Author Archives: tensor_tandauk

1. Avoid time theft!

   8th November 2019 3:07 pm Leave a Comment

   Time theft is the unethical practise of not working during paid work time, and thus receiving money for doing nothing. For example, clocking in for somebody else, or takin a longer lunch than you are permitted. 

   It is widespread across virtually all industries.

    

   Many of the time theft offences can seem petty and minor. Most managers would protest a 90-minute lunch instead of an hour, but what difference does being 5 minutes late make, anyway?

    

   An employee paid the National Living Wage would cost you approximately 68p (£0.68) in pay awarded for not working for 5 minutes. Multiply this up by the  number of employees you have, or by how much longer than 5 minutes they are absent, and you have a larger number than you might have expected. 

    

   What’s more it is all too easy to imagine employee complacency spreading (because what does 5 minutes matter? Nobody has said anything). Soon they’re coming in 5 minutes late on Monday mornings and leaving 5 minutes early on Fridays. 

    

   Their time theft just doubled!

    

   Hopefully, this has helped you to better understand the implications of time theft on your business. 

    

   Time theft is not only a monetary wasting issue, it can also become a morale issue. To stop it from happening, you need a happy, engaged workforce who do not feel trapped by draconian timing policies. 

    

   It is also helpful to invest in a method of time monitoring which cannot easily be falsified or swapped between employees. 

    

   Time and Attendance Southern offers a biometric clocking terminal with clocking options of varying security, up to 3-factor authentication of smartcard, PIN and biometrics. The biometrics offered are a hand scanner or a fingerprint scanner. 

    

   The hand scanner terminal captures an image of the hand each time the employee punches. The hand’s size and the shape are used to verify their identity with unparalleled accuracy. No finger or palm prints are utilized. 

    

   The biometric fingerprint reader is designed to give absolute peace of mind that the correct person was present when scanning. Once registered on the fingerprint scanner, the image of the patterns usually found on the fingertip is converted into a code through a secure algorithm, which is then stored on the system database for future comparison and authentication. 

    

   To learn more about our secure and affordable biometric time and attendance systems, please give our dedicated team a ring and they will be happy to help you with any queries.

2. Southern England roughly on par with national flexible working levels

   11th October 2019 10:31 am Leave a Comment

   Flexible working has been demonstrated to have great effects on worker productivity, and yet many businesses still do not make use of this way of working because they do not understand it, or are worried about employees taking advantage. 

   Organisations are legally required to consider requests for flexible working from employees who have been employed for at least 26 weeks. There are many different types of flexible working, including flexitime, job sharing, reduced hours, compressed hours, working from home and working in term-time. 

    

   According to the CIPD, the south of England, which combines the south-east and south-west regions, is “on par with the UK average on the availability of compressed hours”, and “just above average for use and availability of working from home.” The south-east has less availability of compressed hours than the south-west, while the south-west has 9% less availability of working from home as a flexible working option.

    

   The south of England is about the national average for workers reporting that they can’t fulfil external commitments due to work pressures. Allowing flexible working here would clearly motivate the staff who are currently struggling to meet other commitments. 

    

   ________________

    

    

   There are many ways to manage staff who don’t work in the same building or area, or to the same timescale.

    

   Studies have shown that many Scottish bosses aren’t taking advantage of the flexible working phenomenon – which can improve morale and productivity immensely – because they are too concerned about workers slacking off. 

    

   Here at Time and Attendance Scotland, we can help get rid of that paranoia. Our Self Service Module (SSM) is an addition to our overall software package, and it is ideal for remote workers and those with flexible working hours. It is a browser or mobile phone-based app that workers can use to clock in and clock out, and request or cancel holiday. 

    

   If it is used on a mobile phone, then the GPS location is sent to the central time and attendance system as well. This allows supervisors and managers to check that the employee is in the expected location. If the employees go into an area of bad signal, the mobile app can cache the information onto the phone and transfer it as soon as connectivity is restored. 

    

   A record of their clock-ins and outs can be exported or printed if the company would like a copy in those formats, but the supervisor has full access to all the employees’ data on the app anyway, and can run reports if they need to. 

    

3. EU rules to regulate attendance monitoring

   4th September 2019 1:53 pm Leave a Comment

   The European Court of Justice has ruled that EU member states must ensure their employers set up:

    

   “an objective, reliable and accessible system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured.”

    

   (from paragraph 60 of the provisional judgement, found here).

