a workplace ecosystem where employees are happy and paid correctly, while the company achieves higher productivity and revenue.