July 2016 – Time and Attendance

Absence Management – “Anyone know where Bob is?”

Knowing exactly how many absences and holiday days each of your employees have had is key to the successful running of your organisation. Not knowing which of your staff is in the office at any one time could have substantial problems for your organisation especially if it leads to departments being under staffed.

Keeping track of your employees absences – whether it be holidays, medical reason or sick days can be a difficult task for any organisation, especially if there are no set processes in place to do so. Not knowing who’s in at any one time can cause major disruptions to departments or even productivity. Employees who have a busy workload themselves are sometimes asked to take on even more work to assist with that of an absent employee.

Absence Management Software

Introducing absence management software into your organisation can drastically help manage your entire workforce. Mangers can access individual employee data in real-time, at the touch of a button. Employee clock in data, absences and holiday information is all stored within the one easy to use system. Managers have full access to every employee’s holiday calendar allowing them to view who’s off on which shift at what time. This information allows them to monitor and identify when agency staff need to be called in to cover. This also provides managers the ability to ensure your facility is staffed adequately in order to avoid any disruptions or fall in production. All employee clock-in data is also stored within the system allowing managers to identify at the earliest opportunity when an employee is absent.

A number of customised reports can also configured to run automatically, within the absence management system. Employers can customise reports to flag up any employees with a significantly high absence rate or initiate triggers specific to your company KPI’s. Line managers are then able to monitor and interact with employees immediately. Absence reports can also be customised based on days, weeks or months. The system will even report on an employee who has called in sick and identify if a holiday request for that day was previously submitted and rejected.

Absence management however doesn’t have to just be something an employer does. By giving your employees access to their own data they can take control of their own clocking in and attendance records. CEEQUEL Employee self-service provides your employees with access to their own personal data. Employee can view their current and weekly time cards, view absences by day or week basis and update personal information such as next of kin and emergency contact. Employees are also able to view any planned of taken holidays and send out holiday request to be approved by their line manager. Employee self-service also lets employees who work shifts view their weekly working pattern. The system is username and password protected, and can be customised to only show the information you want the employee to see.

For more information on how an absence management system can help your organisation better manage your workforce contact us today!

Biometric Time and Attendance for your organisation

Biometrics systems were once considered only useful when it came to securing business locations. However over time more and more businesses have began using biometric capabilities as a means to track their employees time and attendance data. The use of a biometric systems drastically simplifies the way in which your employee clock-in data is recorded.

The use of biometric security technology within organisations has dramatically developed over the years with many businesses now using it to do more than just act as an access control system to secure personal information, intellectual property rights or access office buildings. Organisations are now using biometric technology as a means to accurately check and record employee time and attendance data.

Keeping track of how many hours each employee worked was once a complicated task. Mechanical time clocks were often unreliable and slow which often lead to long queues during shift changes or at the start and end of the day. Many employees would often forget to clock and due to the use of time sheets or proximity cards employers often became victim to ‘buddy clocking’. “Buddy clocking” is when employees clock for a friend who is either running late or in larger organisations one that may not even be present.

Inaccurate time and attendance data can add substantial cost onto your payroll processes. Not knowing the exact hours of your entire workforce often means some employees can be over or under payed. Under payed employees require the attention of human resources to manually correct any mistakes that have been made. This process is time consuming and costly for all organisations.

Biometric Time and Attendance

The use of biometric technology eradicates fraudulent clocking’s, costly time delays and the recording of inaccurate data. The most popular biometric systems companies use are fingerprint or facial recognition. Both systems capture data and then compare this to an individual’s unique algorithm template.

The CEEQUEL biometric time and attendance system is easy to use and records accurate employee clock in data that can then be accessed by authorised personnel in real-time. This information allows managers to identify, at the earliest opportunity, when members of staff are absent giving them time to organise any cover which may be required. Integrating the CEEQUEL HR module in to your time and attendance also allows your managers to track all employee absences. Employers can filter the data recorded using a number of different criteria’s allowing them to identify any employees with either a high or low absence rate, based upon KPI’s specific to your business. Information about each absence can be stored within the systems and fit notes attached where needed. This provides managers with the information to correctly manage absences.

For more information on how biometric time and attendance could work for your organisation contact us today!

Managed Employee Self Service

Employee self service systems were designed with one focus in mind to help free up time for a businesses human resource department by delegating tasks such as the updating of personal information back over to the employee. This means many people believe that the system therefore requires no management this however isn’t nessiceraly true.

Employee Self Service

Many businesses believe that an employee self-service system doesn’t require managing. In most cases this is true, as employees can be left to their own devices without assistance. However introducing new technologies or processes into any company requires some management even if it’s just down to effectively communicating its benefits to your employees or educating them on its use.

Ensuring you choose the right employee self-service system for your organisation is crucial. The software needs to be user friendly for every employee and accommodate all of your organisational needs. Launching a complicated system that’s hard to understand would significantly cost your business time and money as staff would require extensive training and support. Once you choose the right system for your organisation, employees should not just be expected to “get on with it”. Effective training should always be provided on the new system and companies investing in educating staff from the onset, find its adoption and effectiveness provides a quicker return on investment.

Once your employees have been educated, companies should continue to monitor the system in order to safeguard against its misuse. CEEQUEL tracks what information your employees are amending through the process of approvals. Managers can configure the system to notify them when employees change personal details, update next of kin and emergency contacts, provide bank details or request any form of absence. Managers are asked to sanitise and approve any changed prior to them being committed within the live system. CEEQUEL is designed to reduce the amount of manual processes employed, and by devolving the upkeep of information, reduces the negative workload many HR Teams have to endure.

