Employee time clocks have been around for many decades, today I will explore not only the most common employee time clocks used today and over the past few decades but I will also cover the single most used employee time clock that you may not even know about today that will be the most used employee time clock over the next 10 years

Most people today are more interested in today’s products and not products that may be dated and possibly been around for more than 20 years like bundy clocks with bundy cards. Today I will start the list in reverse order starting with the what will become the most used employee time clock over the next 10 years globally, and it is happening right now every day.

Number 1 most used solution for employee time and attendance over the next 10 years will be…..
Smart Phones including iPhone and Android, Tablets and iPads. These types of items will be the most used items for employees to clock in and out over the next decade. Smart phones are so prolific now that it has never been easier for employees to clock in and out from their own mobile phone. Supervisors and Managers can also see company specific information, replace staff and manage rosters all from their own mobile phone. You can create your own time sheet, set up time sheet approval and more.

While writing this blog I hear advertising from our largest national electronics retailer promoting spend $500 in store and get a free Tablet, it is no wonder they are so prolific with promotions like these. Read More

Number 2 most used solution for employee time and attendance over the next 10 years will be…..
Simple electronic employee time clocks. Over the past decade hundreds of types of electronic employee time clocks have been released, some are still around and many have come and gone. This electronic employee time clock is our favourite as a stand alone employee time clock. This time clock also integrates directly with the fasted growing rostering program on the planet. We have provided thousands of employee time clocks over the years and every day see the decline while smart phones and tablets with iPads are increasing exponentially. Read More

Number 3 most used solution for employee time and attendance over the next 10 years will be…..
Portable employee time clocks designed for the most remote conditions, no power, only generators. No internet, no network and no computers. What type of device can you use when you have no power and no internet.

Call 1300 800 077 to find out more.

Monitoring and logging your employees’ time and attendance is an important facet of your business operations. Having the best and most accurate time and attendance equipment and solutions is imperative in ensuring all staff is performing to their outlined responsibilities and your company is not experiencing time theft or wage fraud.

Using online time sheets for employees and management allows your organisation to collate and store data in a much more streamlined and organised fashion. By moving your time and attendance time sheets to an online platform, staff can log on and off immediately and you will automatically have collected their data, rather than chasing them up for it or manually having to go through timesheets.

Alternatively, the traditional method of time and attendance is paper based or spread sheet collated data. This is a very simple and trust-based method of collecting time and attendance information, as staff have to manually fill out their hours and work productivity. These so-called ‘normal’ time sheets are the more traditional method of data collection, however they are somewhat out dated and can lead to discrepancies and time theft, costing your company additional money in wages and investigation.

A cost effective and more accurate time sheet system

Online time sheets are far more cost effective in this day and age as they eliminate the need for manual handling of time and attendance records. By minimising the manual input of staff data, your organisation can be confident that all time and attendance records are collated, stored and organised in the most efficient and correct way possible.

By implementing online time sheets, your company can save money by reducing the opportunity of time theft by employees . Time theft is a very common occurrence in workplaces where online time and attendance solutions have not been implemented as the staff themselves are responsible for reporting the hours they worked and their productivity levels.

Online time sheets are an automatic register of staff clock on and clock off times, meaning your staff are much more likely to arrive on time and leave when they’re supposed to as all their attendance is recorded on your company online time and attendance platform electronically.

Traditional time sheets can be beneficial for some workplaces

While online time sheets are the most popular and effective method of time and attendance records in today’s technological society, with iPads, Tablets and smart phones everywhere, there are still some instances where traditional time sheets may be of use, we cant think of any though.

If you run a large scale company that sees large quantities of casual workers work irregular shifts, then implementing online time and attendance would be crucial to excellent output of information collected in preparation for payroll.

For example, say you run a catering company that works at a large sporting arena. Every week there are a number of events staged at the venue with a large number of casual staff employed to cater them. With a staff base running into the thousands, implementing an online time and attendance system with rostering is really the only way you can save thousands of dollars when compared to a paper time sheet solution of the past.

Book in a demonstration and see for yourself

Last week was the last week before school goes back, Jacob my youngest who is 9 had his hair looking like Jeff Thompson one of our famous cricketers. Thommo was well known in his day for his shaggy hair. I was also due for a trim so off we went to our local hairdresser.

My hair is significantly shorter than Jacob’s so the young apprentice who cut my hair cleaned up while I sat down and waited for Jacob. We were the only people in the salon at the time getting our hair cut. The salon had 6 workers at the time, it looked like one apprentice, a manager and the remaining four could have been fully qualified hairdressers.

While waiting for Jacob I observed the apprentice grab a piece of paper and started walking over to the 4 girls in the back corner having a chat waiting for the next customer. I learned later the piece of paper was a weekly time sheet for the salon. It looked like they were filling in for the final day of the pay week as the sheet already had information.

About this time I decided to go to the post office as I had some mail to do, I have been using the same local post office for more than 10 years. I lined up at the post office as it is always very busy. Yong who runs the post office is as efficient entrepreneur as you will ever see. He has an incredible memory and always spends time with his regular customers letting them know he cares they frequent his shop often.

