Time & Attendance Management with HRMS Software

 

Time & Attendance Management with HRMS Software

About 85% of the absences generated in companies are requests for vacations. Most vacation requests are for the summer months. However, other patterns have also been detected, such as people with employees taking more vacation days. How to manage vacations and leave so that there is a minimum of staff in the company? How to ensure compliance with the legislation, agreements and company policy when granting leave of absence?

How to manage employee attendance and what is it for?

Time and Attendance Management (Time and Attendance Management) is responsible for keeping track of the presence of employees. In this way, an attempt is made to minimize the loss of money due to periods of inactivity or absence of the employees and ensures that the legislation and company policy are complied with.

 

The main reasons for inactivity or absence are vacations and leave. In a small business, days of leave or vacations can be managed with an Excel. However, when a company grows or has headquarters in different places, this task is complicated.

 

For example, a construction project company has its main headquarters in Spain and a secondary one in Portugal. The Portuguese headquarters is carrying out a work and needs a purchase from the main headquarters to be validated. Without good attendance management, the person in charge of ordering does not know that there are 2 holidays or that the person in charge of validating his order has taken a vacation. Therefore, this delays the request from the headquarters in Portugal and, with it, the entire project. That is why many companies request that there be an HR system with a calendar.

How can managers take better control of attendance?

Companies have to ensure both that they always have a minimum of available workers and that they comply with the legislation. However, keeping track of how many days of vacation or leave has been granted to each employee can be complicated and more with the flexibility that is wanted to offer the employee today. In addition, national, regional and local holidays must also be taken into account, apart from company policy and the agreement regarding holidays and days off.

 

Therefore, there are many companies that purchase an employee portal. From the employee portal, workers can request their vacation and leave and see how many days off they have left. However, an HR system could help with other procedures apart from vacations and leave, such as: calendar, compensatory rest (Time off in lieu, TOIL) and reports (for managers).

Vacation concession and permits

In some companies, vacations and leave are requested from the manager or human resources staff. However, these people do not have a head start on how many days off each employee has left or if there is someone else on that date who is not available. Therefore, with an employee portal, a worker can see the vacations that still remain, request the days they want (as long as they are not higher than those that remain) and the status of their request. If the absence that is requested is not for vacation, you have to fill in a little more information, since sometimes they do not fall within the bag of vacation permits.

 

The most requested leaves are those for sick days, educational leave (leaving because of having to take an exam), leave (maternity / paternity, temporary disability, etc.), accident, death of a family member, own wedding and moving. Some have a time determined by law or agreement, for example, for your own wedding you have 2 weeks of leave and 1 day for moving. All these types of specifications can be configured within the system so that they are taken into account.

 

On the other hand, the person responsible for approving or denying the permissions will be able to make better decisions by being able to view all the details at the same time in the manager's portal.

 

Another reason why it is important to keep track of vacations and leave is because it must appear on the payroll. These data can be found within the non-remunerative accruals (vacation days and permits). That is why there are companies that ask that the data be dumped in the HRMS software. There are other companies that grant external access to the consultancy that makes the payroll so that it can take the data or generate reports with the information that the consultancy needs.

 

Visible employee attendance and calendar

Something closely related to vacation or leave days is the calendar. In the business calendar all holidays are indicated. Additionally, you can show by person, team, department, headquarters, or global who is available and who is not. In this way, if an employee from Madrid wants to call a meeting with colleagues from Barcelona, ​​then he can see that they are all available and that it is not a holiday to call it.

 

This function is important especially in international companies or those that are in different regions, since each place has its holidays. Also, there are some calendars that show what time you meet other people. For example, if you want to work on a project with a Latin American country, the calendar can show the range of hours that coincide with the working day.

 

Compensatory leave (TOIL) and / or compensatory overtime pay

There are people who due to the sector, type of company or other reasons have to work overtime. When an employee records their hours, if they have put in overtime, in many companies it is required that they be validated by the manager. These hours must be compensated by the company. However, each company is free to choose how to do it, within the limitations indicated by law.

The most common forms of overtime compensation are: allowing another day of the same week to enter and / or leave earlier (matching overtime); pay for overtime; and, accumulation of overtime to be given as “free” hours or days, also known as compensatory rest or TOIL, for the acronym in English ( Time Off In Lieu ). Other times, companies allow you to choose between "free" hours and days and pay for them. When an employee chooses the time off option, they have a period to take it or it expires.

 

To keep track of the accumulated hours, the HRMS software must be able to show the accumulated hours and when they expire. Depending on how the company has it configured, this accumulation and expiration can be seen by the employee and / or the manager and human resources. In the event that the employee cannot see them, the company must inform him of the accumulated free time and how much he has left. For this reason, there are organizations that put an alert to notify them when an employee's compensatory leave is about to expire to let them know.

 

For example, an employee of a production company puts in overtime in peak season (such as preparation dates for Christmas). This employee charges overtime as compensatory leave, but overtime has a 6-month expiration date. From the employee portal you can see the vacations you have and the accumulated compensatory leave and when it expires. This way, you know how long you have to request compensatory rest.

This facilitates compensation and prevents the employee from not knowing the hours that belong to him and is continually asking the manager or human resources. However, the company policy may stipulate that vacations and TOIL cannot be taken during high season periods. In that case, the system can be configured so that the employee cannot request it on that date.

 

Reports on employee attendance

Reporting on the attendance and absence of employees is very important for a manager. These reports can be obtained by individual, group, department, headquarters, city, region, country, continent and even globally.

If you do not have HRMS software with the data that can collect it, this task can be quite arduous. With business intelligence (BI) these reports provide an analysis of the current state of the company and a forecast for the future. These reports help you see what the main reasons for absenteeism are in the company and take steps to solve it. For example, a company where all employees must perform their work in a sedentary way can see that the greatest absence is due to health issues. By seeing it, the company can take steps to incentivize its employees to lead a healthier lifestyle.

 

In addition, these reports also help to see details of another type. For example, if an employee is laid off and has pending vacation days, a report can be drawn up to be credited to the payroll settlement.