Managing employees is never without its challenges. Whether you’ve got 7 employees or 500, there are some traps we can all fall into that make our lives far more complicated, and result not only in a serious amount of wasted time, but, even more alarming, cost your business a significant amount of money.
So, let’s play a little game. How many of these common mistakes can you all-too-easily relate to in your workplace?
Manually running your payroll.
Where do we start with this one…
The sheer amount of time involved in taking each employee’s individual timesheet, and having to input their basic hours, any overtime, sickness or absence days, can be shocking. Then, of course, you need to raise any queries you have about the hours reported. You also have to chase missing or incomplete timesheets. Even with the most efficient person behind the keyboard, mistakes are frequently made and over/underpaying is commonplace.
Absence management filled with question marks. And holiday clashes.
Maternity/paternity leave, compassionate leave, personal days, annual holiday, sickness, etc…
Knowing which employees have absence days is one thing, but you then need to find out which sort of absence it is – planned, unplanned or even unauthorised, which means checking with line managers or supervisors or even the workers themselves, before determining whether the days in question need to be paid. Over 55% of companies admit to not knowing how much absence is costing their business. We can’t know the exact amount, of course, but we can absolutely say this: it’s a lot more than you think (or want).
There’s much more to absence management than just knowing who’s in, and who’s out. It’s also being on the ball to see where patterns emerge – and investigating WHY they aren’t in. Is there a problem in your workplace you’re unaware of? Tackling an internal issue early on before it becomes a massive problem is always advisable.
Then there’s holiday management. Word of mouth requests for a day off, or a paper trail not properly communicated or recorded, can suddenly lead to unforeseen holiday clashes that result in issues of inadequate staffing.
Sloppy timekeeping.
Here’s a sobering thought for you: time theft is almost certainly costing your business money. If you don’t know exactly when your workers are clocking in and out, nor how long they’re taking for lunch, the chances are you are paying people for work they are absolutely not doing. There are two very important issues here as well:
- If you don’t know exactly who is clocked in or at what time, in the event of a fire, how do you know who should be present on your roll call?
- Demotivation amongst staff is highly contagious. Even the keenest, hardest working employee will reach a point when they will ask themselves “Why bother” when it becomes clear that colleagues who frequently turn up late and/or leave early, are not held to account.
Complicated reporting.
Where do we start with this one…
For many of us, reports = torture. When it comes to gathering all the necessary in order to even begin to produce a report, the process can take anything from days to weeks to months from start to finish. Then you have to generate the report itself. (A report that cloud-based workforce management software can do in moments).
Planning rotas and budgeting.
When it comes to effective budgeting and rota planning, you need to make sure your business needs are met. Examples of this include ensuring you have adequate staff cover. Knowing the availability of your workforce in the event you need to arrange cover is essential, but often results in frantic phoning around to try to find help. And when it comes to rotas and scheduling, how many of us get a physical reaction akin to anxiety just thinking about it? No sooner have you managed to plan a rota, than someone needs you to change it, or it’s time to plan the next one.
HR & HS record management.
How do you know when someone’s probation is almost up? Or if your forklift driver’s licence is coming up for renewal? Of whether your fire marshal’s certificate has expired? Keeping on top of all the HR and health & safety paperwork is extremely challenging. But when it comes to labour regulations, etc, compliance isn’t just preferable, it’s your legal duty. There can be a lot at stake, should errors occur.
The biggest problem of all is often that there’s a huge black hole when it comes to information. The person in charge of payroll doesn’t have the rota and budget information; the HR documents are only accessible on the computer of the HR manager; only one person is in charge of reporting, etc… and so on a company level, there is a lack of awareness and transparency which ultimately hinders your operation levels and, therefore, your business’ success.
The good news: Employee Attendance Cloud workforce management can help you with every single one of these points.
*Everything is centralised. One system, all the information. You can choose who has access to which parts, of course, but it’s all right there in your EAC cloud account.
*Automated reporting – just a few simple clicks, and it’s all done for you.
*Automated, accurate payroll – timesheets are approved in the system, your pay rates are already included. No mistakes. No stress. What’s more, accurate hours can be uploaded directly into most payroll systems with no manual input.
Amongst the most common reasons for a company not switching to a cloud-based system is this one, which we hear all the time:
We’ve always done it this way.
The truth is, we are actually quite fond of the old “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra. Looking for problems where there aren’t any, seems like a misdirected waste of energy.
But what if it IS broke, and you still don’t fix it? What if your habitual ways of doing things, mean your business is losing money, your productivity is suffering, your employees are unhappy and you are wasting hours upon hours unnecessarily, through a simple lack of organisation?
Then, surely, we can all agree that fixing would be the logical, preferable option?