Keeping count of the work time is equally important both for employers and their employees, especially those paid hourly. The former need this data to calculate the compensation for the subordinates, while for the latter it means receiving the fair compensation for the exact time they’ve worked.
This necessity has brought about the time clocks – machines that track the hours worked by individual staff members of a company. This is achieved via a number of methods, the most widespread ones being swiping a special card or using a biometric scanner. Recently, even web-based time clock software has appeared. Essentially, what these systems do is record the time a person started work (“punched in”) and finished (punched out). Using this data, it is easier to calculate the payroll and control employee attendance.
Pros and cons of using a time clock
Savings
Time clock (or biometric scanner that also grants access to an office or building), can come in handy for businesses with a lot of employees and various work hours (shifts), like retail or service industry. As opposed to either hiring a person to control how much time each staff member worked, or simply relying on their goodwill, implementing a time clock saves an employer’s money and nerves.
Fair rewards
For employees, using a time clock means that in case of any discrepancies they can always refer to its log and get paid for the time worked.
Fraud possibility
Unfortunately, the use of time clocks doesn’t exclude cheating (unless it is a biometric system). For example, employees can use the cards of their absent colleagues to create the impression of their presence at work.
Presence ≠ productivity
Being present at work doesn’t necessarily mean you are productive, or that you are working at all. Employees working fixed hours tend to be more focused on how much time is left till they can leave for home rather than pursuing the set goals. While fixating the amount of time worked, time clock systems don’t provide any more information, which is too little for objective evaluation of employees’ productivity.
Benefits of time tracker software over time clock systems
Time tracking software appears to be a an alternative to time clocks in the spheres where computers are the main “field of work”. It actually tracks working time, not just the time of arriving and leaving work. So, let’s look what are time tracking software key advantages:
- physical presence doesn’t matter
Time tracker can be installed on each employee (or freelancer) computer and track the working time of all company employees simultaneously, even if they are in the other part of the planet, the only condition being Internet connection.
- provides complete work information
Time tracking software is launched when a computer is switched on and records what websites and software apps are used along with the time for each of them. Thanks to the categorizing function, it is possible to classify all resources as productive, non-productive and neutral, and see the diagram of the day work, identifying at a glance the amount of non-work related activities.
- absence recording
Apart from everything done on the computer, a time tracker also fixates offline activity, when a person is absent from the computer, and its duration. It also allows commenting on its reason – making a personal call or going to a business meeting etc.
- easy-to-understand reports
An employer can view the information on how his/her employees are using their work time in just a few clicks in the form of graphs and diagrams. This let's detect the most and least productive workers and take immediate measures.
Bottom line
If you want to know how diligent your employees are, and improve their productivity, a time tracking software is what you need. So, you can start tracking immediately and free for 14 days with Yaware.TimeTracker after filling in a short sign-up form.
