Tag: Productivity

How Human Resources can motivate Employees (without salary increases!)

Finding ways in which to motivate your employees can be a challenging task for many companies. Traditional methods such as raises and bonuses often put a strain on company budgets, meaning many organisations are now opting to use the numerous free methods available.

In this time of tight budgets, human resources can no longer simply give raises or bonuses to employees in exchange for excellent service. Luckily, motivating employees isn’t limited to monetary rewards, and some motivational techniques are free.

Thanking Employees

Everyone wants to know that their hard work is appreciated. A simple heartfelt thank you costs nothing, but instills a sense of purpose in an employee.

Public Recognition

From a simple email announcement to an employee of the month award, public recognition lets an employee know that they are valued and gives them a sense of pride and accomplishment. Most employees will want their co-workers aware of their hard work and there is no better way to show off an employees talents than publicly awarding them.

More Responsibility

Excellent employees want challenges and outstanding employees want to advance their careers. Putting an employee in charge of a project gives them managerial experience that they can point to when applying for managerial positions.

Professional Development

Allowing an employee to attend a professional development seminar benefits the employee and your organisation. The employee gets to network and list the training on their CV (therefore helping their career) while your company benefits from the cutting edge techniques your employee learns at the event.

Flexible Work Schedule

No one likes getting up early, getting dressed, and making a long commute to work. If you have an outstanding employee that can work independently, allowing them to work from home (at least part of the time) is a great incentive, plus, skipping commutes increases employee heath and satisfaction, creating a happier and more productive worker.

For more information about human resources, contact us.

Is Employee Self Service going to become the Industry Standard?

Businesses are always looking for ways in which they can cut business costs without damaging their overall end product. If the same processes can be achieved through using a quicker and cheaper solution, then switching over is basically a no brainer for any organisation. Our employee self service platform has been designed to boycott your Human Resource department when it comes to updating individual employee data.

Businesses are always looking for faster, more efficient ways to operate. The goal is to cut costs without losing any quality in the end product. If you can do something faster, or for less money, but that doesn’t affect the end product then it’s something worth looking into. That’s why employee self service is poised to become a new standard in business practices.

What is Employee Self Service?

The easy explanation is that employee self service is when a business allows employees to update their own information without going through the red tape of the Human Resources Department. Let’s say, for example, you just moved to a new apartment and you need to update your information. In the past you’d go to the HR department, fill out the necessary forms, show them your new ID, and then sometime in the next week to the next month (depending on how backed up HR was with paperwork) your information will be updated.

Now, let’s say you had an employee self service policy at work. If you had personal information you needed to change all you would do is log into your employee account, click the edit button, and then change your information. Once it’s been changed you click save, and continue on with your work day. Whether it’s a name change, an address alteration, or something else entirely there’s no reason to wait for days and weeks when you can do it yourself in mere moments.

The only question at this point is whether or not the savings in time and effort that employee self service represents will become standard operating procedure for businesses.

For those businesses that would like to pursue employee self service contact us today to see how Elf Productivity Ltd. can help you make your business more efficient.

Tips for Improving Human Resource Departments

The Human Resource department is the most vital part of any organisation. Making improvements to your HR department has the potential to improve every other part of your business. There are a number of ways in which you can improve your HR processes below is a list of a few.

The HR department has a challenging job; it is also a vital part of an organisation. Improving the HR department enhances the entire business, there are a number of things that will help improve your Human Resource department, here are a few tips to consider:

Engage

It is crucial to communicate and engage with all employees: being proactive and making an effort to speak with people is beneficial. HR workers should go out of their way to interact with employees in every department, consider creating a daily ritual of walking the building or floor looking for people to converse with.

Listen

Employees need to feel as if they are being heard, increase listening skills to achieve this. HR operatives must know when to talk and when to be quiet, educate the HR department on proper listening skills.

Avoid Micro-Managing

Employees need to feel that they are trusted, if you micro-manage them, they feel incompetent. You can observe them and give feedback without micro-managing everything, give employees some freedom and independence to perform their work on their own, this builds confidence and produces happier employees.

Team Work

Team work encourages employees to work together, building camaraderie and relationships among employees is powerful. Employees should feel as if they are a part of something larger than themselves, when they develop connections to each other, a healthier work environment is produced.

