More and more we are starting to see a shift in traditional employee, work hours. Gone are the days when keeping track of employees were as simple as having a punch clock machine in the lobby of your main office and having your entire team punch in before the start of their work day and punch out at the end. We live in a society where gas is more expensive than ever, where businesses are looking to grow and expand further then their home office’s ten-mile radius and while still looking at ways to be cost effective and saving money. Fortunately, we live in an ever expanding technological age, technology that provides organizations with the ability to have an employee clock in and out of a location and be considered accounted for. In fact, technology has come so far that there are applications out there that provide you with an even more comprehensive and in-depth tool to track an employee’s day-to-day activity and know within seconds from looking at your mobile device what an employee's time sheet and time clock punch is?
Tools such as Call the Time’s mobile application, which allows cell phone users that have GPS capability, to clock in and out from any location. The application will record the time and location of the employee using Google map technology. This is a superior application that will not only provide the employer with the ability to view the address of the building from where the employee is working but also the exact part of where they checked in or out from.
Time and attendance reporting has come a long way since the very first punch clock, which forced the employee to insert a heavy paper card, into a slot on the punch machine. When the time card hit a contact at the rear of the slot, the machine would print day and time information on the card. This allowed a timekeeper to have an official record of the hours an employee worked to calculate and pay an employee. This sounds like a lot of work and a system that is far too archaic considering all the advances we have made in technology. This method also seems as though it could all be accomplished within a much smaller time frame, using a lot less man power with an all encompassing time and attendance online system. This is the reason why so many companies are shifting their time, attendance and reporting methods to an online service. Online applications such as Call the Time provides companies with the ability of eliminating paperwork, cutting down employee travel time and providing organizations with a virtual data base of employee schedules, information and reports. This is happening because of the simplicity of these applications. Essentially a company’s entire time attendance and reporting information is all in one place and paper free. As fantastic of an idea as this is, why hasn’t every organization made this logical switch to an online application such as Call the Time? Studies show that the most obvious and glaring objection is employee compliance, as most company’s compliance range from 40-80%. At Call the Time that is a statistic that we felt could be improved on by developing a solution that is a virtual punch clock, mobile application. This is a very simple tool, which essentially eliminates many of the reasons why an employee could be non-compliant, “the phone was in use”, “the phone systems were down”, “the line was busy!” With a mobile application, employers can now simply have the employee down load the application software directly to their iPhone, Black Berry or Android mobile device, click the application, put in their individual Employee ID and Password, the GPS locator will stamp their time similar to a standard punch clock with the exception that when you submit your information an employer can go on line and view the employees precise clock in or out location, thus eliminating many of the excuses and the best part is it’s even easier than having to make a single phone call.
Think of the money an organization can save by minimizing the amount of gas and time spent by supervisors having to drive from client to client “babysitting” their staff to ensure compliance. With a mobile application your laptop or office computer can be a second set of eyes in the field, that will literally save your organization thousands of dollars, while ensuring and providing the most state of the art and yet simplistic time, attendance and reporting initiatives to date. The days of traditional employee work hours are quickly becoming a thing of the past. In order to ensure an organizations virtual punch clock numbers are consistent to a traditional time clock method, online applications need to be relevant and must stay on the cutting edge and evolve as organizations and technology do. We believe the next step in the evolution of time attendance software and reporting management is here and it’s a virtual punch clock, mobile application.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Time Theft? The Time and Attendance Software Solution
As an employer one of the most difficult components within your organization to control and manage is time and attendance. The intention of this week’s blog is to review how much revenue is lost through employee time theft and how a web-based,time and attendance software can resolve and minimize many of these issues.
An underlining role for any business owner or manager is the necessity of having to evaluate their company’s loss and profit of revenue. Even with this attention and micro managing of financial details, there is still a surprising amount of employees within any organization who are successfully cheating your current time, attendance and reporting system.
It’s an unfortunate result that this is happening in today’s workforce because as human beings we naturally want to gravitate towards seeing the “good” in everyone. When a company makes the decision to offer a new employee a role within their organization, there is optimism and excitement. Employers see a new addition to their team as an opportunity, an employee who is going to be a long term and valuable asset to their company while providing “world class service and integrity” regardless of the industry. Unfortunately the reality is this does not always happen.
According to recent studies, statistics prove that time theft is happening within every organization at an alarming and financially-crippling rate:
• The FBI calls employee theft “the fastest growing crime in America!”
• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 75% of employees steal from the workplace and that most do so repeatedly.
• One third of all U.S. corporate bankruptcies are directly caused by employee theft.
• The Boston Globe and Denver Post newspapers recently reported that U.S. companies lose nearly $400 Billion per year in lost productivity due to “time theft” or loafing.
• The American Society of Employers estimates that 20% of every dollar earned by a U.S. company is lost to employee theft.
