As a manager, you are responsible for managing teams and their schedules. The inability to properly track employee absences can result in more labor costs. In some industries like manufacturing, construction, and mining, it is challenging to track absentees when you are not aware if they are present onsite or not.
These are some reasons your company needs a solid strategy to track team member absences. In this article, we will cover some tips on how to track employee absences.
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What is employee absence tracking?
Employee absence tracking is what it sounds like, a way to track absences and late arrivals of workers at work. It is an essential aspect of workforce management to ensure that workers adhere to the attendance policy. Employee absence tracking is also necessary for controlling overtime and shift scheduling issues.
Modern-day absence tracking is not manual, and automated tools are available that will help you to better track your employees, such as Truein. But we will discuss employee absence tracking tools in a while; before that, we will explore why your company must ensure effective absence tracking.
Why is tracking employee absences important?
For workforce management, you must regularly track your employees’ time, attendance, and absences. For a strong work culture, your company must have clear guidelines about absenteeism. Also, there must be open communication channels between workers, supervisors, and managers.
Here are some essential reasons why you must track absenteeism in the workplace.
1. Helps to manage payroll and pay employees accurately
Absenteeism is directly associated with payroll. If you are not accurately tracking employee absences, you risk paying employees for hours they have not worked. Accurate pay is vital for both the company and the employees. All employees must receive a fair wage for the work they do.
For companies, it implies that there will be extra labor costs and overtime compensation. A resilient attendance tracking system is how you can efficiently track employee absences. Choose an employee absence tracking system that integrates with the organization’s payroll software for calculating employee salaries.
2. The total attendance taken is transparent for both employees and employers
When you have the correct attendance data, you can maintain employee transparency. There is no hidden information or confusion regarding the pay received or action taken. Automated employee absence tracking provides complete data about the leaves taken, paid time off left, and any attendance penalty points given to workers.
The same data is visible to employees too. This gives them a feeling of being in control of managing their time off. When you make the attendance data transparent, workers can balance their work and life and make up for any lapses when required.
3. You can easily schedule shifts if the employee is not available
Shift schedule is badly affected if there is frequent workforce absenteeism. When you properly track employee absences, you can avoid last-minute changes to the shifts. It gives you enough time to look for a replacement and arrange for other employees to fill in the gaps.
Properly planning shift schedules is how you can maintain the work balance and ensure no worker is overworked or burned out. According to the National Safety Council, overworked workers are the most susceptible to accidents. Shifts must allow employees to work without compromising their physical or mental health.
In most cases, overexertion is a leading cause of work-related injuries in companies. Now that you understand how important it is to track employee absences let’s find out the best ways.
How to track employee absences
1. A centralized telephone number where employees call and inform about their absence
By setting up a centralized phone number for reporting absences, you can direct all calls to one place. This will save supervisors and managers from getting texts and calls throughout the day and reduce productivity. While a straightforward solution is how to track employee absences, a central phone line will still require HR to go through the calls.
The call records can be filled quickly if you have a large workforce with hundreds or thousands of employees. No matter how automated the system is, in the end, a human has to verify the calls. It’s time-consuming, costly, and not sustainable for more than a few dozen employees.
2. Using messaging to inform about leaves
A more approachable communication medium is texting about the leaves to inform supervisors or managers on popular apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. The problem with this solution is how every worker will be skilled enough to use messaging apps on their phones.
Also, not everyone will be comfortable using or downloading apps mandated by the employer. For the managers, keeping track of the messages and updating the shift schedule rooster will be tedious. Furthermore, no paper trail will spell trouble for record keeping and tracking employee absences.
3. Using attendance management software
For any business, irrespective of its industry or size, attendance management software is the best solution to track absenteeism in the workplace.
Truein is a hardwareless employee time and attendance tracking software. It is a cloud-based attendance system that can be deployed on workers’ smartphones allowing them to request leave online. The managers are notified about the request and who can approve or reject it.
Truein offers complete attendance data management, including leave management, overtime, paid time off, and holidays. You can also create and share attendance policy within the Truein dashboard. It also offers geofencing and GPS targeting to ensure that workers are present when they record their attendance at the assigned spot.
Conclusion
If you want your business to run smoothly, you cannot rely on manual methods to track employee absences. Don’t spend time wondering how to track absenteeism in the workplace; deploy a reliable and cloud-based attendance management software like Truein to easily manage employee time and attendance.
