Consistent and reliable attendance is an essential requirement for all employees irrespective of their positions in the organization. Regardless of the industry, employees are expected to be dependable and punctual to meet the requirements of their respective departments. If the employees are tardy or absent, services and work get hampered and adds additional pressure to the project and other colleagues as well. One should also understand that this extra burden can affect the quality of the deliverables. Consequently, attendance becomes an important factor in evaluating the performance of an individual and also affects the paycheck.
How irregular time keeping can cause havoc?
Absence due to illness, injury or other reasons can become exceptionally adverse and affects the project and the reputation of the company. It can be a cause of concern even if the lowest grade of employee chooses not to show up. It has been observed that employees who tend to be regularly absent, choose to combine leaves with holidays, weekends and scheduled off days. Others request for early leaves, emergency leave requests, fraudulent use of work flexibility and persistent tardiness. Businesses globally have been losing millions of dollars due to fraudulent absence of employees. As per reports, only 1/3rd of these lost working days due to illness are genuine. According to a report by Kronos Inc, offices in the United States witness unplanned absence costing the company 5.9% loss on its payroll.
Attendance is more of a work ethic and only the reasonable ones will reach their desks on time, complete their daily tasks, remain on the desk for the entire working day and use limited leaves. However, all of this needs to be properly administered and controlled. Attendance is not only related to completing the work in time but also affects the paycheck and other factors of employment such as the employee’s rating. Since record keeping can be verified and quantified, checking employee attendance is something that every organization does. Dealing with increasing absence extends to HR management policies, understanding the causes and more. A talented employee might not be fit for a workplace if he/she has a tendency to remain absent frequently. On the other hand an average employee who shows up on his desk everyday and is available at all times is more of an asset to a company than a skilled employee who chooses to take frequent unplanned leaves.
The need for good attendance systems
Latest technologies in the market have helped offices in attendance keeping and time tracking. Biometric record keeping, punch cards and other variants of access control systems help in authorization and identification of employees. Further, the system will record the exact swipe in and swipe out time of an employee at the workplace. A thorough report gets automatically generated for every employee at the end of the month (duration can also be programmed otherwise) providing the HR team with a proper database to track the employee’s presence. Biometric tracking systems for instance can save more than 7% of the gross payroll and eliminate time theft, buddy punching, tailgating and other security violations.
Record keeping is highly important for every workplace. Airports, hotels, government offices, factories, hospitals etc run on manpower and this makes employee attendance a crucial factor to their quality of performance. Regular attendance will also ensure that each and every employee of the organization is updated with the latest skills required to accomplish their tasks.
