One of the most important factors businesses should monitor is attendance. This is very easy to do when you are running a micro business with a handful of employees. But when your company starts growing and you have scores of employees working multiple shifts (and your very own list of tasks begins to grow), it can be hard to track and monitor your entire staff.
You can never be certain if an employee attended on a particular day and if they remained at the workplace for their entire shift. Many businesses are so bad at this that they end up losing $373 million a year because of buddy punching.
But fortunately, there's one simple tool that can help you track employee attendance better and ensure they remain there through their entire shift. This is the employee time clock.
What are employee time clocks?
They are software that record when employees start and end their shifts. They even track when employees start and end their time breaks. Time clock apps can help businesses automate employee attendance and save time. They are a lot more accurate than manually adding the time employees come in and leave to a piece of paper.
Types of time clocks
There are so many types of employee time clocks. Here are a few popular ones...
Punch cards:
Here employees place a card into a punch card machine. The machine then prints the time and date onto the card. This is a great option for small businesses with a few employees. But if you are larger business, there are far better digital methods.
Time station software:
Here, employees will need to login and log out of an account specifically created for them when they arrive and when they are leaving.
Fingerprint and facial recognition apps:
The above two methods can help automate employee attendance tracking. But they won't be a 100% accurate as they can't prevent buddy punching completely.
So, if you want to be more careful, you can give a fingerprint or facial recognition time clock app a try. These can be installed on the mobile devices or desktop on site and employees will need to scan their fingerprint or face to clock in and clock out.
How to use them
The first thing you must do is decide on the type of time clock you want to use. There are several different time clocks out there. But as mentioned above, it is best to choose a fingerprint and/or facial recognition app.
After you decide on the preferred option, you can come up with a system. By this I mean that you should show employees how and when they should use it. The main times at which they should use it are when they come into work and when they leave. They also need to clock in and clock out when they take a break. Make sure you do a proper demo and get employees to attempt a scan right in front of you.
That's it. They are that easy to use and implement. Several of these time clocks integrate with payroll software. So, they will take in the time at which employees came and left and the amount of time they spent on breaks to automatically calculate the wages. This will save you a lot of extra time and will ensure you don't overpay or underpay employees.
Some time clocks also let you set up alerts. When an employee doesn't turn up or if they miss taking a break you will know immediately, and you can get in touch with them to make sure everything is okay.
All the data collected can also help you accurately measure employee performance. You will know who the top performers are and who the under performers are. This will help you manage them better and improve your ROI. Some good time clock apps integrate with several other management tools. So, the data from these reports can be incorporated too.
Conclusion
Now you know what time clocks are, how they benefit your business and how you can use them to improve attendance and performance. Hope this information will help you find the best time clock for your business.