How to Track Working Hours Correctly

Any type of business must keep track of its employees’ work hours. Even if a company’s workers have flexible hours, monitoring how they spend their time at work can be useful. It makes HR tasks a lot easier and helps stakeholders comply with labor regulations. Of course, tracking hours can simplify payroll processing.

This article provides details on how to track work time and how the initiative benefits businesses and employees.

How Time Tracking Solves Attendance and Productivity Issues

Throughout labor history, proper attendance management has played a significant role. As the competition in the market becomes fiercer, companies must turn to efficient time management to survive and get ahead of the game. Over the years, the size of an average company keeps on growing. Moreover, because of the demand for mobility among the current workforce, time theft and labor inefficiencies have become more likely. Finally, because of the prevalence of remote teams and freelancers, challenges in the employment environment have required increasingly complex solutions.

Here are some of the issues that time tracking can resolve:

Attendance Issues

In every industry sector, one of the recurring issues for HR departments is employee absenteeism. As a result, a lot of HR managers have resorted to creative ways to deal with the issue. Here are some of the negative outcomes of poor employee attendance:

  • When employees don’t show up in time, the quality of work and output suffers.
  • Absent employees will leave gaps that will hinder effective teamwork.
  • As absenteeism becomes pervasive, morale will start to dip.
  • There will be resentment among members of the team, causing conflicts to arise.
  • Without adequate staffing, productivity and profits will suffer.
This list gives an idea of how attendance issues can gravely affect companies. One of the best ways to deal with this sort of malfunction is by creating a comprehensive attendance policy. Once that is in place, time tracking comes into the picture to provide decision-makers with all the data they need to enforce the regulations.

Work Inefficiencies

Absenteeism is not the only time management-related issue that companies face. There are many gaps to fill throughout an attendance management system. Every company has a unique malfunction, but most of them have to do with ineffective resource distribution. Simply put, issues often arise when staff members are doing the wrong task at the wrong time.

When left unchecked, this malfunction can lead to work inefficiencies. Thankfully, an attendance tracker or time monitoring software can help supervisors generate comprehensive labor analyses to identify and resolve these issues. Consequently, they will be able to assign the right tasks to the right employees.

Irresponsible Work Behavior

It can be difficult to hold staff members accountable for the amount of work they put in when companies do not have a proper attendance management system in place. In this case, managers may be unaware that some employees have been taking too many liberties with company time. Moreover, ineffective attendance management can prevent supervisors from finding opportunities for proper task delegation.

What’s great about task monitoring apps is they offer various solutions to this issue. For instance, sophisticated tools for keeping track of work hours can have biometric or GPS technology that ensures team members are where they are supposed to be. Moreover, managers can gain access to real-time labor analyses. When they can track what their employees are doing, they can address every aspect of the accountability malfunction.

Management Challenges for Remote Teams

These days, virtual teams are getting increasingly popular, especially since the global economy demands it. However, such type of setup requires high-octane collaboration. Of course, it can be challenging to achieve this goal. There are several reasons why virtual collaboration can be hard to obtain. Mostly, the malfunctions arise because of attendance issues and poor coordination. Thankfully, employee attendance software can fix this issue.

By having the right time tracking app, managers can ensure that the right remote team members are working together, especially during crucial times. The program will play an important role in helping a supervisor’s coordination efforts. What’s more, it will contribute to establishing clear communication between team members.

What Are the Best Ways to Track Employee Hours?

It will be no surprise if a huge percentage of companies around the world move to virtual teams. There may be inherent issues with this setup, but it offers benefits that a business cannot afford to ignore. Of course, to ensure success in such an environment, it is essential to have an excellent time management system.

One of the secrets for effective employee time tracking is getting the right system or tool in place. Here are some of the common ways that companies monitor their employees’ hours:

Timesheets

Old-school managers who prefer using pen and paper mostly turn to timesheets to track employee hours. Companies create a template on a sheet of paper with predefined data so that workers will fill it in. Employees can submit their timesheets on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. Some timesheets are designed for managers who need to compile their employees’ work hours and submit the data to their superiors. In most cases, timesheet templates require workers to record their:

  • Start time
  • Lunch break
  • End time
  • Overtime hours

The employee will have to get the total amount of hours they worked for the day or the week. They will enter the information at the end of the timesheet. Depending on the arrangements within a company, someone else—apart from the subject—may need to add some of the data. Despite that, approvals and additional checks are always necessary.

Biometrics

Biometric clock-in devices verify an employee’s identity by using biological markers like fingerprints or facial features. This system prevents employees from ‘buddy punching’—a trick wherein one worker clocks in for their friend. Once an employee checks in via a biometric device, the clock system will monitor their hours until they clock out.

Kiosk or Desktop Time Clocks

Some companies may have a designated desktop or kiosk with time clock software. Employees can head to this area to clock in and out. With a designated place for people to record their time, a company can streamline the process for tracking its employees’ work hours. Usually, to set up this type of time clock, IT personnel will download an application and assign a PIN or ID number to every worker. HR personnel can easily export every employee’s time data to make payroll processing a lot easier and more seamless.

Mobile Apps

Managers can track time per task for contract or salaried employees by using mobile apps. This is an easy and cost-effective way for employees to submit their clock-in and clock-out times. Managers can ask their subordinates to install a timer or time clock on their smartphones. If part-timers have fixed shift hours, the app can inform them to clock out or have a break.

Task Tracking Software Programs

Analog time tracking methods may be effective in monitoring employee hours. However, time tracking programs are more accurate. In most cases, they make the process a lot easier. Managers can integrate such a tool into their payroll program, ensuring that the employees are paid accurately for the hours they worked.

Companies benefit by investing in comprehensive tools for keeping track of work hours. Task monitoring programs allow employees to log accurate hours in real time. As a result, managers can gain smarter and better insights into operating costs and work efficiency. Over time, they can make cost-effective scheduling decisions that lower their expenses.

How to track work time accurately:

  • Download Traqq, an efficient and easy-to-use task tracking application
  • Install and launch the application
  • Configure the application according to your data requirements
  • Click the Start button to begin tracking time.