For more information on how an employee self-service system can help your company adopt a hands off approaches contact us today!

Brexit Proof Your Manufacturing

It’s always been important for manufacturing organisations to be able to keep up with shift changes or market demands. After the recent brexit decision its now crucial that these organisations are able to fully accommodate all future changes by remaining flexible throughout every part of their manufacturing process.

With Brexit on its way, it is now more important than ever that manufacturing organisations remain flexible in order to keep up with potential shifts in market demands. What margins you’re making by product, what processes you employ, and the capabilities of your facilities and employees needs to be nimble – and lean. Most companies opt to implement a shop floor data capture system to manage the information surrounding their manufacturing processes. However, our experience shows that the majority of the data you get back from your shop floor – is at best a guess. ELF Productivity’s world leading shop floor data capture system takes the guess work out of your shop floor. It delivers accurate data and provides staggering, true, information at a granular level.

Time/Activity Tracking

Most manufacturing organisation struggle when it comes to knowing how much time is being spent on each task. With employees often switching between projects and tasks having an understanding of how long was spent completing one whole project is virtually impossible. CEEQUEL’s Shop Floor Data Capture accurately records how much time each employee spends on each given project. The system can also record how much time was spent on each individual job, activity and task – whether the employee was on productive or non-productive work. It will show you your WIP, any bottlenecks on your floor and even skills gaps of your employees. CEEQUEL can also compare how long each job has taken compared to your standard time database and if required, calculate any performance related pay (including efficiency modifications for scrappage and reworks) – then automatically pass these bonuses on to your payroll department.

Job Cost Tracking

Knowing exactly how much margin you’re making on each product is vital to any manufacturer. This however becomes even more stressful for manufacturing organisation with employees who are often switching between high and low value jobs. CEEQUEL SFDC accurately tracks how much time each employee is spending on each job, provides a true correlation between productive and non-productive hours and can calculate the true cost of that job. Don’t forget, as we know what time an employee clocks in/out, when their shift breaks are, if they’re late back from lunch, been on a training course, an internal meeting or even cleaning down – true times and costs really do mean true times and costs.

Machine monitoring

The Biggest headache for any manufacturing organisation is machine productivity. If you’ve invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in your technology, you need it to be as productive as possible. Broken or faulty machinery can cost manufacturing businesses thousands of pounds as they are unable to hit production targets. The CEEQUEL shop floor data capture system captures real time information from each of your manufacturing machines spotting issues at the earliest opportunity. The system also calculates and collects all machine cost per hour allowing you to make an informed decision on the replacement of any of your machinery. Most importantly it will highlight the efficiencies of man and machine. Have you got the right individuals working on your equipment?

Listed above are just a few of the problems CEEQUEL SFDC can help resolve. For more information about what our shop floor data capture system will do for your manufacturing organisation contact us today!

Managing and improving HR processes utilising the latest technology

A companies human resource processes were once considered time consuming. It would take staff weeks to perform the easiest of tasks as they relied on the manual input of hundreds of employee details. Computer based systems made it easier for companies to manage their processes dramatically reducing the amount of time hr staff spent on all tasks.

The introduction of computerised Human Resource systems has made it easier for companies to successfully organise and manage all of their HR business process from one place. Having a computerised system not only simplifies any human resource department’s job but also saves them valuable time. As tasks such as creating reports, searching for specific staff and quick matching resumes to job criteria are available at the click of a button.

Human Resource Software

Many companies are choosing to opt for human resource software. The Ceequel human resource software is designed to completely streamline all of your HR processes, significantly reducing costs as documents no longer need to be printed as all forms can be passed to employees and completed at the touch of a button. The Ceequel system is easy to use and keeps all employee records together. The Human resource department can simply fill in all employee details on one screen, attach qualification certificates (where needed), schedule training courses, set reminders and much more.

The Ceequel system also allows members of the HR department to track and identify any absence or performance issues within departments but absence can also be identified on an individual basis. A company hierarchy can be set up within minutes always displaying the correct company formation as records immediately update when new data is submitted. The Ceequel system allows your HR department the option of advanced management by integrating the software into employee self-service or a time and attendance system. With employee self-service your employees are able to control and manage their own personal information such as current address, next of Kin, absences and holidays taken/planned. Employees are also able to request holidays within the online portal, the request is then sent directly to their line manager for approval. When a request is approved that employee’s holiday calendar is automatically updated. All Ceequel platforms are integrated meaning all information is transported between each portal in real time. When a holiday request is approved the request will automatically show up on an employee’s calendar for any member of the human resource team to view. This significantly reduces the amount of time the human resources department spend updating employee information meaning they have extra time to complete more strategic tasks.

Integrating a time and attendance system into your human resource software can significantly reduce time and money. Asking your employees to clock in at the start/end of the day and when they leave for lunch is the easiest and most accurate way or recording clocking data. The use of a computerised system completely eradicates the need for paper based time cards, meaning your human resource department no longer needs to manually input from the old fashioned time cards.

For more information on how a human resource system could benefit your organisation or for information on employee self-service or even the implementation of a time and attendance system, contact us today!

CEEQUEL – Employee Management Software Portfolio

The Ceequel portfolio created by ELF Productivity consists of a number of modulus. All modules can be full integrated together to form a company wide employee management system. All seven modules are available to be implemented separately.

CEEQUEL Portfolio