    

   Without clear time and attendance data, it is very difficult for employees to prove whether or not they are being forced to work hours which would violate EU health and safety directives such as:

    

   ‘Member States shall take the measures necessary to ensure that every worker is entitled to a minimum daily rest period of 11 consecutive hours per 24-hour period’

    

   and

    

   ‘Member States shall take the measures necessary to ensure that, per each seven-day period, every worker is entitled to a minimum uninterrupted rest period of 24 hours plus the 11 hours’ daily rest referred to in Article 3.’

    

   (from the Directive 89/391/EEC – OSH "Framework Directive", found here)

    

   Many companies will be unhappy with this ruling. Here are a few objections:
   

    

   • My company is tiny. Do I still need this? How can I afford this?

    

   Yes, all companies who employ staff, no matter what the size, will need to pay heed to this announcement.

    

   Most time and attendance companies are very familiar with the needs of small and micro-businesses, and can tailor their programmes and pricing accordingly. There are many different types of systems available, including mobile-based.

    

   Our Win.TA.NET – Start Edition provides time and attendance management for any company with up to 50 employees.

    

   • My staff can use phone/email records to prove when they were working – shouldn’t this count instead?

    

   A time and attendance system is faster, more accurate and more reliable than trying to cobble together a patchwork of different types of records to prove your case. Clock in at the start, clock out when you’re done. Quick and easy.

    

   With our flagship Win.TA system, the clocking data is immediately available on the system for exporting or reporting.

    

   • All/some of my staff work remotely. How does this fit with time and attendance requirements?

    

   Certain industries, such as sales, healthcare and transportation will be very concerned about this point. Worry not; as mentioned above, many time and attendance companies have made provisions for remote workers in their products.

    

   For example, our Self Service Module (SSM) allows employees to clock in and out using their browser, along with many other functions, and themobile app even includes GPS in the data collected. This enables your employees to accurately clock-in wherever they are.

    

   • My staff have salaries and work at desks. Why do I need to monitor their working time so closely?

    

   It is a common misconception that clocking in and out is only necessary for employees who are paid by the hour, or who work in blue-collar industries which reply on physical production.

    

   The ECJ considers it necessary as a health and safety matter, to ensure that adequate rest is being taken. Obviously, that is still very important for office workers.

    

   There are also many other ways in which all office environments can make use of attendance data.

    

   For example, tracking productivity. HR departments can also find having easy access to computerised attendance data very helpful for absence management.

    

   • The UK is likely to be leaving the EU. Does this still apply to me as a British business owner?

    

   Whether this will apply to UK workers remains to be seen.

    

   Any UK company which has employees working in an EU country will need to comply with the working time measurement requirements for those workers.

    

   Our time and attendance system can be purchased with multiple different language packs installed, enabling you to unambiguously communicate clocking requirements and processes to your employees in their native language.

    

   Please get in touch with us for further details about this, or any point regarding time and attendance systems covered in this article.

4. Don’t underestimate remote working

   27th August 2019 2:58 pm Leave a Comment

    More and more workplaces are needing to grapple with the additional needs of remote workers, as that option becomes steadily more popular. Over the last ten years, the number of UK workers moving into remote working positions has increased by almost 250,000 according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS). 

    

   This has prompted a shift in the way that many employers view the practise of remote working. It has the potential to reduce the costs of running an office building, allows you to recruit from a wider pool of employees and can lead to higher staff morale. 

    

   However, many employers are still worried that the productivity of remote workers will suffer from lack of direct monitoring. Not only does technology today allow managers to watch their remote employees through webcams if they so wish, but this opinion demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of remote working. 

    

   The practise is not simply an excuse to be at home. It is a move to a different workplace, and if an employee has properly planned for that shift, there should be no drop in productivity. An inflexible employer who assumes that all remote workers are looking for an excuse to shirk work is missing out on a valuable rise in employee motivation. 

    

   As mentioned above, technology is essential for productive remote working. At minimum, workers need a reliable, real-time way to communicate with their office-based coworkers, and access to any files necessary. There are many different ways for employers to track productivity if they wish to, ranging from project management software like Trello to web-cam apps for direct check-ins.

    

   Our time and attendance system can help you verify your employees’ working times, thanks to our Self Service Module. This browser or mobile-app based software allows employees to clock in and out, and also to sign themselves on and off jobs. The mobile version also collects GPS information, so that whereabouts can be confirmed. 

    

   This information is sent to the central system, so that you can run reports on it and otherwise make use of it. If employees are in areas of low signal, the data will queue to be submitted later.

