Benefits of a Time and Attendance Management System
Implementing time management solutions on a company level is a difficult task – employees resent the extra ‘hassle’ and replacing old habits is harder than replacing software or paper-based timekeeping methods. In this article, you will learn two things – the benefits of using a time and attendance management solution at your workplace and how to use a modified version of a company-level time and attendance management system for your personal life.
What is Time and Attendance Management?
It is the monitoring of employee work hours for the entire organization and the calculation of various important figures (such as accrued benefits) that are derived from employee work hours.
Think of a time sheet or the modern employee card-based attendance system found in most organizations. The objective is to determine, without much hassle and time wastage, the attendance and time spent at work by each employee.
Benefits of such a System
The benefits of a time and attendance management system are more visible to employers and higher level management than they are to employees. For the upper management, such a system allows them to monitor employee performance automatically – and thus allow them to evaluate if there are any laggards in the system. It also keeps employees in check by forcing them to be accountable for their absences – once again, better for the business than for the employee himself.
Today’s automated systems offer another benefit – the ability to calculate valuable data about employee performance both on an individual level (how hard does a particular employee work and how much should he be rewarded?) and on an organizational level (what days bring in most absences? Are people staying back to finish up on projects or leaving as quickly as possible?). Access to this information allows the ‘upper management’ to make informed decisions to improve employee performance and productivity on a major scale.
A time and attendance management system can also be used as a direct part of employee review.
How to Use a Time and Attendance Management System for Yourself
A big part of time management is to ensure that you not only set personal goals but that you work towards achieving them bit by bit every day. With that in mind, here are a few ideas to use this organization-level strategy to improve your own time management skills:
– Select your top 3 personal goals for the next year and set monthly and weekly deadlines for them.
– Set aside a specific, unchanging amount of time every day to work on your top 3 goals.
– Log your efforts daily – what time you started work on your goals, what time you stopped, and whether you actually worked that day or not. Maintain this logging process for at least a month. If you miss a day or have to cut short on a particular day, make sure you write down your reasons why. This is very important for the next step.
– At the end of the month, review your logs. Are you skipping your personal time? Are you not giving enough time to your personal goals? With these logs, you will know exactly when you took time away from your personal goals and why you did so.
– Review the success of your projects and whether you have been meeting your deadlines or not. Do you need more time, or are you being distracted by unnecessary, unimportant tasks?
Use the above review process as a self-monitoring time and attendance management system. It will not only help you take a regular pulse on your progress regarding your personal goals but will also act as motivation to improve your time management habits even more.
