8 ways to improve workforce productivity

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Top 8 Ways to Improve Workforce ProductivityAn Analysis of Workforce Management Technology


“Give your employees access to everything”OK, maybe not everything, but employee self-service options should be implemented as often as possible. Employee self-service (ESS) functions will allow your employees to record their leave requests, record time, review their own schedules and work hours history, view their personal information, benefit accruals, vacation and sick time. In the past, these job-related tasks would have required the assistance of management or administrative staff.

By giving your employees access to their own information you instantly eliminate the calls and questions about how much vacation time they have earned or how many hours they have worked any given week. If there are any discrepancies, they can be caught quickly and corrected well before payroll is processed. Additionally, some systems can send messages to your employees, allowing management to keep their workforce informed of approved leave, attendance infractions, or special events.

It is easy to see why employee self-service was rated the most important feature for managing time and attendance data by Paytech survey respondents. If each employee can use self service as opposed to spending an average of 12 minutes on the phone with the Human Resource or Payroll department, a tremendous amount of productive work time will be saved. ESS will provide management with more

time to focus on business strategy and developing a high performance workforce. ESS features can be set up on your company’s intranet or via web-based SaaS (software as a service) systems.

“Maintain compliance by saving all of your data”Few things can bog down an entire workforce as much as compliance violations, especially if the reason for those violations is in part due to poor record keeping. According to the US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division in 2006, 222,000 employees received $135.7 million in minimum wage and overtime back wages resulting from Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) violations. Not included in those numbers is the significant reduction in productivity resulting from employees who are unhappy about their wages and the HR department that has to devote large amounts of time researching the complaints.

It does not take long for one to be overwhelmed with the number of laws from FLSA, FMLA, and Sarbanes-Oxley, not to mention all of the state-specific employment laws every organization must adhere to. Unfortunately there is no miracle program that will keep your company in compliance, but there is something that will help. Create and maintain a digital historical archive of your employees worked hours, leave requests, and other important information. The new advances in data storage will allow

INTRODUCTIONTackling the issue of workforce productivity can be intimidating, especially when one considers its critical importance to succeeding in today’s marketplace. Improving workforce productivity is near the top of every organization’s “To-Do List”, but a surprisingly low percentage of companies feel confident that they are performing well in their workforce optimization efforts.

Based on third party research and our own experience, we know that organizations that have successfully implemented automated technology and reporting tools to support their HR activities have seen real workforce productivity benefits. In a survey from Paytech Magazine, 65.6% of respondents admitted they would like to see improvements made to their existing time-tracking system. Additionally, the 2006 Accenture “High-Performance Workforce Study” reports only 14% of respondents described the skill level of their workforce as industry-leading. Such data underscores the importance of using the latest technology in order to improve your overall workforce productivity. This white paper will provide you with an in-depth analysis of the top 8 ways you can improve your workforce productivity using the latest advances in HR technology.


you to store all of your employee data in a modern SQL database, not to mention the huge amount saved by not having to maintain physical paperwork. Additionally, some of the more robust time and attendance systems on the market will not require you to use archive databases, they keep the historical data “on line”, greatly increasing the speed in which you can obtain accurate work history information on an employee, even if the employee was terminated years ago.

“Track your employees in real-time”How can you achieve a higher performing workforce if you do not have real-time visibility to your employees’ time, schedules, and attendance records? At one point automated time and attendance systems were praised for simply being able to eliminate the need for manual punch cards and the headaches associated with filling out such paperwork. However, the time has come when your system should be providing you with true real-time information.

By giving management visibility to the current state of their workforce, schedules can be rearranged and strategic plans can be made well before your organization hits a critical staffing or scheduling issue. Additionally, benefit accruals and leave requests can be monitored as they come in, allowing decisions to be made fairly and accurately in order to maintain the most effective workforce.

Plus, a huge step has been made in the tracking of mobile employees, which had previously been a difficult task to track accurately. With innovations from companies like Actsoft Inc, management can determine who is working at specific worksites and view maps that pinpoint workers’ exact locations using GPS technology. Combined with a robust time and attendance system, managers of mobile workforces may now have the ultimate tracking tool.

“Let all your systems talk to each other”At any given organization, dozens of separate programs, software and systems are utilized to perform necessary job functions and automate common work processes. The key to maximizing these tools is setting them up to work together as one seamless unit. Instead of manually

transferring attendance data from your time and attendance system to your payroll system and vice versa, you can implement the latest XML API to automatically transfer the required information between systems on a real time basis or as often as you like.

XML API is the abbreviation of eXtensible Markup Language Application Programming Interface, which can be explained for our purposes as a simpler way of coding two different systems to communicate with each other. Not all systems will be setup with XML, but seeking out a robust time and attendance system with this capability is well worth it. It could make the difference between your employees recording their time accurately or having to deal with missing information.

For example, American TV & Appliance – a leading brick and mortar retailer of furniture and consumer electronics – had only two or three time clocks at each store location, which resulted in an unacceptable number of missing punches. By installing an AsureForce® time and labor management system with XML API capability, the Point of Sale terminals at American were set up to act as time clocks for recording employee time to flow directly into the time tracking system.

“The fact that we can use our own terminals and workstations has addressed a very significant problem we have had. It was a big, big savings for us,” said Steve Klapper, American TV & Appliance Controller. Integrating your individual systems may open a number of doors to increase your overall workforce productivity.