5. Holiday booking problems can be rectified with technology

   20th August 2019 1:13 pm Leave a Comment

    With the summer holiday season well and truly approaching, your company might already have fallen foul of the many problems caused by out-of-date and inefficient holiday booking procedures.

    

   A common problem from inexperienced companies without a specialised HR and accounts system is problems working out what the holiday entitlement is for their employees.

    

   The statutory minimum entitlement for annual leave, except for staff who work irregular hours, is 5.6 weeks. This is calculated using their usual working week, so for example someone working 5 days a week needs to be allotted at least 28 days. A part-time employee who works 3 days a week will need at least 16.8 days of holiday.

    

   Even if your department is armed with this information, it is all too easy for a typo to result in an incorrect annual leave allotment, while a computer system will sort this automatically.

    

   You may well wish to give employees more than the statutory minimum; for example, if you wish to reward loyalty with yearly increases in entitlement. (It is widely considered unwise to give extra holiday days to one or two employees without a very clear transparent structure for how all employees can similarly earn more days.)

    

   Software can come in handy here to automatically update employees’ records with their new extra day. Otherwise, there is a clear risk of the extra day getting overlooked thanks to administrative burdens and backlogs until the employee complains.

    

   Another common holiday booking issue is when more than one employee wants to take the same day off. Usually the counter for this is to operate a first-come, first-served policy, but this can cause friction in situations where holiday requests aren’t instantly applied to a centralised system.

    

   Imagine this scenario:

    

   One employee tells a manager about a specific day they would like to take as annual leave and the manager make a note of it somewhere to add it to the system when they next have time. This then gets forgotten about in the daily hurry of work.

    

   Two days later, another employee asks for the same holiday day, this time while the manager is on their computer and has a spare five minutes. The manager checks the central system – ‘Oh, that looks fine, I’ll put that on for you’.

    

   The first employee would be understandably furious.

    

   Having an automatic holiday requests/approval system will remove the possibility of situations like this from ever happening.

    

   To make your holiday procedure stress-free, you need the annual leave features of our time and attendance system. Please do get in touch for prices or with any questions you  might have!

6. 5 modern uses for biometrics

   8th August 2019 4:11 pm Leave a Comment

   Biometrics are measurements and/or calculations of the human body, used to identify people.

   There are many different types of biometrics, as there are many parts of the human body which can uniquely identify you.

    

   • Security

   This is the usage that most people immediately associate with biometrics, thanks to its constant appearance in films. Use of biometrics in security bars access to certain areas to all who don’t have their biometrics registered on the system.

    

   In films, the scanner is often fooled by the villain or anti-hero gorily cutting off relevant body parts from someone with that registered access. Outside of the world of films, this sort of shenanigans would likely to be foiled by inbuilt liveness detection.

    

   The most common security biometric measurement is fingerprints or facial recognition.

    

   • Time and attendance

   Any workplace needs a way to keep track of employees’ attendance, particularly since the European Court of Justice has ruled that companies need “an objective, reliable and accessible system” to measure daily time worked.

    

   A biometric attendance system is the perfect way to ensure this ruling is followed. Fingerprint scanners are most commonly used for this purpose, though some companies use facial recognition.

    

   As well ensuring accurate measurements, biometric attendance stops employees from committing wage theft. With a non-biometric method of measuring attendance, such as swipe cards or a paper register, employees can make co-workers sign in for them fraudulently. With biometrics, employers can be confident that the person clocking in is who they are supposed to be.

    

   • Law enforcement

   The police force has used fingerprints to help them solve crimes since the early 20th century. Fingerprint matching techniques have increased in accuracy in leaps and bounds, including not only matching fingerprints from people brought to the station, but accuracy of latent fingerprints left at a crime scene.  

    

   In modern times, police forces also use facial recognition biometrics, both in order to catch known criminals and in order to prevent crime occurring, by comparing passers-by to a watch-list.

    

   • Travelling

   Biometrics are becoming the norm in many airports across the globe, as part of a drive to make passengers’ journeys more seamless. This generally takes the form of facial recognition at passport control, when passengers insert their passports and have their faces scanned to see if the match is acceptable. This is considerably faster than officer-controlled checking.

    

   • Banking

   Biometrics are fast becoming a vital step in banks’ anti-fraud arsenal; everything from setting up voice recognition when you telephone the bank, so that they can hear someone pretending to be you, up to the more complex ‘behavioural biometrics’.

