Attendance management is something we all have known, felt, seen, and heard about since our schooling days. But when it comes to attendance management in HR, the seriousness is at a different level.
🤷🏻♂️ WHY ❓
Because employees need to adhere to attendance at all costs to receive their monthly salary or wages in full. And this one factor can be used as a cause by the employer to deduct salary without elaborated explanation
Well, let’s talk about it in detail.
What is Attendance Management in HR?
HR practitioners believe that employees who are disciplined contribute to the organization’s direction and goals more efficiently and productively.
And that does not mean only availing fun, recreational, or engagement activities. It also means ensuring employees are encouraged to maintain organizational conduct.
The most basic element of any employee code of conduct (COC) is the attendance. And perhaps all efforts are put to ensure employees attend 100%.
So what is attendance management in HR? It is the process of tracking employee work hours and time taken off. This definition is very simply put, but the factors that contribute to the success of an attendance management process are multiple and sophisticated.
Attendance management not only needs to meet local or federal laws. It is also the most crucial and basic factor in calculating remuneration and measuring productivity.
Why is attendance management important?
The most definite importance of an attendance management system is its contribution to accurately calculating payroll. A robust attendance system calculates exact working hours, which feed into employee gross wage calculations.
Good attendance management also helps in counting leaves and absences. Organizations can use this as an evaluation tool in measuring employee productivity. Also, HR personnel can use attendance as a cause for negligence of duty, if not met accordingly. It is also a cost control mechanism that ensures that losses from unapproved leaves are in check.
Types of Attendance Management
Across companies and countries, attendance management processes vary. However, the purpose remains the same across all systems – to track employees in and out time for duty.
Manual Systems
Manual attendance management systems include traditional methods like noting ins and outs of employees on paper or on cards.
Using pen and paper to track attendance is old school. Yet, this method still applies in places and organizations, mainly if the firm thinks converting to digital is costly.
Usually, using log books to write the in and out time with a signature is the most common form.
Another form of manual attendance is using time punch cards. Though electronic, this system is also old school and is a rather slow form of managing attendance.
In addition, time tracking sheets composed on paper are another form of manual attendance. Similar to a logbook, this form of recordkeeping is done on sheets of paper and submitted to the HR department for attendance tracking.
Automated Systems
Automated attendance management involves digitally or virtually tracking employee attendance. These methods are fast becoming the go-to methods of attendance.
👉 Biometric systems
Biometric attendance uses unique physiological or behavioral characteristics to verify and identify users. This technology captures and stores biometrics like fingerprints, handprints, facial features, or iris patterns in a database.
These templates ensure employees can be recognized without the need for smart cards, usernames, or other traditional methods.
👉 RFID Attendance Systems
In this type of system, digital information is stored inside a tag or card. Radio frequencies read the data or information. The RFID card or tag contains a microchip and an antenna. These hold specific identification details of the user with the card.
This technology is now less expensive to manufacture so many companies use it.
👉 GPS-Based Attendance System
This type of attendance system offers efficient remote workforce management. The GPS feature lets employees easily mark their location, regardless of where they are remotely working from. The system records attendance based on the employees’ GPS location when they clock in or out using their mobile devices.
The real-time tracking capabilities enable managers to monitor the whereabouts of their workforce. This helps especially with sales reps, ensuring that they are at their target locations on time and that customers receive timely service.
👉 Interactive Voice Response
This technology, in short IVR, is an automated telephone system technology, This technology allows callers to provide or get information using voice or menu inputs. However, one can do that without speaking to a live caller.
In attendance management, IVR works by allowing employees to interact with a timesheet data collection server over the phone. These systems can include implementation options, like IVR telephone time clock and mobile time tracking. These enable immediate communication and real-time data reporting through time and attendance systems.
👉 Cloud-Based or Online Systems
This type of attendance system requires each employee to access the organization’s website and log in to give their attendance. Employees usually enter personal usernames and passwords to clock in. Then, once they reach the end of the day, they simply clock out by stopping the digital clock or logging out.
Project management tools and ERPs have these cloud-based systems integrated.
👉 Virtual Messaging Platforms
Employees can also type in their ins and outs on messaging tools like WhatsApp,Messenger or Viber. Here, HR personnel and managers can track the employees position as well, if GPS is turned on.
Elements of Proper Attendance Management
Attendance management is not merely tracking the in-time and out-time of an employee. There are various other aspects to consider for a proper attendance management system. Let’s take a look at them in detail.
🧿 Payroll integration
The attendance system should provide accurate and timely data for wage or salary calculation. Authorized HR personnel should have the employee reports and attendance data at hand before calculating the remunerations. In the case of wages, the data should be ready hourly, daily, or weekly. For monthly salaries, the data should reach HR by the last day of the month.
🧿 Proper Monitoring of Employee Ins & Outs
Your attendance management process should be able to detect employee ins and outs on time and accurately. There will be cases of movement outside office premises for official duty. Those should NOT be mixed with unauthorized movement during office hours.
Also, the attendance system administrators need to ensure that employees leaving the premises due to emergencies are not deprived of their rights, as per company policies.
🧿 Leave Management
Though entitlement to leave varies depending on territories and laws, like the FMLA, employees entitled to leave should get it. The attendance manager (or authorized personnel) must track the time off of employees as either paid, unpaid, or unauthorized.
🧿 Absence Management
A critical aspect of attendance management is ensuring the tracking of unauthorized leaves or absences. This situation is a direct misconduct that can be a ground for disciplinary action or dismissal.
