Whether you’ve been running a business for a while or you’ve just started, you’re probably well aware of how valuable data collection and utilization can be. If you’re collecting information about all aspects of your business on a regular basis and comparing the information in search of trends or patterns, you’re better able to identify the strategies that are or are not working and thus able to pivot and keep your approach to business flexible.
Being able to make adjustments when needed is one of the most important factors in whether or not a business thrives and succeeds in the long run. With that in mind, the following will explore in detail some of the benefits of tracking just one specific piece of information: employee attendance.
What Is Employee Attendance?
Employee attendance is quite simply a log that keeps track of whether someone showed up for work or not. It might include additional checkboxes that explain the reason for the absence. This is often managed using an app like TeamSense or a software program that allows comparisons to be made based on different data points. Ideally, you would have hyper-specific reasons as, again, the more information you have, the better.
Employee sick days should be categorized differently than an employee’s child is sick. Appointments like dental visits, doctor’s visits, chiropractor visits, etc., can be one category of absence.
Patterns In Sick Days
First and foremost, one of the most common reasons people call into work and say they won’t be attending is because of illness. Tracking how many employee illness days there are and when these days occur can drastically improve how you do business. Of course, people get sick for a lot of different reasons, but one of the more common reasons, especially if they’re working in a competitive field, is because they’re not taking good care of themselves.
Proper Absence Management will give you insight into whether or not there is a correlation between one department and another when it comes to sickness.
If someone isn’t sleeping enough, their immune system weakens. If someone isn’t eating well or enough, their immune system weakens. If someone is over-caffeinated for an extended period of time, they can experience adrenal fatigue. Quite simply, if a person refuses to take a break for too long, their body tends to force them to take that break by getting sick.
Comparing employee sick days with the dates of hyper-stressful projects or clients, with your busy season, or with periods of rapidly changing shift times can often reveal exactly when and where you’re wearing your employees so thin that they get sick. To prevent future sick days, you might want to examine these patterns and figure out how to help employees unwind and relax after a tougher week at work.
You need to take burnout seriously as it could have long-term repercussions on employee health, satisfaction, and performance, and it’s intrinsically linked to patterns in sick days. If you have, for instance, one client that rains hell down upon you every year the second week of September, why not schedule a bonus day off at the end of that week or a half-day or some sort of at work event that helps people rejuvenate like morning yoga or meditation?
While you’re at it, consider offering up steaming hot, high-quality lunches during those rougher weeks to help ensure staff is getting the calories and nutrients they need to keep fighting the good fight.
Patterns In Children’s Needs
There are also always going to be certain times of the year when children are more likely to get sick or need things from their parents. If you’ve been collecting data on when people miss work because of their children’s needs, you’re going to start seeing the cycles and patterns. You can use this information to better schedule the heavier workloads so that those weeks where every kid in town is sick aren’t wreaking havoc on workplaces.
If you can, try to organize projects so that lighter workloads exist around those times. Not only will this help ensure that parents aren’t going mad with the fifteen different things they’re trying to juggle, but it also helps improve children’s lives, too. When kids are sick, they need their parents; what they don’t need is parents who are about to have a mental breakdown because they can’t fit one more thing in their schedule.
Embracing the flaws in hustle culture and helping people have a better family-work balance can drastically improve employee satisfaction and retention. This, in turn, can boost employee performance.
Overscheduled Periods
Another fantastic spread of data that you can get your hands on if you’re tracking employee attendance is an awareness of the periods in a year that inevitably get overscheduled. Almost always, January is a big problem for scheduling as everyone has their new years resolutions and has packed their schedule stupidly tight and is calling in all their favors and trying to get everything on their mountainous to-do list done. You might notice far more employee absences for appointments as everyone is trying to start the year off right and actually go to the dentist every six months and finally deal with that vertebrae issue they have.
Knowing this, it might be good not to schedule too many work extras during this time. It might be good to focus on burnout prevention as every February; people are beaten down, exhausted, and disheartened because they tried to do everything they wanted to accomplish in a single month.
Similarly, most people have absurd Septembers. This likely comes from having spent years going back to school in September. It’s a second fresh start within the year, so naturally, everyone breaks out their impossible to-do lists and calls in all their favors and starts scrambling to get done all the things they are under the impression they need to. More appointments than normal can be expected.
In all likelihood, you’re going to have even more periods in addition to January and September, where things tend to get hectic and overscheduled depending on the climate in your area, your workplace, larger societal culture, and the industry you work in. If you know these busy periods are coming up, you can take steps to mitigate risks and ensure that employees are getting what it is they need to thrive.
Payroll Simplicity
Another great benefit of tracking employee attendance on your end is simplifying the payroll process. If you have great records of hours worked, it’s really easy to have no mistakes on your payroll—employees can be paid for the time they put in, meaning you’re not underpaying anyone causing frustrations or overpaying anyone causing a loss of profits.
Mistakes on the payroll are one of the largest headaches to deal with in a workplace for everyone involved and so should be avoided at all costs. Well-tracked employee attendance can also help you streamline the process of payroll, which can result in no delays or late payments, which can help keep employee satisfaction high.
Meeting Regulations And Standards
Another fantastic benefit of tracking employee attendance comes into play when you consider the legal requirements you have to meet regarding hours worked and time off. Many industries have different standards in this regard, but if you’re tracking employee hours, you should be able to compare them to the regulations in your field to ensure that you’re not legally overworking anyone.
You might need to instate more breaks or enforce more days off to meet these standards. You might also realize you’re legally entitled to be paid overtime. It’s always best to be on top of your legal responsibilities as a business owner as legal problems are crazy expensive, can damage your brand image, and can cause an insane amount of headaches.
Scheduling Guidance
If you have an overview of employee attendance and hours worked, it’s really easy to see where there are gaps or problems. Let’s say, for instance, the workflow always gets behind on Thursdays.
You can look at how many people you have in, at what times, and realize that you actually need an additional staff member as this is when you get deliveries, and so someone is always forced to put off their work until everything is unpacked and put away. Being aware of schedules can also help you better assign projects based on employee strengths and help balance different vacation requests.
Client Proofs
Depending on the industry you work in and the clients you work with, you might need to make proof claims regarding the fees you’ve charged. It can be super helpful in those situations to be able to breakdown exactly how many employees you had worked for how many hours. Likewise, in some fields, you need to prove you’ve hired a certain number of locals for tax break purposes. Information regarding employee attendance can be used to help make sure you’re getting all the tax help and breaks you need and deserve.
The above information should have explained a few of the many benefits of tracking employee attendance. The more information you have about how your business is running day-to-day, the more data you have to apply to your company strategies.
Being able to have a bird’s eye view of employee attendance and other factors that influence your business can radically improve your decision-making and managerial choices. It can help you bolster employee health and satisfaction, improve work performance, anticipate difficult weeks incoming, and better schedule your workdays out.