   This is a multi-factor form of identification, where software learns everything from your usual shopping habits to the way that you move your mouse or type on a keyboard or scroll and tap on a phone.

    

   ______________

    

    

   If you’d like to find out more about the biometric time and attendance systems supplied by Time and Attendance Southern, just contact our dedicated product team or Book a Demo. Our representatives will be more than happy to answer any questions or queries you might have.

7. Accurate monitoring of sickness absences is vital in any workplace

   26th July 2019 12:35 pm Leave a Comment

   Accurate monitoring of sickness absences is vital in any workplace. This means something more trackable than a phone-call, or an email to their line manager.

   Having reliable data allows employers to recognise any developing patterns, or unbalanced amounts of sickness absences.

   It is important not to immediately jump to negative conclusions if you discover that employees are taking a larger number of sickness absences than you or your organisation consider acceptable.

   There may be many reasons why your employees are taking days off sick, and if you conduct good return to work interviews and have a safe environment, you and your employee may be able to work together to reduce any problem absences and increase their productivity and happiness in the workplace.

   It is up to you as a business to set the threshold for sickness absences, but the Bradford Index, which is built into our software, can help you to do so by assigning absences values. Frequent shorter absences accumulate a high score than one longer absence, rather than scoring everything day-by-day and penalising those on long-term sick leave.

   In 2017, UK government statistics showed that employees took the equivalent of just over 4 days off. The sickness absence rate (the proportion of working hours taken as sickness absence) for the private sector was 1.7% and 2.6% for the public sector (public sector health workers had the highest rates at 3.3%.)

   Businesses can give negative reinforcement for sick days, such as not having company sick pay, or offer positive incentives such as extra holiday time or other perks. These strategies can be effective but you should pay attention that you don’t start suffering from presenteeism, which is when people turn up for work even when they shouldn’t, and is associated with high employee stress levels and low productivity. This is more difficult for employers to detect than absences.

   Obviously, no business can eradicate sickness absences, nor, as the linked information on presenteeism shows, should you want to! But with reliable data, honest communication with employees and a fair sickness policy, you can minimise the damage sickness absences do to your business. 

8. Digital marketing agency moves premises in order to expand

   21st June 2019 10:14 am Leave a Comment

   DotLabel, a digital marketing agency, has moved to new premises in Basingstoke as part of its expansion plans.

   The company has moved from Southern Cross to Belvedere House in Basing View. It hopes to increase its staffing numbers by a third, including a web developer and an UX designer.

    

   Matt Oxley, co-founder and director of DotLabel, said: "The last 12 months have been incredibly successful for us and we’ve executed some great client projects. This is an encouraging sign that businesses are embracing the need for a digital overhaul.

    

   "We are proud to be creating business applications that staff will actually use, and websites that don’t just look good, but are user friendly and create maximum conversions.

    

   "With our experienced, expanding team, we are looking forward to reaching even more businesses wanting to move in this positive digital direction." 

    

   Source: Insider Media South East

    

   ____________________

    

    

   Moving to new, larger offices is the perfect time to assess your time and attendance system. 

    

   Many office-based companies don’t believe that they need a structured attendance monitoring system. As we say at Time and Attendance Southern, time and attendance system isn’t Big Brother, it just gives you the big picture! 

    

   The European Court of Justice has just ruled that all companies need to measure the duration of time worked every day by their employees. We can provide multiple different language packs, to help you fulfil this requirement if you have employees over on the Continent.

    

   You may not need to know the exact timings of your salaried staff as a boss or a manager, but HR might find a full history of their timings very important if you ask them to put a member of staff on a disciplinary for lateness. Without careful documentation, proving lateness could be difficult.

    

   Many companies still operate on a casual “Just let me know,” attitude, which make it difficult to clearly state how many absences they might have had over a certain time period without laboriously scrolling through texts or emails. 

    

   With our centralised time and attendance system, HR can see everyone’s clocking data for whom they have permission, and quickly and easily export this or format it into reports using our report wizard or advanced report creation settings.

    

   Staff can clock in either using our physical terminals, which work with fingerprints and/or radio-frequency smartcards, or if physical terminals can’t be installed then we can offer an online/app-based clocking in service called the Self-Service Module (SSM). 

    

   For more information, please get in touch today. 

9. Somerset business park ready to open

   14th June 2019 2:45 pm Leave a Comment

   A new Somerset business park is ready to open.

