Executive, Consider These Costs Before You Put Off Workforce Management (again) For One More Year

“I know workforce management is important, but I’m too busy to dive into a solution right now.”

We get it. Running a business is hectic. There is always more to do than time to do it. But choosing the right activities is vital.

Someone once said; “Money, I can only gain or lose. But time, I can only use. So, I must spend it carefully.”  

Unfortunately, in business, you don’t only lose time. Lost time equates to lost money. Both are vital to business success. That is why putting off workforce management software will cost your business money.

Can you name the 4 major costs workforce management eliminates or reduces?

1. Staggering Fines Cost Businesses Millions of Dollars a Year

Can you name your state’s break laws? 

Do you have to provide paid sick leave?

Are you 100% compliant with FLSA rules? 

Today, employers don’t have to be compliant with only Federal labor laws. They must also follow local city and state regulations, industry-specific regulations, and union rules.

The list is overwhelming.

In 2017, employers paid millions to the Department of Labor for infractions of FLSA rules. That isn’t millions total, employers were individually fined as much as 19 million, or in larger cases, 250 million dollars, for FLSA penalties.

Add to that, local sick leave laws, local FMLA laws, and local scheduling laws. It gets complicated for employers. And, that doesn’t even count industry-specific regulations and union agreements and rules.

However,

Did you know? . . .

That many employment law requirements can be easily managed with a workforce management software?

Do you have to follow the strict scheduling laws of Washington D.C., California, New York, Oregon, or other states? You can maintain a matrix of employee skills and availability that you use to hammer out your schedules 2 -3 weeks early.

But, it’s much easier to use an automated workforce management system that automatically looks for compliance with clopening laws, allows employee feedback, and automatically pushes publications to employees.

WorkforceHUB is ideal. Build schedules based on business need, skills required, scheduling law requirements, and employee preferences. This allows you to create schedules that comply with industry requirements like training, education, and certifications.

It also makes staying compliant with Federal and local labor laws easier. Plus, you can input employee preferences and other requirements of secure scheduling laws. This means that your employees are happier and you avoid regulatory fines.

2. Happier Employees Mean More Than Just Happy Employees

Enable SwipeClock optional scheduling features. This allows employees have better communication and a happier work-life balance.

Employees can log in to a dashboard to request specific hours or schedules. This can be updated each week. Employers can maximize employee scheduling by reviewing real data. Data allows managers to understand where the gaps in coverage are and what times employees are truly needed.

This also allows managers to be more flexible with employees. Flexibility in schedules is one of the top employee-sought benefits.

Allowing employees to request shift swaps or schedule changes through an online portal provides facilitates communication. Employees can request changes from their home when a personal need arises and not risk forgetting to provide more notice. Managers can see and approve alerts on their mobile devices providing instant feedback to employees.

When an employee struggles to manage their personal and work life, they can become stressed, demoralized, and disengaged. That is a leading cause of buddy punching.

Additionally, employees who are disengaged spend more working hours on personal activities and other forms of time theft. (WorkforceHub offers facial and finger scanning time clocks specifically to eliminate buddy punching and inaccurate time cards)

Happy employees are more likely to stay, which saves on hiring and training costs. It also allows you to keep your best talent.

3. Unnecessary Overtime is, well, unnecessary.

Of course, there are times when employees need to work extra hours to complete a project or reach a goal. That’s needed overtime and the costs for these hours are usually offset with a much greater return.

But, far too often, employees work overtime that is not required and not productive.

It’s 3:20. Mike sat at his desk working. An alert on his dashboard flashed. Janet has not clocked in for work.  His brows furled in confusion. Janet is usually on time. Sam, the person Janet is replacing was very close to overtime on the schedule.

Mike checks and sees that Sam’s still clocked in and has crossed into overtime hours. Sam is happy to pick up more hours at time-and- a- half and didn’t think he needed permission to wait for Janet to show up.

Five minutes later, Mike has talked to Janet on the phone, discovered that she won’t be in due to an unexpected emergency, and checked SwipeClock’s system to see who else is available to cover her shift.