“Prevent cheaters from cheating you”Although we may all wish that our hiring, training, and management processes would be 100% fool-proof, the reality is that some of your employees may have no problem with trying to cheat your organization out of a few hours or more every week. Or in some cases, the offense may occur in a less devious situation, such as one co-worker asking his friend to clock him in early since he is stuck in traffic and the friend complies thinking it’s not a big deal.

Unfortunately “buddy-punching” is a very big deal that can quickly hurt your workforce productivity.

Implementing biometrics in connection with your time and attendance tracking can virtually eliminate buddy-


punching as it requires employees to record their time with something that cannot be replicated by a fellow co-worker, such as a fingerprint or hand scan. The Ingersoll-Rand Recognition Systems Hand Punch uses hand geometry technology to measure the size and shape of each employee’s hand which can be more effective and more secure than using fingerprints.

Another concern may be “ghost employees”. A ghost employee is a fictitious or previously terminated employee who is still on payroll as a result of someone setting up this false employee record to divert checks to their own personal account. An automated time and attendance system makes ghost employees nearly impossible to create as management has full visibility to work data which allows for a fair system of checks and balances.

“Set your schedules in advance”The sooner you can assign your workforce schedules the better. Employees appreciate knowing when they will be working as far in advance as possible so they can plan their personal schedules accordingly. From a management standpoint, setting your schedules early will give you time to make the necessary adjustments to ensure you minimize overworking your staff without compromising the effectiveness of your organization. Unfortunately, such planning can be nearly impossible working with paper.

With an automated time tracking system, entire shifts can be pre-loaded by employee group and total hours can be planned days or weeks in advance. Managers will have instant visibility to holes in their employees’ schedules and will be alerted when overtime will be used. Additionally, the real-time tracking ability of some systems will allow managers to make adjustments immediately if an employee calls in sick. Whether scheduling an individual, a department or a group of employees, an automated system will maximize the efficiency of your scheduling process and help improve workforce productivity.

“Don’t let human error cost you $140,000.00”We all know humans make mistakes and a mistake seems more likely to happen if you are calculating payroll from paper time cards and using complicated payroll rules. Of

course the bigger mistake is not letting these calculations be done for you by using an automated system that will drastically reduce errors and ultimately save time and money.

In the recent case of an Arizona Unified School District, “human error” was to blame for the overpayment of more than $140,000 to 270 employees on their January 4, 2008 paychecks. Although the school district uses automated software, they determined it would be more cost effective to manually calculate the back pay and then upload it to their automated system. Overpayment is not always reported, but in this case it was and the district found there had been a very costly mistake in not utilizing the technology they had available.

When upgrading your current processes with an automated time and attendance system it is important to remember that “cost effective” does not mean “the cheapest available”. There are a variety of automated systems to choose from and your focus should always be on what system meets all of your current and future needs.

“Save paper, save time, save money”According to the Resource Conservation Alliance, a typical US worker generates 9,999 sheets of paper each year which totals roughly 27 pounds per person. The digital age has arrived and the amount of paper used should decrease significantly with the implementation of automated systems. A significant additional benefit is an increase in productivity. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that workforce productivity has increased by 10% since the year 2000, which can largely be attributed to new technology.

For HR, working with paper timesheets and other manual methods of data entry can be tedious and time consuming, not to mention increasing risk of human errors. Even at the most basic level, an automated time and attendance system can make paper timesheets obsolete. Additionally, robust time tracking systems provide real-time tracking, excellent reporting tools, messaging options, and more that all help reduce paper waste and increase your workforce productivity.


CONCLUSIONImproving your workforce productivity must first start with increasing your workforce visibility. If you are unable to view and measure the current production of your employees at all levels you will be unable to make the critical decisions necessary to optimize your workforce. The top 8 ways mentioned in this white paper provide an excellent starting point for determining how you can increase visibility and utilize the latest technology to quickly improve time consuming and error-prone processes. By implementing the right systems you can maximize the productivity and profitability of your workforce.

Resources:

“Actsoft Inc. Wireless Data Innovators.” Actsoft Inc. 2008. <http://www.actsoft.com>

Balaguer, Ellen., Peter Cheese, and Christian Marchetti. “The High-Performance Workforce Study 2006.” Accenture 2007.

Disselkamp, Lisa. Working the Clock: How to Win the Race for Productivity and Profits with Workforce Management Technology. Richmond: The Oaklea Press, 2007.

Kalaitzidis, Konstantinos. “Human error led to TUSD paying workers too much.” Tucson Citizen Jan. 2008.

“Recognition Systems Hand Punch.” Ingersoll-Rand Company, 2008. <http://recognitionsystems.ingersollrand.com>

Thompson, Lauren. “Tracking Time & Attendance Trends.” Paytech Jan. 2008: 31.

“Using Less Wood.” Resource Conservation Alliance. <http://www.woodconsumption.org/products/paper.pdf>

“Workforce Productivity Technology Council”. WorkProTech, 2008. <http://www.workprotech.org>

About Asure SoftwareAsure Software, Inc. (Nasdaq:ASUR), headquartered in Austin, Texas, offers intuitive and innovative technologies that enable companies of all sizes and complexities to operate more efficiently. The company ensures a high-performing work environment by integrating its “keep it simple” solutions and expertise to more than 3,500 clients worldwide. Asure Software’s suite of solutions range from time and attendance workforce management solutions to asset optimization and meeting room management. For more information, please visit www.asuresoftware.com.

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8 ways to improve workforce productivity