Every organization around the world thrives only due to its employees which is its human resources. Human resources are the most challenging resource to manage as they are dynamic and constantly evolving. Also, the size of an organization brings its own set of challenges.

In small organizations, managing human resources is tricky as they may not have a fully-functioning human resources department or the responsibility may lie with the CEO of the company. In bigger organizations working with thousands of employees, the work of the human resources department gets remarkably messy due to the sheer number of employees and their data which needs to be tracked and maintained in real-time.

One of the most crucial real-time function of the human resources department is attendance management. Put quite simply, attendance refers to the employees showing up for work to the organization on any given day. It is the attendance that determines the employees’ paycheck at the end of every month.

But is managing attendance so easy? Not really.

In simpler times with fewer employees and single shifts, employee attendance could be managed manually with everyone coming on the same designated time and leaving on the designated closing time. Attendance could be easily managed with everyone signing the attendance register once in the morning while coming to work and then once again in the evening while leaving from work.

At the end of each week or month, HR would use this information to generate the paycheck. But with lots of employees, different shift timings for different departments and flexible timings, manual attendance register entry is rather cumbersome and not at all feasible.

What is the solution, then? An online attendance management system, of course.

What Is An Attendance Management System?

An attendance management system refers to a system that keeps track of the attendance and working hours of the employees of an organization. It also documents the breaks and the leaves taken by the employees. An attendance management system can be of many different types such as manual attendance register, spreadsheet timesheet, time cards or online attendance management system.

An online attendance management system can either be a standalone software, or it can come as a part of a human resources management system that is integrated with the payroll processing system and the leave management system. An integrated human resources system makes it infinitely easier to generate a paycheck at the basis of the attendance cut-off date.

Similarly, integration with the leave management system streamlines the calculation of vacation time for the employees, irrespective of whether it is a sick leave or a casual leave. So, you can breathe easy while an online attendance management system will do two of your lengthy, time-consuming tasks and make your life easier.

Why You Should Have An Attendance Management System?

An attendance management system is imperative for any organisation and especially for the human resources department to function smoothly without any hiccups.

In the most basic of terms, any job role is a barter system where the employer pays the employees compensation in lieu of their time. If any party of this barter system does not hold their side of the bargain, the system will collapse sooner or later. Attendance management system keeps track of this barter to ensure that the employees are not playing with the system.

An organization that has a high attendance indicates a great work culture where the employees are diligent about their work and their shift timings while a low attendance is indicative of either a problem with the work environment or with the attitude of the employees.

Since every leave costs the organization money and time, it becomes important to keep the attendance records for cost-effectiveness and time-management of the organization. Prolonged absenteeism also weakens the morale of the organization while having a negative impact on the quality of the work. If the employees are repeatedly coming late to the organization even after reprimands, it also reflects a certain disdain for the rules of the organization and is not a good sign in an employee.

The most basic reason for having an attendance management system is to keep a proper track of the working hours of the employees. With an effective attendance management system, the human resources department can maintain records of the working hours of every employee as well as the over-time they have been doing.

In the case of employees who are paid hourly, this information comes handy while generating their paycheck. In the case of salaried employees, this can give an insight into how long the employees are working even when they are working from remote locations.

Must-Have Features Checklist

What makes an attendance management system useful? Apart from fulfilling its primary function of clocking in the check in and check out time of the employees, there are certain features added into an effective attendance management system that will streamline lots of concurrent processes and save time, money and resources. Following is a checklist that includes all the key features that an attendance management system should have to be the best in its domain:

• • Accurate and simple check-in and check-out function for the employees to calculate their productive working hours and minimize human errors.

• • Comprehensive monitoring of project time and over-time to monitor productivity.

• • Real-time, cloud-based attendance database creation to keep an eye on the attendance records of the employees at anywhere anytime.

• • System compatibility with different biometric-integrated attendance devices like fingerprint recognition, face recognition, retina scan, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology for easy migration and no extra expenditure.

• • Provision of web-based or mobile-based check-ins for employees who are remotely located, work from their homes or are on out-duty locations.

• • GPS tracking to ensure the authenticity of the remote check-ins of the employees.

• • Incorporation of attendance policies like flexible timings, late penalty, short leaves, minimum hours for half-day shifts, and over-time bonus.

• • Provision for multiple shift management for different groups of employees.

• • Integration with the payroll processing system for streamlined payroll functionality and paycheck generation.

• • Integration with the leave management system for monitoring the vacation time o and mandated leaves of the employees.