Budget

Ensure that your budget includes plenty of funds for development and training. Your employees’ education does not end when they begin working for your organisation, in order to keep up with technology and innovation, the staff should consistently go through development and training, this keeps your workforce up-to-date and ready for the future.

These are just a few tips you can implement to improve your human resources department. It is a complex job, and it is essential for any organisation. When the HR department performs at its best, the entire company performs at its best. Contact us for more information.

Shop Floor Data Capture is the Canary in the Coal Mine for modern Businesses

As a production company, making sure you stay on top of your produce and waste numbers is an essential process if you wish to remain in business. Any drop within your production numbers could become critical as less stock means less money. That is why it is crucial for any company who produces a product to implement a shop floor data capture system.

In the days before OSHA safety standards, coal miners would bring canaries down into the mines with them, the little yellow birds would tweet happily in their cages, raising the spirits of the miners as they toiled away beneath the mountains. The birds, being so tiny, would also die if exposed to dangerous, invisible gases, which gave miners a warning to get out before they met a similar fate.

Shop floor data capture is kind of like that, if it was for manufacturers.

Shop Floor Data Capture: A Better Canary?

Let’s say that you run a printing company, and you have your machines set to produce 500 magazines an hour in order to meet your client’s needs (it’s just an example, you could easily use this with any product on the market). What you don’t know is that your presses are only putting out 450 an hour because of an easy-to-fix problem that’s hard to detect. You don’t realise your production is falling behind until you’re almost at the deadline and your numbers aren’t adding up. Shop floor data capture is a way to prevent this sudden, last-minute realisation

How Does It Work?

Shop floor data capture is fairly simple: you attach sensors to your production machinery, and those sensors capture the raw numbers in real-time. Those numbers are then provided directly to you, and if there’s a deviation from what you need to have, you find out in minutes or hours instead of days or weeks. The system is smooth, and it uses wireless communication to make certain you know what’s going on at the shop floor level so you can side-step any nasty surprises.

Put another way, no metaphorical methane is going to sneak up on you and your workers while you’re toiling in the mine. For more information on shop floor data capture, and how it can help your business, simply contact us today!

Is Human Resources Necessary in The Age of Employee Self Service?

Over time labour specifications have evolved dramatically due to the advancement in society. Community’s were once made up of people who took care of themselves now each individual has a specialised ability n band together within bushiness to form departments of people who all work together.

One of the ways you can tell that a society is becoming more advanced is the specialisation of labour. That means that it goes from a community where everyone more or less takes care of themselves individually, to a place where everyone has a more specialised trade. So, instead of everyone doing a little bit of everything, you have a blacksmith, a farmer, a carpenter, etc. Businesses are like this too: at first, all of your employees have to be able to do a bit of everything, but over time you grow and develop into separate departments who all work together as part of a greater whole.

But what happens when technology renders a job no longer necessary? We don’t have milkmen or lantern lighters anymore, but what happens when this kind of obsolescence happens to a department in a company?

Will it happen to Human Resources? Employee Self Service: The Future of HR?

In the past, it was necessary to have an entire department dedicated to keeping track of employee information, Human Resources is what we usually call it. If you need to get your banking information changed, if you got married or divorced and need your name altered, or if you moved and needed your address updated you, would go to HR, fill out some paperwork, and wait for someone in the department to input your updates.

The technology that business runs on has shifted dramatically though, and most businesses operate on a single computer network. With integrated software, it’s possible to promote employee self-service. What that means is that if you have to do any of the things mentioned above, you simply log on with your company password, go to your profile, and change the information yourself. There’s no paperwork to fill out, no waiting on the change to be made, you simply log in, fix the issue yourself, and get back to work.

Changing The Way You Do Business

While there’s something to be said for doing things the old-fashioned way, employee self-service allows businesses to streamline their operations, and it cuts down on the amount of work and time that the HR department does have to do. The question that has yet to be answered is whether this self-service option is going to free up HR to tackle big problems, or if it’s going to render HR as a department obsolete.

If you’d like more information on employee self-service and on our integrated business software that lets you achieve more with less effort, simply contact us today!

