Tracking employee hours is essential for businesses to create the right strategies keeping in mind the billable hours. It also helps the HR department to process payroll accurately on time. Moreover, the productivity will increase along with the profit once the employees are accountable for their working hours.

There are many solutions available in the market to measure employee hours. The primary concern for the managers is the additional time these systems will consume. They may cause more trouble to the employees since they may get treated as a tedious task in their schedule.

Tips for Small Businesses to Formulate Employees’ Hours

Here are some tips for small business owners to efficiently calculate the employees’ hours with minimal troubles to the workforce.

1. Card Swipes

You can implement an attendance system with card swiping on the wall mount to save time for everyone. The employees don’t need to punch in the machine every morning. Moreover, the working hours are automatically calculated on the central system.

The modern card swiping methods ensure the system is contactless as part of the new normal. Also, they are less prone to inaccuracies and errors because of the quality assurance from the developers. You can easily integrate these wall mount systems to the other software to manage different aspect of employee management.

• Mobile Attendance System

You need a mobile attendance system installed if the employees work from home or in some remote location. Many employers faced some serious trouble while trying to track the employee hours during the pandemic. They lost significant productive hours in the absence of a system to accurately measure the working hours.

You can use the company provided resources to track the employees’ activities legally. The GPS in their company phone will update you about their location during working hours. Also, you can install an activity tracker in their work laptop to find the time they spend on the system.

• Automated System for Compliance

Noncompliance to the state rules and regulations for fair labour can cost significant money to the business. You need a system that tracks the required data without discrepancies and inaccuracies. In the absence of the right tool, you will struggle to meet several state regulatory requirements.

Therefore, ask the developers whether the attendance or bookkeeping system follow the government regulation and policies. You should avoid the use of tools that may cause legal issue from an employee or authorities. It is an investment to track attendance and time to ensure the business meets the state guidelines. 

• Employees Access to the System Data

Employees sometimes lose track of their working hours amid the hustle of professional and personal life. It will harm their performance review. Thus, it is essential to provide them with an opportunity to cover those hours.

The solution here is to provide employees access to their attendance data. They can check the attendance and working hours to keep track of their performance. Moreover, they can report the HR department for errors.

• Third-Party Software Integration

Your business requires many tools to streamline and keep track of the different processes. These tools may require integration for the best return on the investment. It will help them fulfil the purpose with more features than before.

The same is true for the employee hours tools and the other software in the HR department. With third-party software integration, you can automate the payroll processing and client billing system based on the working hours. You can take £1000 loans with bad credit to cover the cost of these tools if the budget is tight.

• Cloud Storage Support

Small businesses spend additional hours to cut the cost of some expense to a minimum. Many avoid the investment because of the cost of hardware required for these tools. The cloud system is the cost-efficient alternative to offline systems.

They are faster and easily accessible to the employees to increase the overall efficiency. The operations will not stop in case the machine experience some failure. You can access the system from any system with the account credential.

They are also cheaper than the system installed in your systems. You can opt for a subscription model to avoid a heavy initial investment. If your business is new, you can take loans without a guarantor for unemployed from direct lenders.

• Biometrics for Additional Security

Biometrics are integrated with the attendance system to add a layer of security to the workplace. It reduces the chance of fake attendance for the employees to steal hours. You can rely on it to ensure that no unauthorised person gets access to your employee’s area.

It can also help to keep track of the employee location within the office premises. The use of fingerprints was not recommended during the pandemic because of the direct contact with the surface. Thus, a retina scanner is an ideal option with contactless verification of the employees.

• Manual Data Entry

You can enter the employees working hours manually in a spreadsheet if the above solutions are unaffordable. Many small businesses with only a few employees still use the old-school method of manual entry. It will save money, but the trouble of managing the data will increase.

Conclusion

To sum up, modern solutions have automated a lot of processes associated with employee hours management. You will receive employees work reports within a few minutes with accurate data. Therefore, the decision making, payroll processing, and invoice generation are simplified with a small investment.