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A Complete Guide On Attendance Management Software For A Hybrid Work Environment

November 24, 2022
By Ganesh Ram
A Complete Guide On Attendance Management Software For A Hybrid Work Environment

Reverting to a full-time office is not something employees are willing to consider, given two years of positive evidence. 62% say hybrid working will decide if they continue or leave their jobs.

In a CISCO global hybrid work study, 2022, conducted two years after WHO declared the pandemic, it was found that workforces worldwide were evolving. The remote and hybrid working culture today is the norm.

This survey of 28,000 full-time employees across 27 markets also revealed that hybrid working today has become routine and will continue to stay in some form or other—long into the future.

 

How does hybrid work affect attendance management and compliance?

And this is where the topic of our discussion today comes into play.

How has attendance planning at work been impacted, and what are organisations doing to facilitate a hybrid attendance management system?

A shift has occurred from office working to working from anywhere and from time bound to whenever you want. This anywhere-and-anytime working style delivers more purpose and increased productivity (at least—for now) for both employees and employers.

Three recent studies published in HBR reveal that hybrid employees are 22% happier, have less stress, and are more focused and more productive than when they were in the office.

Having reached a consensus that hybrid is here to stay—it is time to understand how time and attendance are handled, how it was traditionally managed, how it is being managed now and what solutions are addressing it.

 

Need for an Attendance Management Software

Manual recordkeeping is time-consuming, resource-consuming, and prone to human error. Invariably, it leads to compliance errors, regulatory issues, and a dissatisfied workforce.

Organisations everywhere need a secure tech-based and cloud-enabled solution that allow employees to record their attendance from anywhere and anytime on a handheld device that meets all work policies and working hour needs.

An attendance management system is much more than about tracking attendance. It provides invaluable insights using data on overall workforce management using interactive dashboards, reports, and analysis.

Features like geotagging and geofencing make managing a diverse and hybrid workforce—simple and effective.

With an attendance management platform, hirers can keep a proper record of the time at work and pay the concerned worker a predefined fee as per the verbal or written agreement.

In summary, attendance management keeps track of attendance and figures out how productive an employee is at work. And finally, this system connects with the compensation system rewarding employees for work completed, including the computation of incentives and bonuses.

 

Must-have features in an ideal attendance management software

Having understood what an attendance management system is and why it is needed for all organisations— we should discuss the potential outcomes of a robust attendance management system and how it provides real value to every employer.

 

  1. Accuracy

    The ideal attendance management software is accurate and provides consistent and timely information to employees and employers.

    Management’s ability to effectively monitor output and productivity leads to more meaningful strategic discussions on company growth, revenue, and top line.

  2. Transparency

    Often employees are disgruntled when receiving erroneous pay slips or delayed payments due to holidays and bank dealings—especially when working remotely or in a hybrid environment. In a manual system, logs are not reconciled on time leading to delays in pay-outs.

    Over time, morale gets affected, leading to mistrust, affecting loyalty and eventually profits.

    A robust attendance management software system eliminates this, allows for complete transparency, and helps effectively communicate with employees. With secure and timely payments, employees can focus on what they do best – delivering quality products and improved services to their organization and customers.

  3. Shift Planning

    With added complexities and challenges of hybrid working—in the absence of an attendance management system, planning and implementing shifts becomes a complex exercise.

    Computations around days and times, scheduling tasks and accounting for employees working remotely or in hybrid environments requires multiple tweaks to the system. Conducting these exercises manually is something no organisation can afford to do.

    A tailor-made attendance management system can quickly adapt to scenarios surrounding work from home and hybrid across countries. The savings on costs, resources and productivity are easily measurable while managing inconsistencies.  And lastly — with predefined allowance, overtime and related provisions, employees receive actual error-free and input-related reports and pay slips.

  4. Attendance Processing

    All businesses have different human resource policies on pay, leave, compliance, benefits, and pensions which are further tailor-made based on departments.

    Without an advanced automated attendance management system—there are high chances of missing benefits payment or failing at compliance.

    The system ensures compliance and safeguards against audit issues while adhering to all regulatory frameworks—without any extra effort. And most importantly, the system allows clear and transparent communication with employees on all aspects related to the processing of attendance.

    For streamlining hybrid work management—time trackers and digital check-in and check-out with geofencing technology can be installed to track how employees invest their time at work, when they take breaks, late arrival, overtime, and so on.

  5. Integration with Payroll and other HRM software

    Leave and attendance management have a cascading effect on the entire gamut of HR operations.

    Simply put, mismanaging leave and attendance directly impacts employee engagement leading to productivity loss. Hence, seamless integration of leave management with existing HR tools including payroll is a must-have for an organization.

  6. Overtime Registers

    Advanced attendance management solutions can send reminder alerts to employees when they go idle, and if no response is received—the system can pause the timer indicating break time.

    A do-it-yourself employee portal shows the number of hours at work in real-time, listing overtime work and suggested approaches to dealing with downtime—if any.

  7. Handling exceptions and violations

    Once attendance is processed, the system needs to assess employee compliance with HR policies and guidelines. And should there be any violations like habitual late arrival, regular early punch-out, absence from work without approval, or a shortfall in the number of hours worked—corrective actions can be made.

    These include interventions by managers, investigating the causes to assess if those are genuine within a pre-stipulated time. With manual systems, such exceptions and violations go unnoticed or missed completely—when delayed beyond a month.

  8. Regularization

    Employees often face issues around regularization when working outside the office, on out-of-town duty or related to approved emergencies. At other times hardware or software failures take place. Such problems can lead to dissatisfaction amongst employees who may be considered absent from work or erroneously accused of being less committed at work. The right attendance management system captures such instances beforehand and records such anomalies.

  9. Mobile-friendly

    In today’s work environment, mobile friendliness is a must-have feature, especially as many employees may not have access to a laptop/computer at all times.

    Furthermore, to enable additional features like touchless and biometric authentication, being mobile-ready is 100% essential.

  10. Reporting and Analytics

    With the right attendance management system in place – Real-time information on employee workday, productivity, total hours on individual projects, etc. used by remote and hybrid workers—is accessible by HR leaders.

    This data helps management find and identify best practices to increase productivity and address issues before they happen.

    At the employee level, with access to their dedicated board—they can understand how they are delivering at work and assess their productivity compared to co-workers, thus giving rise to healthy competition amongst the ranks.

  11. Customer Support

    Dedicated help desk for employees and a 24/7 AI-enabled chatbot to answer most queries without human intervention. Failing this, a ticket support system should be provided by the attendance management system.

    Once the system is deployed organisationally—it releases HR from repetitive admin queries that today take almost all of HR’s time.

 

Conclusion

With immediate payoffs, the right attendance management solution positively impacts an organization from day one.

It helps reduce time and attendance management costs, improves productivity from top-to-bottom, and improves employee engagement. At the same time, it leads to an increase in the overall well-being of an employee with an increase in quality family time, better off-time management, and error-free and transparent pay-related concerns.

 

Check out PeopleStrong

An advanced attendance management system is necessary for any organization in Indonesia that plans to invest in employee experience and productivity. However, besides focusing on the technology aspect, the usability and flexibility of the platform need to be considered.

PeopleStrong is a modern workforce management solution with a remote, hybrid, dynamic, flexible, configurable system for the modern workforce.

Top organizations across Asia-Pacific such as AirAsia, Hyundai, Maersk, Health Insurance, and more already use PeopleStrong to manage leave and attendance for a hybrid workforce,

Now, manage your global workforce with a sole source of truth — on the go while adhering to compliances and eliminating calculation errors.

 

Punch-in to modern workforce management with PeopleStrong

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