High performers on a team won’t appear overnight. While they already have great skills and experience, HR managers still have to help them maintain that high level and encourage their personal development.
Here’s a little insight into the best practices of exploiting the data from time and attendance systems HR managers can turn to their advantage.
1. Managing proactively
Proactive managers don’t wait for obstacles to come when they least expect them. Rather, they plan carefully to minimize the risks. Surely, no one can know what the future will bring and with markets changing so rapidly even short-term forecasting could be outdated quite quickly.
But when big changes are underway, it’s best to be prepared to meet them in full armor. Work environment is changing constantly. Time and attendance systems are great in visualizing productivity trends and dynamics for employees and companies at large. Having such real-time data at their disposal, managers can then align their plans and HR objectives with real capabilities of their staff.
2. Assessing new staff on the team
Evaluating trainees and newly hired employees could be quite a challenge – mostly because new people find it hard to fully engage in the new work environment instantly and so their potential can be overlooked. Time and attendance data collected by special software will help determine realistic entry level for each position. Managers can then assign achievable goals and realistic deadlines based not on the empty suggestions of desk research, but real-time, objective data on everyone’s performance and team dynamics.
HR managers will definitely find it useful to see how new staff distribute their work time (i.e., their time management skills), how they are carrying on with the pace of work within the team and if corporate standards of attendance are followed.
3. Managing talent
Talent management is among major trends in HR in 2015. To make sure the company stays sustainable, HR managers have to make this process real and not just take it as part of their professional jargon.
Employees are the driving force behind every success in the company and therefore, the most valuable asset it may ever possess. That's why it’s crucial everyone’s at their own place. Fostering talent development is not easy and it can hardly bring excellent results immediately. This is where time and attendance systems could help as it will show who is best at what and so you can distribute the roles accordingly.
It will also help align your company’s commitment to hire and further support talented staff with realistic indicators on their performance. Expecting high results is good but expecting too much (or too little) do nothing but harm. The above metrics will show what is the limit to these expectations.
4. Managing schedules
These days you can hardly imagine a company without employees with flextime schemes. Flexible schedules are highly beneficial for both parties for multiple reasons. Employers use them as an effective recruiting tool and as means of retaining talented staff on the team, if for some reason they cannot work a full day in the office. In turn, employees get greater freedom and increased productivity by sensing the company’s support and understanding of their needs.
What can cloud this mutually beneficial cooperation is recording the flextime for adequate payroll calculations. One of the best practices HR managers can try to prevent both parties becoming suspicious on each other’s metrics for performance could be exactly time and attendance systems.
5. Increasing accountability
In accountable organizations people are willing to learn the feedback on their performance because they know it’s going to add to both their personal and team’s success. Time and attendance data will show if someone falls short and so something could be done about it. However, this is not about just knowing or, even worse, telling off, this is about improving instantly and providing necessary guidance so that everyone stays happy and productive.
Time and attendance data will help focus on the real-time processes that keep your team busy at the moment. How is everyone progressing? How work time is being distributed? Is it productive?
Final thoughts – use time and attendance systems to fuel productivity
As you can imagine, such data provides managers with much more than just records of who came when and how much time staff spent on social media. It helps them explore the patterns of productivity within the team – this way they can ensure the company employs and supports talented, motivated and highly loyal professionals.
