8 Employee Attendance Tracking Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Tracking your employees’ attendance properly requires knowing what not to do. Here are employee attendance tracking mistakes and how to avoid them.
Do you want to identify any attendance issues in your workplace? Perhaps you want your staff to be working remotely. Or maybe you want to ensure employees are paid accurately, in full, and on time.
If so, then implementing employee attendance tracking will get the job done. But do you know various attendance tracking mistakes can derail the process?
Without an accurate record, employees may be unproductive and even take unaccounted time off just because you’ve allowed it. And if you don’t think tracking attendance is meaningful in your organization, your staff are very aware of it. This results in lots of productive hours lost, leading to astronomical costs.
As a business owner, you want to gain more control over staff attendance to ensure your firm runs very smoothly and effectively. This alleviates attendance issues lowering productivity such as tardiness, and countless call-ins.
However, if you’re thinking of implementing employee attendance tracking, there are various mistakes to be aware of. The following are 8 common employee tracking mistakes and how to avoid them.
1. Missing an Attendance Policy
Do you know having an attendance policy ensures staff is taking attendance seriously and help avoid a casual attitude? Most business owners understate the importance of written records in implementing attendance tracking. For effective attendance tracking, formally inform your employees about the policy.
You’ll need to have an employee attendance policy spelling out;
• Expected productive hours
• Official working hours
• Annual leaves
• Definition of absenteeism or tardiness
• Leave approval process
• Half provision
• Consequences for the breach of an attendance policy
Ensure this policy is availed and signed off by all the new staff. If you’re introducing the policy in your organization for the first time, make sure every employee is conversant and in agreement with it.
2. Allowing for Proxy
While no organization wants to deal with proxy attendance, there’re systems that can be exploited by staff to their advantage. For instance, proxy attendance is mainly associated with system log-in or paper register. In these cases, employees can have their colleagues or friends sign attendance on their behalf.
Good employee attendance tracking needs to verify an employee’s identity to alleviate such cases. This ensures that the actual employee is signing or marking the attendance. Some of the attendance tracking systems that won’t allow for proxy include the Wi-Fi attendance system and biometric systems.
3. Failure to Track the Log Out Time
Another major employee attendance tracking mistake is not taking the log-out time of the staff. Here, the system only records the log-in time and ends up counting the employee as a present for the entire day. However, this can lead to inaccurate data since you can’t establish whether employees mark the attendance and leave after a few hours.
In most cases, the attendance stipulates employees worked for more hours than they actually did. Also, if employees are aware your attendance system will only track their log-in time only, they are likely to manipulate it. It’s vital to have a system recording both the log-in and log-out time and also to count the number of hours spent in the office.
4. Failure to Implement Attendance Policy
You already have an attendance policy that everyone in the firm is aware of, right? But do you monitor the implementation? Well, it isn’t a wise decision to expect your staff to follow any rules without supervision.
If you’ve implemented an attendance policy in your firm, be keen to ensure it’s followed. But you can’t monitor every employee to ensure they are following the policy, can you? This is why you’ll need an attendance software system that will alert if an employee’s attendance goes below the required standard.
5. Confusing Leave Policy
Contradicting or unclear rules in leave policy can confuse employees. For instance, a leave policy may have eight public holidays, but the leave management system contradicts by mentioning ten. With this, you can have some employees report to work while others don’t come with a genuine reason.
At times, such confusion can result from grapevine and rumors in the workplace. This is especially a bigger problem for already established companies with a huge workforce. However, it’s your role as the business owner or HR to ensure there are no inconsistencies in the written word.
Also, you’ll need to establish a clear attendance communication channel to address any concerns or confusion.
6. Not Counting Tardiness or Absenteeism
Tardiness and absenteeism result in unproductive work hours in a business. These involve employees arriving late to work, leaving early, being absent, or taking long unwarranted breaks. Also, this could be an employee being available in the workplace but doing unproductive works such as browsing for hours.
If these behaviors affect only a few employees, it could be due to a lack of motivation. However, if it’s a widespread issue in your organization, then you need a major change in company culture.
7. Unfair Implementation
When implementing an attendance policy, it should be the same for all employees. Having varied attendance rules for different departments creates dissatisfaction with other employees. For instance, working hours ought to be applicable to all management levels.
To avoid resentments and demotivation, avoid double standards when implementing an attendance policy.
8. Failure to Analyze Attendance Data
For every business using an attendance system, there is a lot of data collected. However, most companies will let such data go to waste, which is a big mistake.
By analyzing and interpreting results, a company can improve its attendance and workplace culture. Also, leave patterns can shed light on when your staff is likely to take leave, and you’ll plan accordingly. Or, you can use the data to calculate employees’ productivity hours and compare them with their performance.
Here Are Common Attendance Tracking Mistakes
Employee attendance tracking can have major benefits to your business. However, you’ll need to know and avoid common slip-ups to enjoy these perks.
Above are attendance tracking mistakes and how to avoid them.
Are you looking for attendance tracking software? At TimeTrack Systems, we got you covered. We offer a wide range of employee time tracking tools from simple to advance to guarantee the success of your business.
Contact us today for a free quote.
