Time & Attendance: the Core of Workforce Management

Finding a time and attendance solution is often the first step when an organization wants to level up their workforce management approach. Maybe you – or your employees – are tired of manual timecards, or you’re finding it tough to get accurate reporting. Or maybe it’s a leadership desire to work smarter, not harder. Whatever the reason, time and attendance is where the journey begins when it comes to using the power of technology for better workforce management.

Workforce management is an organizational process that includes all the activities required to maintain a productive workforce, including managing mobile or remote employees, employee scheduling, leave management, and document management. Thanks to technology, workforce management now incorporates tools and software that support management, front-line supervisors, and workers across manufacturing, distribution, transportation, and retail operations. While robust, integrated solutions are key to true workforce management, time and attendance remains at the core of it all. Determining how your employees clock in and out, when they work, and what functions they perform while at work are all key elements of optimizing your workforce.

Time and attendance is also at the top of the list as an essential part of HR technology. It’s one of the ways HR needs to meet its core contract with employees, according to George LaRocque, founder of the HR technology research and advisory firm HR Wins.

“For many small functions, means looking first at payroll, benefits, and time and attendance technologies. I’ve surveyed thousands of small businesses, and executives usually see the biggest ROI in those technologies because they want to see costs associated with those areas contained, measured, and managed,” LaRocque told the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing most businesses to adopt remote work, employers have an obligation and need to effectively track the hours employees work both onsite and remotely. Accurate time and attendance is both essential to meet requirements put forth under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and important for effective operational management. As part of field management, data collection, budgeting, forecasting, scheduling, and analytics — time and attendance plays an essential role in enhancing your overall workforce management strategy. Download our eBook to learn more.