Future Business Ideas

Ways to track employee attendance are of increasing concern to the HR professionals as poor attendance is one of the most important reasons for terminating employee services. The manual and mechanical mode of recording the employee attendance is almost replaced by the fully automatic software supported systems. The changes in work place habits and technological developments had made the manual data entry obsolete. Implementation of software has made the tracking of employee attendance fast and accurate.

The employee attendance reflects details such as the employee name, employee number, department, job title, sick leave, vacation leave, casual leave, medical leave, maternity leave and leave with and without pay. A well maintained employee attendance record has more to do than just assisting compensation calculation. Any pattern in the employee absence can be easily observed and actions can be taken as soon as possible, so that the productivity is not affected adversely. Employee attendance can be tracked department wise also.

It is observed that the employee absence not only has an impact on his salary but badly hits the employers finance too. This is because the employer has to find a replacement employee or contract the work through agents. This proves costly to the company. Once a pattern is observed detailed analysis has to be done to find the reasons for absence. Most of the common reasons for employee absence are poor work atmosphere, work dissatisfaction, emotional and personal problems, monotonous and boring jobs and work load. In most of the cases problem with the supervisor is identified as a major cause of absenteeism. Attrition can be controlled to some extent if the employee attendance record is constantly monitored and checked for irregularities.

Implementation of Global Positioning System (GPS) tracks employee attendance of mobile work force with great ease. Tracking employee attendance with the help of software facilitates the employer to monitor the work force irrespective of their geographical location. This aids employer in knowing whether they employee is attending the customers and clients and they are doing what they are supposed to do.

Employee attendance record either in mechanical or electronic format gives the names of the employee who report late to work, leave early, take extra-long lunches and frequent breaks. Payroll and benefits are related to the employee attendance recording system. It must be ensured that the employees are properly paid for the work hours that they have put and not paid extra amount. Tracking attendance speaks about the employees discipline and ethics.

When looking at ways to track employee attendance, we must also think of things from the worker's point of view. We must not only be effective in our tracking efforts, but we should be fair and ethical too.