The current pandemic has changed the way organizations work in unexpected ways. Keeping track of employee time in the age of Covid-19 is important now that remote working has become the norm. It is challenging to know if your remote employees are working productively. However, with an employee time clock app you can track your employees’ work hours, monitor your team’s performance and identify improvement areas.
Moreover, these digital tools give employers an upper hand with detailed insights into employees’ working hours and productivity levels. They help reduce manual and error-prone data entry to improve payroll accuracy so that employees get paid for the exact hours they clocked in.
With a vast landscape of time tracking apps, selecting the right tool that matches your organization’s requirements can be daunting. You want an effective solution that easily allows your employees to punch-in and punch-out and an automated system that makes data instantly available to an accounting or payroll system.
Every organization with hourly employees or project-based teams should employ a time clock app to record hours worked. The size, structure, and schedules of your team will dictate the choice of platform that you need.
For example, if your business employs lots of hourly employees in a single site, you may look for an app that monitors basic in/out times. Besides, you can also focus on how your employees spend their time on various tasks.
The following are some points to help you pick the best time clock app for your employees:
Suitability of App with Your Business Size
First, consider the size of your business because there are clock app solutions that offer feature sets that suit small businesses better than huge ones, and vice versa. The premium time clock for a large company may not be the best for a small or middle-sized business.
Consider Your Business Structure
The structure of your business is also crucial when you choose an employee time clock app. Do you have one administrator who will orchestrate the solution, or do you require a team administrator for every department or team in your business? Ensure that the structure of the time clock can be customized to fit your business structure.
Work Time Pattern and Location
Consider the work time patterns in your business – are your staff members all working the same hours or following a flexible schedule? Do some of your employees come early, and others leave late?
Also, consider the work location of your employees? Ensure to pay attention to these important concerns to look for a time clock solution that has flexible settings to fulfil the distinct needs of your workforce.
Integrations
Like any separate or composite software system, a crucial point of choosing a time clock app for your employees is checking the ability of the software to integrate with other apps or solutions. Find out if your accounting, payroll, HR, and IT software can connect with your new time clock app. Also, find out if it can export information for easy upload.
No matter how good the app is, it may stand useless for your business if it does not integrate well with other tools and software.
Extensive Reports
Picking an employee time clock app that allows you to have access to diverse reporting options is critical. Go for apps with more report options because many apps offer you additional details like customizable options and even attendance reports.
You will not just find the solutions that get you employee time tracking-insights, but also get a payroll record for tracking diverse projects, billing clients, and examining periodical performance.
Easy to Use App
Learning how to use a new application can be incredibly stressful. This is why you should pick an option that is easy to learn. As your employees will be using it, the app must be easy for everyone on your team to know how to operate.
Consult Your HR Team
It is sensible to check with the requirements of your human resource team regarding the time clock app. Find out about the functionalities that they want in a clocking app for employees. Also, know about the data HR needs on employee attendance reports to comprehensively prepare paychecks.
Besides, consider how your HR team is currently managing absences like vacations and sick leaves. This will help you discover ways to digitize this entire procedure with an employee leave tracker built into the time clock app.
If you are looking beyond time and attendance and want to integrate payroll, HCM, compliance and analytics, it’s best to opt for a robust employee time clock app that gives you clear visibility of the employees’ availability and performance. Once your business has a proper time tracking tool for creating accountability, you can dispel the challenges of tracking the productivity of remote workers.