🧿 Flexibility of Time Management
There are times when employees may need to work less or more hours; work from home, or work from another location other than office or home. In such cases, attendance management systems should be able to track the employees’ whereabouts and provide reports accordingly.
🧿 Scalability with Business
Your attendance system must be aligned with your organization’s direction and objectives. If your business is growing fast but attendance systems lag, then it’s a loss for your company. There should be an alignment between the progress of your business and your HR activities, including attendance management.
🧿 Improved Automation
If your business uses an automated system, the attendance management system should be upgraded and use the latest technology.
With so many AI tools for HR functions available in the market and rapidly emerging automated solutions, accuracy, speed, and data should be elements of the system.
🧿 User-friendly report generation
Finally, the reports generated from your systems should be timely, user-friendly, and accurate. If possible, visual presentation through graphs and charts should be integrated into the reports.
Benefits of Attendance Management in HR
So, what are the benefits of attendance management in HR, for both employers and employees? Let’s see 6️⃣ major benefits:
✅ Smoother Workflow Management:
A well-developed, reliable, and robust attendance management system ensures accurate tracking of arrivals, departures, absences, and overtime. This helps organizations to stay compliant with HR laws of the land and company COC or Employee Handbook. This eventually helps in creating smoother workflows and minimizes lag times.
✅ Improved Productivity:
A well-maintained attendance system encourages employees to be punctual and productive. The system works as an instrument for discipline, ensuring work is carried out timely and identifying defaulters.
✅ Real-time Data:
Centralized and effective attendance management in HR facilitates the smooth flow of data from various points. Whether it’s an online system, cloud-based system, or even mere messaging on WhatsApp, a robust attendance system shows instant, real-time data to track employee whereabouts.
✅ Employees’ Access to Information:
With digital and online attendance systems, employees can also view their ins and outs. This enables them to track their status in regards to attendance. Also, HR personnel can show employees attendance reports to help them identify gaps in their punctuality or working hour issues.
✅ Organizational Discipline:
This is very obvious. If HR can maintain a robust and reliable attendance management system, organization discipline will improve manifolds.
✅ KPI for Performance Appraisal:
Usually, HR Departments allot points for attendance in annual employee appraisals. This is a basic parameter to evaluate employee discipline. Thus, an effective attendance system facilitates attendance information to HR personnel, helping them assess the attendance gaps of employees.
Challenges of Attendance Management
However, there are obstacles and challenges when implementing attendance management. Major problems HR personnel face in this regard are:
⚠️ Budget:
The cost of installing an attendance system or carrying out attendance management may be more than the value created. If the company does not have the finances to hire, set up, or run an attendance system, especially software-based, then it becomes difficult to maintain proper attendance.
⚠️ Unclear Organizational or Team Goals:
If there is no sync in the team or team goals are all over the place, employees will be demotivated and demoralized. In such cases, it becomes a bit difficult to maintain attendance. Also, if employees don’t know what to expect, managing attendance becomes hard.
⚠️ Demotivated Employees:
If there are demotivated employees in the team, you cannot expect them to give their best. And the demotivated employees may not even show up in the office.
⚠️ Employee Resistance to Change:
As per McKinsey, 70% of change programs fail because of employee resistance. Thus, when there is a new attendance tracking system getting installed or there is a system upgrade, rigidity can creep in among the organizational members. The change effort may get halted.
⚠️ Poor Communications:
Unless the HR personnel, or those tasked with onboarding new hires, clearly communicate the attendance policies of the organization at onboarding, employees will be confused. This lack of communication would create confusion and deviance from regulation.
⚠️ Adaptability:
Even if employees accept and learn attendance management systems, they may not be able to adapt them unless there is a transfer of training on the job. This will only increase confusion and frustration.
⚠️ Smooth Maintenance:
Maintaining attendance throughout the organization consistently is not easy. As HR personnel, you may face conflicts with employees who do not abide by attendance policies.
⚠️ Information or Data Security:
As we become more automated in our HR processes, data privacy and security are becoming more concerning. With potential leakage of information or unethical hacking of data, attendance management becomes a complex process.
⚠️ Undisciplined Team Members:
A robust and effective recruitment process is as important as managing an employee on the job. If the team suffers from a late-comer recruit, then this ‘bad recruitment’ decision may create complications in attendance management.
How to Improve Attendance
If there are challenges, there are remedies as well. Some proactive strategies you can take to tackle attendance management in HR are:
🟩 Setting Clear Goals ➡️ Having clear vision, mission, strategies and developing a COC aligned with the goals of the company.
🟩 Unbiased Recruitment ➡️ Favoritism or nepotism should be checked and uprooted from the onset.
🟩 Fair Performance Evaluations ➡️ Performance appraisals should be fair and accurate.
🟩 Conveying Expectations During Onboarding ➡️ New recruits should know the company rules, regulations, and policies during onboarding to avoid any conflict with attendance management.
🟩 Enhancing Employee Engagement ➡️ The workplace environment and culture should engage all employees.
🟩 Improving HR Communications ➡️ Authorized HR personnel must be clear and elaborative in their communications.
🟩 Ensuring Proper Health Of Employees ➡️ Focus on designing employee wellness programs and employee assistance programs (EAP).
To Sum Up
Attendance Management in HR is a make-or-break factor for organizational productivity and performance. Proper attendance administration ensures employees are coming and leaving on time; unwanted time-offs are minimized; workflows are running smoothly, good performers are satisfied, and management is happy. All these feed into a successfully functioning organization
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