At this point, Mike can make the decision regarding whether or not to keep Sam covering until Janet’s replacement gets there, if he should move an employee already working to Janet’s spot temporarily, or if he can go without for a little bit. Mike is informed and can stay on top of overtime hours and manage the unexpected fluctuations in schedules.

In many states, Mike would have to pay a premium wage to Sam for staying past his shift (in addition to overtime) and a premium wage to any employees called in without a 2-week notice. The only exception is if employees volunteer to work on a short-term notice. Employees can log into SwipeClock’s dashboard and communicate the days or hours they are available.

Then, SwipeClock recommends employees according to this information. (And Mike doesn’t have to pay a premium wage for short-term notice)

However, this feature is great in other states too because it saves employers time calling down a list to see who can come in. Employees can input a permanent or weekly schedule of preferred hours and additional shift when they are available. Thus, Mike can see who can come and who has the skills for the shift.

SwipeClock notifications can be set to alert managers and employees when employees fail to clock in for a shift. Schedules also notify managers when employee schedules bring an employee close to overtime.

Employers who use this system find that overtime decreases naturally without any decrease in productivity. Managers can review schedules midweek and remind employees to head home when the tasks aren’t urgent or send an employee home at the end of the week if they have stayed late during the week.

SwipeClock alerts allow managers and employees to communicate and decide when overtime is productive and when it’s a matter of employees losing track of the time on work tasks and not leaving on time.

In addition, when an employee calls in sick, managers can quickly see which employees are available to work. They can track skills, preferred hours or days, and whether or not the shift will put the substitute employee into overtime.

Did you know?

That automated workforce management drives unplanned overtime costs down by 7% – and total overtime costs down by 19%? (According to the Aberdeen Group)

4. Eliminate Slow, Painful, Redundant Processes

Payroll staff isn’t exactly minimum wage staff. Yet, too many employers shrug off the wasted hours that payroll or HR staff spends in redundant tasks and buried in paperwork.

Manual time cards, PTO requests, and FMLA forms all take frivolous time. Timecards have to be manually collected, added, and interpreted.

Plus, consider what happens when something looks wrong.

Perhaps the employee has written their time to messily to read, or entered a 19-hour shift on the computer. Either way, Human Resources has to call and verify the correct shift hours. This takes more time.

Then the hours have to be entered.

It is estimated that 4 hours of processing manual timecard calculation and input can be reduced to 15 minutes when time clocks are automated and integrated with a payroll system.

Automated workforce management can help most employers capture at least 50% of their payroll processing time. Although results are usually closer to 80% of processing time eliminated.

Add to that the fact that, payroll human errors account for between 1% and 8% of total payroll expenses.

That number increases when human error doesn’t get corrected and results in regulatory penalties for employers. Other errors include typos or memory slips.

There is a cost to reissue, reprocess, and the administrators time.

5. Control

As an executive, you often deal with schedule changes, un-approved overtime, distribution of employee notices. All of these scenarios (and more) can cause headaches for management. Making changes pulls away key players from other, more-skill and profitable tasks. Incorporating a workforce management software into your business makes it easier for managers to keep control over all things employee-related. A sick employee makes it easy for the manager to see who is available for backup.

Unfortunately, too often managers ask employees to stay late at work without realizing that the employee is already close to overtime. However, overtime notices inform managers of which employees are close to thresholds and allow for more informed decisions.

Additionally, you probably have numerous employee notices that are required to be distributed to employees. Sometimes these notices are required for new employees, and sometimes at the beginning of the year. Other city or states require specific payroll information to be provided to employees. Control the accuracy of distribution and track it for future retrieval through your workforce management software. Employees can log into and access documents.

Let SwipeClock Help

Can you really afford to wait another year to convert to automated time and attendance and workforce management?

SwipeClock provides a comprehensive array of workforce management and time tracking tools that can help businesses to more easily stay in compliance with local and national laws.

Records are effortlessly kept for years and accrual is automatically tracked and reported to employees according to the state and city laws. Additionally, with geo-timekeeping clocks, businesses can effortlessly track time worked in specific cities to ensure compliance.

Resources

Osha

DOL Civil Penalties 2018

FLSA

Written by Annemaria Duran. Last updated on March 21, 2018