• • Easy-to-use interface that lets employees view and manage their attendance effectively at one go.

• • Attendance updates through messages or emails to notify the employees for missed punches, half punches, or technical glitches.

• • Provision for attendance regularization in case of incorrect attendance marking after approval from the concerned person.

• • Easily configurable system that could be modified to best suit the needs of the organization.

• • Generation of customized attendance rosters for individuals as well as whole teams for monitoring attendance.

• Generation of tailored reports and analytics like financial reports, activity reports, time off reports, etc. to get useful insights in performance and time management for business intelligence.

One Attendance Management System that provide these is Kredily’s.

Challenges In Attendance Management

Any organization only functions if it has employees who work, it is glaringly obvious that any leaves and absenteeism takes a toll on its functioning. Leaves like paid holidays and vacations are scheduled beforehand and are necessary to help employee manage work-life balance. Therefore, they do not impact the functioning of the organization. But unscheduled leaves and high absenteeism have an adverse effect on everything, right from disruption of schedules and poor quality of work to money lost in the whole chaos.

Here are some common challenges that the human resources department face when managing attendance in any organization:

1. 1. Lack of an absenteeism management program
      

      The advantages of an absenteeism management program are well-documented and yet, many organizations do not have a proper absenteeism program in place that would reduce absenteeism and improve productivity on the whole. Any initial cost that is incurred while implementing the absenteeism management program would be recovered in a few days once it starts to work and the costs related to absenteeism reduce drastically while giving productivity a substantial boost.

1. 1. Lack of attendance management policy and its poor implementation
      

      The lack of a proper attendance management policy that is up to date with all the legal requirements and is tailor-made to suit the needs of the organization are rare and yet, it goes a long way in solving the challenges that come in attendance management. Even if an organization has an attendance management policy in place, it is not implemented properly which is equivalent to having no policy in place and does no good for the organization.

1. 1. Dismal Attendance Tracking
      

      In many organizations, the attendance tracking is not taken seriously which can lead to employees taking undue advantage of the situation. It can be either due to the lack of proper resources that are needed for efficient attendance management or due to the unconcerned attitude of the supervisors and managers who do not take any action against repeated absences. In both cases, the employees do not take attendance seriously as they know there will no repercussions. So, the supervisors and managers need to be trained accordingly to take action on frequent absences or late comings by employees to set an example for punctuality.

1. 1. No Difference Between Innocent & Culpable Absences
      

      Although we use casual leaves and sick leaves interchangeably, they are not so legally. An absence which cannot be helped due to medical reasons or emergency is considered an innocent absence while an absence which can be avoided and is controllable is called a culpable absence. The employers should differentiate between what is an innocent absence and what is a culpable absence, and deal with the employees accordingly. When there is a need for absence on humane grounds, the organization should consider the request without being too strict. The need of the hour is to be accommodative of the employees’ request on the basis of the circumstances in hand.

1. 1. Medical Leaves
      

      Many times, employees take undue advantage of sick leaves of the organization by faking illness which is ethically wrong. Legally, the organization is allowed to verify the medical claims submitted by the employees but, this is not generally done on a regular basis until and unless it is a serious issue. This practice of verifying medical claims may prove to be quite detrimental for the organization in the long run.

1. Third-party Dependency
   

   Many organizations depend on third-party vendors for attendance management which may lead to problems as they may not have the same attendance policy and rules as the organization. It is extremely critical that the human resources department exclusively takes all the decisions related to attendance policies instead of letting other third-party organizations take the decision on the organization’s behalf.

Kredily – The Best Attendance Management System In Town

If you are on the lookout for an online management system that does it all, Kredily Attendance Management System is your saviour. The best attendance management system in the town, Kredily ticks all the boxes in the must-have features checklist. It does the dirty task of managing the attendance records and fixing the attendance on its own with minimum human intervention and maximum efficiency and accuracy, at absolutely no cost.

Compatible with almost all kinds of different biometric-integrated attendance devices like fingerprint recognition, face recognition, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, it facilitates web-based and mobile-based check-ins and check-outs as it is cloud-based and GPS-enabled.

Easily configurable to suit your organization’s unique needs, it allows you to configure and manage everything right from multiple shift management to customized attendance policies and reports. Its Employee Self Service portal is so simple that you don’t even need to give your employees any extra training.

With a support staff that is available anytime, Kredily has the best to offer in terms of attendance management to your organization. With Kredily, you can breathe easy.