I was called over to Yong to complete my mail and as quick as I was being served by Yong another customer to my right was being served by Chris. Chris has worked for Yong for as long as I can remember, when Chris does not work Yong’s wife comes in to work. When I took a closer look the person to my right was the apprentice  hairdresser who had just cut my hair. I noticed she was handing over a weekly time sheet to be faxed. I assumed at this point it was going to a head office to be processed for payroll.

I asked Yong while being served how much does it cost to fax 1 page and he replied $2.00 or $2.50 I could not quite hear at the time.  I went back to the hairdressers to get Jacob and they were still finishing his hair, getting it just right so he was happy with the length he kept and mum would be happy with the length that he goes back to school with to start year 4.

I had a couple of minutes so opened my iPad and googled the name of the hairdressing salon, I found the company website quickly which was very modern, then I read on the front page of the salons website the company has 28 salons now. I did not know the small salon in my local shopping center was part of a 28 store company.

This got me thinking of course about the time sheet. I have been involved in employee time and attendance for more than 15 years, we have provided solutions over the years to many types of businesses, some that you would not even think would need to have employees clocking in and out. If my hairdresser has 28 locations and each location has on average over a month 10 employees and managers per week we are now talking about 280 employees and 28 time sheets, one for each store.

Where ever the time sheet got faxed to, back to head office where administration is completed we will assume, I am sure a payroll person will be sitting in their office ready to process these 28 time sheets manually every week.

What is wrong with this story I ask myself….

• Employees filling out manual time sheets can easily put down incorrect times
• Managers who want to be friends with employees can easily approve employees coming in late by changing a start time of 9:15 back to 9:00am
• Managers at each store will be manually managing rosters for the staff week in week out
• Head office has no visibility, Head office can only wait for time sheets to be faxed through to see what is happening out in the stores.
• 28 stores sending 28 faxes is costing at least 56 dollars every week.

What if you could implement an electronic rostering solution across all 28 stores?
What if the cost of the faxing alone equaled 20% of the cost of an electronic system?

• Employees could only clock in and out electronically, no more manual time sheet changes
• Managers can roster staff electronically, workers could easily be shared across multiple locations without the need for multiple phone calls
• Head office could have live and instant visibility on employees arriving at every one of the 28 locations from their computer or mobile phone
• Payroll could receive electronic data that can flow directly into payroll

Would you stay with a manual time sheet system today or consider these advantages in your business?

Read more about how you can make your payroll more efficient and reduce costs or book in a demonstration

Does Weather affect your rostering or scheduling of employees?

Talking to hundreds of customers every month over the past few years with all sorts of adverse weather conditions impacting day to day sales I thought it was time to ask “Does Weather affect your rostering or scheduling of employees?”

I remember back when I first started working as a 14-15 year old in my fathers welding business, Speed was dad’s nickname but he was everything but fast, he built sheds and factories for people in the bush with orchards. He also spent a lot of time building silos for flour mills right across the central west of NSW. This was 30 years ago when I got my first experiences of how weather can impact a business. It was simple, if it rained and the job was outdoors then the work was called off for the day.

Often we experienced weather conditions that were to hot, welding back in those days was stick welding only, mig welding did not exist, we would be dressed in heavy blue one piece overalls that may well have been the first ever onesie.

Hot weather stopped us welding when it went over 40 degrees Celsius or 104 Fahrenheit, but i bet ice cream shops, swimming pools, companies selling air conditioners, companies servicing air conditioners went gangbusters.

 Does Weather affect your rostering or scheduling of employees? maybe it is time to get a rostering or scheduling solution that understands weather impacts the rostering and scheduling of employees in your business

Read more about a rostering or scheduling solution that understands how weather affects the management of employees in your business

Cold Weather or worse snow like the USA is experiencing in early 2014 can cripple businesses even the businesses that are designed to make money while it is cold. the cold snap in USA in January 2014 has stopped entire towns from moving for days, thousands of flights have been impacted, hundreds of thousands of flying customers have been impacted.

Every one of the situations happening in USA especially the Midwestern United States will be impacting hundreds maybe even thousands of businesses including the rostering and scheduling of hundreds of thousands of employees.

One place hot pies and hot dogs will sell well in this cold snap will be when the Green Bay Packers meet the San Francisco 49ers as fans of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers vowed to brave the weather to see a playoff matchup that could stand as one of the coldest ever games in league history. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, football fan Jacquie Tucker Braun, 44, was undaunted by a forecast for temperatures below 0 F (-18 C) when the Packers match up with the San Francisco 49ers.

Read more about a rostering or scheduling solution that understands how weather affects the management of employees in your business

Last week I was asked to complete a 6 week rotating roster, as we gathered the details from the customer it is interesting to see how different customers require different structures.

Based on the requirements the first thing we did was build a spreadsheet applying the maths behind each of the requirements ensuring the rules were being met.

This was for a 24 hour operation where each employee worked 12 hour shifts. Some of the criteria that had to be met included….
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