Time Management
Time management is a key area of any business and can make or break a new or developing organization. Time and Attendance systems are there to assist the monitoring of employees time, this can be as simple as calculating the total amount of hours worked or actually calculating the number of hours worked on a particular project, job or activity. These hours could then be compared to a standard and potentially a performance and bonus could also be calculated.
Absence Management
Encompassed with the majority of Time Management systems is Absence Management where you can monitor, minutes, hours, half day or days of absence by employee, cost centre, department or site. With the more advanced Time Management systems you can also calculate spells or occasions of absence this assists to identify those employees who have lost of separate occasions of absence as opposed to those who are on long term sickness. This can also be used to calculate the Bradford Factor. The Ceequel® system developed and supported by ELF Productivity Ltd provides this level of analysis by linking absence codes to identify these spells of absence, it’s even intelligent enough to realise when an employee was on a rest day. Typically Human Resource departments wish to view absences in this manner.
Systems Integration
The passing of static data or even variable data which remains in the same format is easily transferred from one database to another a good example of this is the passing of hours or gross wages to payroll from Time and Attendance. However integrating key data such as absence is far more complicated and only ever really works when the systems share the same database. In my opinion linking Time & Attendance and Human Resource software is one of the most efficient ways of linking key employee information. A good example of having just one single database is the absence management side detailed in the previous paragraph. With the best will in the world, in a large company it is very unlikely that the Human Resource department populate all employees absence details not to mention the shift patterns so they can identify how many working days or hours have been missed due to the absence. By utilising a Time and Attendance system which shares the same database as Human Resource Management, the start date, finish date, duration in working days and hours are automatically calculated by virtue of the fact that the employee has not clocked. Generally an absence code will have already been assigned by the employees manager or the Time and Attendance monitor but in addition to this the HR department can then add a little more detail such as a reason, description attach as sick note or a return to work form.
Another good example of a Time and Attendance system with Human Resource Management is the Training element of HR. When an employee has been identified as requiring a Training course and the course has been scheduled for a specific date the user can check what shift the employee is due to work or if they have any planned absence such as holidays or maternity leave. In addition when the employee is allocated to a Training course this is added to their holiday planner and their manager is aware that he needs to arrange cover.
Data Capture
By selecting a Software House as a provider of your Time Management requirements your business benefits from the hardware being supplied from a third part as this provides a ‘best of breed’ approach and in addition ensures you are future proofing the hardware element of your investments as the hardware purchased for your by ELF Productivity Ltd is industry standard. The data capture communications are generally TCP/IP and are true real time. Alternatively we can also communicate to the terminals by 3G or GPRS. There are various types of media available including barcode, proximity fob, proximity card, fingerprint biometric, hand recognition biometric or even face recognition biometric.