A talented team isn’t enough to ensure a company’s success. Projects will suffer if critical members duck out early, show up late, or fail to show up at all. This puts extra stress on punctual employees who have to pick up the slack, but this approach isn’t sustainable for long. Eventually, those employees will burnout, and productivity will tank across the board. If you start missing deadlines, clients and stakeholders will lose faith.
Remote employees add a layer of complexity to absence management. Many employers have a hard enough time keeping track of who arrived and at what time at their brick and mortar offices. Remote teams are even more difficult to keep tabs on due to the virtual nature of their work. For businesses that suspect or know they have an attendance problem, the following mistakes could be the cause:
- Insufficient attendance tracking. If a company doesn’t have a robust system for tracking tardiness, early departures, and absences, they aren’t going to know where to start to fix the problem. By collecting attendance data, businesses can see if the problem is company-wide, specific to a department or team, or an individual. This gives them a good idea of where to focus their attendance improvement efforts.
- Ambiguous attendance policies. Some businesses have a strict arrival time for employees while others focus more on when employees begin working for the day. If a company allows for flexible scheduling, this can make matters murky for employees. It also makes it more difficult to track without an absence management system. If employees come and go at different times, managers may not be able to keep track of who is trimming their work hours. Eliminating gray areas in attendance policies can cut down on employee confusion.
- Focusing on the negative. While businesses need to take action against attendance issues, they shouldn’t only focus on the disciplinary elements. Highlighting employees with perfect attendance improves morale and provides a model for other employees to emulate. Offering small incentives such as a free lunch for any employee with perfect attendance for the month can help reduce absenteeism as well.
- Not listening to the data. Even the best absence management software isn’t useful if businesses don’t look at the data. This information can help companies identify attendance trends before they become a widespread problem. Knowing where to start investigating saves time and money by homing in on the root of the issue.
Manual methods of attendance tracking are outmoded and don’t help businesses identify attendance trends in time to correct them. Actec developed an absence tracking mobile app to help businesses overcome this hurdle. Our absence management solutions provide several channels for communication including telephonic, text/chat, within the app itself, or the web. Employees can report in for the day from the convenience of their smartphones or devices. This is tremendously helpful for remote teams or teams working out of numerous locations. Contact the experts at Actec to learn more about absence management.