What is an Employee Attendance Tracking System?

Employee attendance tracking systems

Employee attendance tracking systems are the equivalent of time and attendance systems. Employee attendance tracking systems can take the day-to-day employee managements tasks like the scheduling of employees, planning work hours, monitoring project costing and calculating all accrued benefit entitlements and automate or computerize the whole process. These systems also do an excellent job in the area of scheduling too.

Employee attendance tracking systems can reduce the administrative issues surrounding the management of time slips and they can significantly reduce mistakes as well. These systems are always needed in big companies with employees whose work schedules are demanding and constantly changing. They can also make a significant difference in one of the biggest issues facing employers today. That issue is buddy punching.

Attendance Tracking

Attendance tracking systems provide many aspects of managing part-time employees. They cover the areas of schedule management including managing breaks, lunches, paid and unpaid time off and overtime. These systems also allow for late punches and they will show all patterns of absenteeism. Most systems also include detailed auditing plus reporting tools as well as giving managers direct access to their employee timesheets and information.

Who uses Attendance Tracking Systems?

Organizations with mostly hourly or part-time employees probably do as do companies with a mix of salaried and hourly staff. Organizations that have mostly salaried employees generally don’t need systems like these.

The need for an employee attendance tracking system usually comes to bear when an organization hits somewhere between 25 and 50 employees. As the size of a company grows so does the system needs. Organizations with over 1,000 employees often purchase larger, more powerful systems that are capable of creating complex work schedules that incorporate advanced labor planning and can even include desired work availability schedules. Other more complex and sophisticated issues that are often required in companies of this size are Labor Planning, Labor Budgeting and Key Performance Indicators (KPI). These advanced capabilities are sometimes used in smaller companies but they tend to begin to be used when an organization is at least 100 employees.

Employee tracking systems, which in fact are really Time and labor management systems, which in fact are also the same as Time and Attendance systems, (see What is the difference between Time & Attendance and Time and Labor Management), are generally designed for larger companies with more sophisticated functionality

How do Attendance Tracking Systems work?

They begin with receiving employee time worked. Employees use their individual id cards or their computer to punch in and out each day. Some employees don’t have access to a computer and they use proximity cards which only need to be place close to a time clock reader. Magnetic stripe cards can also be used. For security reasons, and to avoid the big issue of buddy punching, some companies use sophisticated input devices that use biometrics to check fingerprints or hands to ensure that it is in fact the correct employee that is punching in or out.

In addition to the above, more and more organizations are letting their employees enter their own sick, vacation and worked time directly into the time and attendance system. They allow them to enter their vacation time, sick time and their flex-time hours.