Integrated Software which tracks Time and Attendance

Computerised systems are now the underlying part of any business, with most departments using one on a day to day basis in order to complete crucial tasks. From the tracking of hours, payroll and employee productivity, computers are often the eyes, ears and memory for many organisations. However businesses often use a number of different suites to complete the above tasks.

While we might say we’re still punching that time clock, most workers are actually logging in their hours on a computer terminal, or swiping their ID badge to clock in. While computerised time clocks are nothing new, businesses looking to streamline their software and who want to condense the technology they’re using have been looking for ways to integrate the time clock into a standardised software suite, which is precisely what Elf Productivity Ltd. provides.

Keeping Track of Time and Attendance (Along With Everything Else)

While computers have been integrated into common businesses little by little, they’re now an undeniable part of how even small companies run. From payroll and hours tracking to human resources and tracking productivity, computers are the eyes, ears, and often memory of a business.

So why use a dozen different suites to track important information when you could simply install one kind of software to keep track of everything? That’s the question Elf Productivity Ltd. asked, and it’s what led them to design a unique software suite that’s a one-stop-shop for a business who wants all of its information in a single, easily accessible place.

This software suite keeps track of all the necessary information a company needs. It has employee information, hours worked, and similar data all in a profile that employees can log their hours in as well as updating their information without bothering HR. The suite also provides access control, making sure that only those who need to see certain sensitive information will have access to it.

Integration is the name of the game, and it saves your business time, money, and effort. For more information on how Elf Productivity Ltd. can help you, simply contact us today!

Why You Need Shop Floor Data Capture Capabilities In Your Business

When a problem occurs all businesses should be able to respond and if necessary change. This is even more crucial for businesses within the production industry as one small change could potentially spell the end for their company. Having a shop floor data capture system in place would provide your business with the information needed in order to stop this process from ever happening.

Every business needs to be able to respond and change when it becomes clear that there’s a problem. For businesses who want to get the edge on their competition, while keeping their clients happy and production up, it’s important to invest in shop floor data capture.

What Is Shop Floor Data Capture?

Shop floor data capture is when you set up machines that can instantly record your production numbers and beam them wirelessly to you. As an example: say you were a candle manufacturer, you have seven machines going at once and they’re set to produce 200 candles each day; one machine is malfunctioning, and it’s only producing 180 candles. Sure, that 20 candles might not seem like much on the first day, but after a week that’s 140 pieces of lost product. If you only evaluate production numbers once a month then the problem will already have grown pretty big.

Now say you had shop floor data capture set up, these devices would keep an accurate count of the number of candles being produced, and they’d send an update to you to let you know there was a problem with the production numbers, that way, you would know the source immediately, and you could investigate it as soon as you saw the numbers slipping.

Elf Productivity Ltd. Is Here To Help

While there are a lot of different options on the market for shop floor data capture, Elf Productivity Ltd. has streamlined the process and made it as easy as possible to get results. Our software suite gives business owners all the numbers they need, and they’re updated regularly to ensure that no problem goes undetected for long. Not only that but this software is designed for ease of use, ensuring that all you have to do is plug-and-play.

For more information on how Elf Productivity Ltd. can help your business, or about shop floor data capture in general, simply contact us today!

Elf Productivity Helps Balance Human Resource Needs In Your Business

Behind every successful business is a fully functioning human resource department. Organising your staff is a key part of this and implementing a human resource system will simplify the process by allowing you to easily view all information about any member of staff on one easy to use platform. Our system cuts out the middleman making everything easier for both HR and other departments.

Every business needs people in order to function: without staff nothing gets done. Even if you have the most competent people working for you, you’ll never achieve your goals without some way to arrange and organise your staff. That’s where Human Resources comes in: this department’s job is to make sure that workers have all their information in the system, that hours are clocked properly, that checks are issued on time, and all the other necessary tasks that keep the work force running. With that said though, it’s very possible for HR to get weighed down, backlogged, and clogged up. That’s where Elf Productivity Ltd. comes into the picture.

What Elf Productivity Ltd. Does For Human Resources

We understand how important smooth traffic is for any business when it comes to human resources: you put in a request on Monday and expect it to be handled in a timely fashion, but if everyone else in the company puts in the same request, it’s going to take time to get that done, especially if someone in HR has to take the form you filled out, go into the system, and plug in all your details before doing the exact same thing for the next person in line.

