Agent ELF – Page 14 – Time and Attendance

The top 3 benefits of having a computerised T&A system

Keeping track of employees time and attendance information has always been considered a key aspect of any organisations processes. Making sure the information collected is accurate is paramount to the successful running of any businesses payroll process. With this in mind over time the systems available to businesses have dramatically advanced.

Recording and tracking employee t&a data is not a new concept for many organisations. However over time the systems available to businesses have changed drastically. For many years organisations used paper based cards – as a means to monitor employee time and attendance. The most common problem companies found with a paper based system was that many employees forgot to fill in their time card and the data recorded was often inaccurate. As technology advanced so did the number of companies opting for electronic punch card systems. These types of systems provided more accurate records but were also slow. Human resource departments were also still required to manually record all employee clock-in data in to a database which costs companies a significant amount of time and money.

Computerised time and attendance systems drastically revolutionise the way in with organisations store and record time and attendance data. Below are the top 3 ways in which they do this.

Accurate Payroll Data

Old fashioned t&a systems such as paper based cards and punch card systems rely on the manual imputing of all data. The problem with this is that nobody’s perfect and even the most accurate typists sometimes make mistakes. The data recorded by these types of systems is also in most cases inaccurate. Asking an employee to record the correct time they clocked in and out as well as the amount of time taken for breaks or lunch is rarely accurately documented. Many employees often forgot to fill in their time cards meaning times documented were rough estimates. Employees who were entitled to overtime were also known to extend time by awarding themselves extra minutes at the start and end of the day. Legacy Systems were also prime targets for ‘buddy clocking’ as no formal identification was required when clocking in/out.

When companies process payroll, information provided needs to be accurate if employees are to be paid correctly. And one of the biggest reasons employees leave companies is wages being paid incorrectly. Computerised time and attendance systems record accurate employee clocking data in real time. Information recorded is immediately accessible by your payroll department eradicating lengthy processes and the need for manual imputing.

Central database

Collating employee time and attendance data from multiple office locations can be a challenge. Chasing paperwork, manually verifying the content, manipulating the content and uploading it in to spreadsheets or other systems comes with a hefty workload. Companies with a centralised payroll department require clean data at set points of the week or month. Even if one locations data is late or incomplete, it could impact on the whole company’s payroll run. Any delay in pay and the impact on moral, productivity and more importantly trust by employees – could be seriously damaged.

A dynamic and computerised t&a system will provide a centralised solution with full access from every location, whether it be over LAN, WAN, MPLS or GSM network. Employee clock-in data is recorded real-time and stored from all sites into one core database. Having instant access to the information needed to complete your company’s payroll without the need for any manual imputing of data significantly simplifies your processes.

Expand with your organisation

As your organisation expands, so usually does the number of employees. Increasing headcount can add pressure on to a human resource department and existing systems/processes. Increased pressure often means stressed and over worked colleagues – significantly increasing the possibility of workplace errors.

Computerised time and attendance systems grow with your organisation. The enrolment of new staff is both quick and easy – either centrally or at a divisional level. All employee time and attendance data is recorded automatically enabling your human resource department to complete more strategic tasks.

For more information on how a computerised time and attendance system can benefit your organisation contact us today!

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

Long term Sickness linked to the decline in NHS?

With long term sickness levels on the rise UK manufacturing companies are now calling for tax breaks to be introduced to help them deal with the growing sick note culture. A recent survey carried out showes that 41% of employers have reported an increase in long term absences over the past two years.

A recent survey carried out by Jelf shows how UK long term sickness levels have risen by two fifths for most industries which has left many companies calling for tax breaks in order to help them deal with the high costs associated with the dramatic increase of fit notes. The survey shows that 41% of employers have reported an excessive increase in long term absences over the past two years. With manufacturing organisation EEF saying that one in five manufacturing organisation are now having to pay for private healthcare in order to get their staff back to work, as the NHS isn’t doing enough or there are significant delays with appointments.

The most common long term absence problems that were recorded in the 306 firms studied were muscular skeletal disorders and back problems. This was closely followed by medical tests, investigations and surgery. The survey also showed that manufacturing employees on average were taking 5.3 sick days off per annum. The study comes ahead of a green paper due to be published in summer of 2016 on workforce health and is the UK’s biggest business survey on sickness absence to date.

