This past Thursday marked the official start of summer. You know what that means? No school for the kids, vacations, half-day Fridays and just a slower work schedule in general.
For small business owners, the summer disruptions can mean chaos when it comes to payroll. Does your company policy include summer perks, like early exit Fridays? Do you know if you are losing money by paying employees the same amount for less work during the lazy days of summer?
How do your employees report to work? Do they report their own hours or do you have an automated time and attendance machine?
If you don’t have a way of tracking your staff’s time at the office, then you could be out of compliance, while wasting resources and money at the same time. Here are some fresh ideas for taking attendance and reasons why it’s important to the general health of your business:
- CLOUD-BASED ATTENDANCE – Just like you store your documents in the cloud, you can also do the same when it comes to your employee’s time and attendance. There are a number of cloud-based time and attendance systems out on the market that store attendance information in the cloud, but still offer physical time clocks, internet-based computers or apps to clock in. Small business owners have told me they like to use Stratustime and UAttend. Larger employers tend to use TimeClockPlus. You should look into these attendance systems and others on the market to see what will work for you.
- EMPLOYEE TIME OFF – It’s hard to schedule time off requests if you don’t know exactly how many vacation days your employees are owed. If you have an automated system in place, you can review and approve time off requests quickly, which will satisfy your employee and make sure that the employee’s time off doesn’t affect your business.
- COMPLIANCE IS KEY– It doesn’t matter if you run a large corporation or a small business, all businesses must be compliant with labor laws. Business owners who have attendance software in place are usually following the rules when it comes to scheduling (or not over-scheduling an employee) and employee compensation. Having a good “clocking in” system means you will be able to keep track of your employees hours worked and time off received.
- EFFICIENCY AT THE OFFICE – An automated attendance machine or time clock means an employer has an accurate account of an employee’s work hours. That means you can go back and review the information saved and pair it with past projects. Could your employee have completed the tasks in a shorter amount of time? If the answer is yes, that means you could have also saved yourself some money.
As a business owner, you know there’s no such thing as a slow day when you’re trying to drum up business. The lazy days of summer don’t mean you have to make less money. Actually, while your competition is relaxing by the pool, you and your employees can work harder to gain more clients. A cloud-based and automated attendance and time system could be the best way to measure results, manage a more efficient workplace, and improve employee satisfaction.
Remember, don’t waste away your summer, use it to build up your book of business!