Employee Time Tracking: Expectations Versus Reality
The old-school way of doing things is no longer the best when it comes to time tracking. Your expectations of your employees compared to the reality of what happens with time tracking are often two different things. Let’s look at some of the expectations of time tracking versus the reality and then discuss how to improve the differences.
Time Is Accurately Tracked
You undoubtedly have great employees who have earned your trust. Unfortunately, after years of business, one or two of them are bound to come along and take advantage of that trust when it comes to tracking time.
Things such as punching in for a friend (“buddy punching”), which is easily done with timecard methods, results in thousands of dollars lost when someone isn’t truly working the hours their time tracking card says they are.
Expectation: employees honestly track time.
Reality: a dishonest employee lies occasionally when tracking time.
If It Isn’t Broken, Don’t Fix It
That phrase “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” is all well and good—unless something is indeed broken. It’s possible your current time-tracking system may no longer be serving you well. If your company’s time tracking system relies on any manual entries and is not automated, it’s not tracking as efficiently as it should.
It’s hard to change the old ways once we’re used to them. Change is complicated and time-consuming. Still, in the end, the time and money saved thanks to an automated time tracking system is well worth it.
Expectation: the company has used this method for years, so there’s no need to change.
Reality: Technology has greatly improved time tracking.
We Don’t Have Hourly Wage Employees
Many companies question why they need to time-track salaried employees. In this area of time tracking, it benefits both the employee and the company. Salaried employees have a bad habit of putting in way more than 40 hours. Let your employees know you care by accurately tracking hours and encouraging them not to work overtime.
On the other hand, some salaried employees may not pull their weight if they know no one will ever know. It’s unfair for two employees to make the same salary while one honestly works a full day and the other does not.
Expectation: salaried employees will accurately track time.
Reality: salaried employees need accountability like everyone else.
Looking at your own company, what do you think of the expectations of time tracking versus the reality of it? Does it sound familiar, or are there areas you never thought of? With the technology available to make a business owner’s life easier, take advantage of automated time tracking for the sake of your employees, your business, and the future of your company.
TimeTrakGO has everything you need in our timecard tracking software. Contact us today, and we’ll go over the benefits of automated time tracking and how it improves your company.