Clock Software improvements overtime

Overtime more and more organisations have turned to a time and attendance system as a means to monitor their employees. Advancing technology now also means that the systems available come with a greater range of capabilities making them even more appealing to business.

Clock Software

Many businesses are already familiar with the term time and attendance. Most employees have either used a time and attendance system in the past or understand the concept of one. After all recording employee clocking data for time and attendance purposes isn’t anything new. Businesses have been using these types of systems to monitor employees since the twentieth century. Employees previously used card based systems that required them to manually write down all clocking occasions. The problem with using a card based system is that the data collected wasn’t always correct. Employees couldn’t always remember the exact time they clocked and some would often manipulate their times, if they had perhaps taken a longer lunch or arrived late. Employees in organisations that paid overtime would often award themselves extra hours on top of their contracted. Paper based cards were not only inaccurate but played havoc with organisational payroll as employees were often over paid costing businesses thousands and in some cases millions per annum.

As technology advanced so did the type of systems organisations began using for their time and attendance needs. New modern day systems accurately track and record all employee clocking data drastically simplifying the time and attendance process. There are now a number of different types of clock software available to business all with different capabilities.

Proximity clock software

Proximity software allow employees to register clocking’s by using either a fob or a proximity card. An employee simply needs to hold up their given card to the time and attendance system which will then instantly identify them and clock them in/out. A back up method of clocking can also be configured in case the first means fails or for when an employee has forgotten their proximity card/fob.

Biometric clock software

Biometric clock software are available with fingerprint and facial recognition capabilities. Employees are required to enrol their fingerprint or face onto the main clocking station. This information is then passed through to all other clocks (subject to permissions) within an organisation meaning employees can clock from anywhere within the building or even at other geographical locations for multi-site companies.

Biometrics over traditional passwords

Many of us use password authentication on a day to day basis in order to access secured content. However over the years other forms of authentication have been growing ever more popular within younger age groups and a recent study done by GIGYA on 4,000 adults in the US an UK confirmed this.

Using passwords as a form of authentication to gain access to resources is considered the norm. Many of us have multiple passwords we remember on a daily basis that we use to access to our personal accounts. A recent survey done by GIGYA on 4,000 adults in the US and UK however showed that within certain age groups next-generation authentication methods were becoming ever more popular.

After all password protection can sometimes be a real pain. The procedure to re set your password can be long and tedious, especially if the site you’re trying to gain access to needs you to answer security questions or input a reset code. Fifty two percent of people surveyed said they would completely overhaul the use of username and passwords in favour of other forms of authentication. Millennials were the most welcoming to change with fifty percent of the people surveyed saying they had already used a form of biometric authentication. Sixty six percent of millennials also admitted to owning one or more device that integrates with biometric technology compared to forty eight percent of gen x and thirty percent of baby boomers. With more devices allowing for biometric authentication Jupiter research group estimate that more than 770 million biometric enabled applications per year will be downloaded by 2019 this is a significant increase compared to the 6 million in 2015.

Biometric authentication is definitely on the rise and for obvious reasons. Using one’s finger or face as a means to access what we need is not only quick but also more convenient. No one wants to have to remember an absurd amount of usernames and passwords or spend the time answering questions when they are forgotten. Password authentication is also not the most secure method. Many people choose to use the same password for multiple accounts or use a personalised one they are less likely to forget. The problem with this is that accounts can easily be hacked by hackers with a bit of time on their hands. Companies who use password authentications are sometimes not the most secure either. Even huge companies such as Apple and Microsoft have found themselves in the past fall victims of a data breach. Biometric systems are more secure than passwords as they require your personal touch. Access is only granted when you scan your fingerprint or face making it almost impossible for someone who isn’t you to gain access. Eighty percent of people that took part in the survey agree that biometric systems are more secure.

Biometrics within business

With next generation authentication methods on the rise its imperative businesses stay on top of the trend. The implementation of a biometric access control system into your organisation will revolutionise the way you’re employee’s clock rendering old punch code systems useless. Biometric systems can be set up to allow access on a door by door basis. Access can be limited to certain times and days. Employee access can also be limited to certain areas of an organisation.

For more information on what access control can do for your organisation and the available solutions contact us today!