These statistics inspired us at Call the Time to come up with a time and attendance solution. In the early development stages of our application we provided a free trial to our potential clients. This was done to provide us with the direct understanding of what was essential to control time theft in various work environments. We custom developed a what we feell is a superior time and attendance software solution addressing the needs that would eliminate that of an archaic punch card or manual time clock system. An application built to minimize and prevent time theft and to be utilized as an extremely effective revenue saving tool. In the coming blogs we will discuss more regarding the tools with-in a time and attendance, reporting software application such as Call the Time, we will also focus on various other complimentary tools and tips to prevent time theft.
For now, let’s focus on the return on investment that a web-based time and attendance software application can provide to an organization:
• Let’s say you have 50 employees
• Each employee makes an average of $10 per hour
• Add in a regular work week of 40 hours
The next piece of the equation comes from the administration efforts.
This is an additional cost because many organizations are still using valuable employee time, to manually add up payroll and to create other paper based reports.
• This administrative employee is also making $10 per hour
After 24 pay periods a year, while adding in all the above factors and using a time and attendance reporting tool such as Call the Time, your annual savings would be: $43,120.00! That’s an astonishing amount of savings per year!
Let’s investigate how that number came to fruition by examining studies made by the American Payroll Association:
Time Theft Approximately 2% of your payroll (about 50 minutes per weekly time sheet)
Time Cards Approximately 0.25–0.5% of total payroll costs (about 3 minutes per weekly time sheet)
Human error Approximately 2% of your payroll costs
*According to the American Payroll Association
As mentioned earlier in this blog, unfortunately a percentage of employees will always attempt to outsmart your time clock system. However, there is a simplistic way to resolve many of the issues an organization is having when it comes to time theft and that’s to invest in the correct tools that will either increase revenue or decrease the amount of lost revenue month after month. The reality is: if you are saving even half of the money you are currently losing due to employee time theft, how can you afford to live without an application that is simple, preventative and extremely effective?
An underlining role for any business owner or manager is the necessity of having to evaluate their company’s loss and profit of revenue. Even with this attention and micro managing of financial details, there is still a surprising amount of employees within any organization who are successfully cheating your current time, attendance and reporting system.
It’s an unfortunate result that this is happening in today’s workforce because as human beings we naturally want to gravitate towards seeing the “good” in everyone. When a company makes the decision to offer a new employee a role within their organization, there is optimism and excitement. Employers see a new addition to their team as an opportunity, an employee who is going to be a long term and valuable asset to their company while providing “world class service and integrity” regardless of the industry. Unfortunately the reality is this does not always happen.
According to recent studies, statistics prove that time theft is happening within every organization at an alarming and financially-crippling rate:
• The FBI calls employee theft “the fastest growing crime in America!”
• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 75% of employees steal from the workplace and that most do so repeatedly.
• One third of all U.S. corporate bankruptcies are directly caused by employee theft.
• The Boston Globe and Denver Post newspapers recently reported that U.S. companies lose nearly $400 Billion per year in lost productivity due to “time theft” or loafing.
• The American Society of Employers estimates that 20% of every dollar earned by a U.S. company is lost to employee theft.
These statistics inspired us at Call the Time to come up with a time and attendance solution. In the early development stages of our application we provided a free trial to our potential clients. This was done to provide us with the direct understanding of what was essential to control time theft in various work environments. We custom developed a what we feell is a superior time and attendance software solution addressing the needs that would eliminate that of an archaic punch card or manual time clock system. An application built to minimize and prevent time theft and to be utilized as an extremely effective revenue saving tool. In the coming blogs we will discuss more regarding the tools with-in a time and attendance, reporting software application such as Call the Time, we will also focus on various other complimentary tools and tips to prevent time theft.
For now, let’s focus on the return on investment that a web-based time and attendance software application can provide to an organization:
• Let’s say you have 50 employees
• Each employee makes an average of $10 per hour
• Add in a regular work week of 40 hours
The next piece of the equation comes from the administration efforts.
This is an additional cost because many organizations are still using valuable employee time, to manually add up payroll and to create other paper based reports.
• This administrative employee is also making $10 per hour
After 24 pay periods a year, while adding in all the above factors and using a time and attendance reporting tool such as Call the Time, your annual savings would be: $43,120.00! That’s an astonishing amount of savings per year!
Let’s investigate how that number came to fruition by examining studies made by the American Payroll Association:
Time Theft Approximately 2% of your payroll (about 50 minutes per weekly time sheet)
Time Cards Approximately 0.25–0.5% of total payroll costs (about 3 minutes per weekly time sheet)
Human error Approximately 2% of your payroll costs
*According to the American Payroll Association
As mentioned earlier in this blog, unfortunately a percentage of employees will always attempt to outsmart your time clock system. However, there is a simplistic way to resolve many of the issues an organization is having when it comes to time theft and that’s to invest in the correct tools that will either increase revenue or decrease the amount of lost revenue month after month. The reality is: if you are saving even half of the money you are currently losing due to employee time theft, how can you afford to live without an application that is simple, preventative and extremely effective?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