   The Frome Business Park is located on the Marston Trading Estate, and exists thanks to investment by the co-founders of DNA Worldwide Group. The site provides broadband, meeting rooms and a gym, and already has an 88% occupancy rate with 15 tenants agreed. 

    

   DNA Worldwide Group needed new premises due to outgrowing its existing site at Commerce Park.

    

   David Nicholson, who is co-director of both the business park and DNA Worldwide, said: "The process began a few years ago when we were looking around Frome for a larger site and quickly realised there simply wasn’t anything suitable.

    

   "While we needed something suitable for our company, we also wanted to create and build something that would be of use to the wider community.

   "While it has been hard work, it’s turned out better than we could’ve hoped as it means we can stay in Frome. Being able to live and work in one of the best towns in the country means a lot to us and our employees."

    

   Fellow co-director Hannah Modern said: "We’ve definitely had some challenging times, including the removal of sizeable amounts of asbestos from the old site.

    

   "But from the beginning we wanted to offer a space where people wanted to come to work. So the design and the detail of the space is key. That’s why we have invested so heavily in the quality of the finishes and creating a design led space that ultimately supports people who come to work.”

    

   "The end result is that we’ve created a much-needed space for Frome’s business community. An independent assessment has forecast it will provide an annual £15.6m boost to the local economy."

    

   Source: Insider Media South West

    

   __________________

    

    

   A large complex used by many different businesses needs to have a great visitor monitoring system. Nobody wants people wandering into the wrong office, or accidentally interrupting important meetings because their meeting room is right next door to yours. 

    

   Time and Attendance South West offers the Management of Contractors and Visitors Software to help everyone be in the right place at the right time. This network-based application allows you to advance book visitor appointments and pre-book on site contractors. 

    

   These bookings can be made either via the PC based application or a user’s Internet browser. As soon as an appointment is booked, notification emails are sent to both the visitor and their host informing them of the appointment’s date, time and location.

    

   If there is no reception area in your workspace, or if there is not a designated receptionist, we can also offer you the MCVS Unmanned Reception Console, which enables visitors to check themselves in for appointments using a touchscreen. This can send an email directly to the person who will be hosting them. 

    

   If the appointment is for a visitor or contractor who needs to go around alone, MCVS provides a Welfare Check page to set up welfare notification reminders. These reminders (an on screen popup or an email) prompt the host to perform a safety check on the lone worker. 

    

   This means that you are kept up to date and there can be no ambiguity about location. A history of checks performed and acknowledged is also recorded for audit purposes.

10. Portsmouth to get its first The Alchemist after licensing approved

    7th June 2019 9:11 am Leave a Comment

    The cocktail bar and restaurant chain called The Alchemist intends to expand into Portsmouth. 

    The site at at Gunwharf Quays would be their first South Coast premises. 

     

    Manchester law firm Kuits Solicitors demonstrated to Portsmouth Council’s licensing sub-committee that The Alchemist moving into the area would not disrupt the local residents.

     

    As a result of this, the new bar was given permission to open until 12.30am from Sunday to Wednesday and until 1.30am from Thursday to Saturday.

     

    Ingram said: "We produced evidence to show that The Alchemist is an exceptional operation and, contrary to concerns raised by local residents, is a concept and environment which attracts more discerning customers who are looking for a relaxed food and drink experience.

     

    "We’re delighted to be working with The Alchemist team on all of their premises and supporting them with their growth plans as they continue to expand across the country."

     

    Source: Insider Media South East

     

    ________________

     

     

    Most pubs still rely on employees to fill in handwritten timesheets stating their hours worked. Not only does this run the risk of being inaccurate thanks to employees’ forgetfulness, or worse, deliberate attempts to commit wage fraud, but it can also be a massive drain on your office and payroll staff who have to approve and type up all the information.

     

    A workforce management system from Time and Attendance Southern would bring your attendance systems up-to-date and reduce workloads considerably.

     

    For example, managers would no longer need to approve every single timesheet every single week or month, and accounts staff would no longer need to laboriously type up the timesheets to enter them into the payroll system. 

     

    Instead, the information would be gathered in real-time and stored in an easy to use centralised system, where it can be checked by supervisors for validity, exported to payroll systems such as Sagepay, or made into reports using our report wizard and advanced report creating facility.

     

    All the staff would need to do is clock in and out using one of our terminals, with either a smartcard or a biometric measurement (fingers or hands). If a physical clocking terminal is not suitable for your premises (for example if you rent and cannot change the wiring) then we can also offer our online/mobile app Self Service module.