What we did was create a software that cuts out the middleman and makes everything easier both for those in HR, as well as those outside of the department. Our software suite acts like a fast-track for your business’ needs; it’s an accurate time clock that automatically updates when someone clocks in or out, it also lets people outside of HR make appropriate changes, which means average workers can keep track of their hours more accurately without the need to bother HR. If a worker moves, changes a name, or switches banks, it’s also possible for them to log in and alter their information instead of filling out a form and waiting for HR to get around to it. We combined employee self-service with an accurate time clock, as well as all the access control you need to make sure that truly sensitive information is still only available to those who need it, the result is a system that is smoother, faster, which does more of the work for you, and which you can implement quickly and easily.

For more information about how Elf Productivity Ltd. can help your business succeed simply contact us today!

Benefits to Time and Attendance Software

Managing employee time and attendance data is a hard job for any human resource department. Calculating payroll and holiday time as well as generating reports can take hours, costing your business money. Implementing an easy to use time and attendance system will reduce the number of hours spent on these kind of tasks as well as benefiting your business in numerous other ways.

Managing employees’ time and attendance sounds like hard work for any Human Resources department, even the smallest of companies spend an inordinate amount of time with reports, payroll, and holiday time calculations, the list can seem endless at times.

Many are unaware of the tremendous benefits afforded through the use of Time and Attendance software. Here are just a few:

The Time is Up for Clocks and Cards

If your company is still using a time clock, you are hemorrhaging a great deal of money out of your payroll department. On average, dispensing, collecting, calculating, and purchasing time cards costs roughly eighteen minutes per employee, per week. That’s around fifteen hours for each employee annually. Everyone knows, in business, time is money!

Help Those Who Help Themselves

Although it is simply “part of their job”, Payroll and HR collectively, or separately, spend hours over the course of a year looking up data for employees: vacation time due, verifying days or hours worked, scheduling questions, and many more inquires. Time and Attendance software allows employees to find this information out for themselves.

Absenteeism Adds Up

While some employers may feel that an absent employee is reducing payroll, it is actually costing companies more. According to CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development) research, 90% of businesses say that absenteeism is “a significant cost” for their company. Sickness generally accounts for eight lost working days per year for every staff member or around 3.5% of working time annually.

To save your company valuable time, money, and resources, please contact us to learn more about our Time and Attendance software today.

What Shop Floor Data Capture Can Do For Your Business

As a manufacture making sure your machines are working to the best of their ability is crucial. If one of your machines encounters a problem during the production process your end numbers are likely to drop. In the short run this is unlikely going to hurt your business but over an extensive period of time your available product number will of significantly dropped along with your profit.

Imagine for a moment that you’re a manufacturer: you make dice, and the machines that put out your product can produce 5,000 dice per hour when they’re going full-bore. However, due to altered settings or small hiccoughs in the machinery, you produce 100 fewer dice every 2 hours. That might not be a big deal during any particular day, but over the course of a week, or a month, that takes a significant bite out of your available product and your profits.

Now imagine that you only check your numbers once a week, that’s a lot of lost energy and product you could have avoided if you’d used shop floor data capture.

What Is Shop Floor Data Capture?

Shop floor data capture is a process that keeps track of your output, and which gives you all of your numbers quickly and efficiently. Computer programs track efficiency, tally up the numbers, and send them to you over a wireless connection. Not only that, but these programs can alert you when a problem is detected. This means you find out immediately if there’s a drop in productivity, and you can examine the data over time to see what areas are causing problems.

Find Problems Quickly, Fix Them Fast

Anything that impacts your bottom line has ripple effects. If you can find the source of a flawed product, a slow assembly line, or any other issue, then you will be able to get more done quicker. Since you can’t be everywhere observing everything, Shop Floor Data Capture acts as your eyes and ears, notifying you when there’s a problem. All you need to do is to set up data capture devices, and to install a software suite that will conglomerate that data for you in a single place. Once you have that data, what you choose to do with it is up to you.

For more about shop floor data capture and how ELF Productivity Ltd can help, simply contact us today!