3 Steps to Decrease Employee Tardiness With Time Clock Software

Continual employee tardiness can chip away at your profitability and reduce employee morale. In this post, we’ll be going over three easy steps to minimize employee tardiness with the help of employee time clock software.

Before we do anything, we must look at the top reasons why continual employee tardiness hurts your bottom line.

Late employees:

  1. Are less productive
  2. Produce lower customer satisfaction
  3. Can tarnish your brand

You may as well call the above list, “how to destroy a small business.”

Why You Need to Solve This Problem

When employees are continually late to clock in, they miss crucial productivity time. Late employees have to jump into their workflow without proper preparation. Late employees often hold up critical processes and cause more mistakes than their on-time counterparts.

These late employees also impact the company culture, causing their co-workers to feel resentment and pressure due to the impact late arrivals or absences have on their own work, and could result in more team members engaging in absenteeism.

A small business owner can’t afford such simple mistakes. Part of optimizing your workforce management is cutting out inaccuracies and inefficiencies like team members habitually showing up late to work hours. Luckily, time tracking software might be able to remedy issues in your employee attendance.

Customers are generally less satisfied if they have to wait longer for service. Late employees can delay a checkout line, miss service opportunities, or even keep customers on hold. This doesn’t just impact customers. Employee tardiness also impacts morale when others have to pick up the slack.

Your business will suffer the consequences through the loss of repeat business. Employees are the face of your brand, and your brand suffers when an employee misses the opportunity to serve. Chronic lateness will tarnish your brand and hurt your business. In the end, your business will have a hard time meeting its bottom line and gaining momentum.

Three Steps To Decrease Employee Tardiness

Here are three easy steps to help improve employee time management with automated time clock apps. These steps can also help reduce early punch in’s as well as buddy punching. 

Follow these simple steps as a best practice for improving your time and attendance processes:

Employees should understand your time and attendance policies and know how to use your time clock software if you'd like for them to be able to accurately track their time.

If you want employees to follow your time and attendance policies, they need to know what they are first. You should incorporate policy information into your hiring and onboarding process.

1. Instruct

The first step to reducing employee tardiness is to instruct your employees. You can’t expect them to follow the rules if they don’t know the rules.

Onboarding Policies and Procedures

Communicating time and attendance rules you expect employees to follow is an essential first step. You should make this part of your onboarding process. You can check off employees’ progress through the employee handbook. Make sure that your employees understand your attendance systems and procedures and be clear about potential consequences. Employees should know that you take time and attendance management seriously.

There are many onboarding solutions available that allow you to driver onboarding materials to your employees online. You can track their process and check off milestones to ensure they are entirely on board. 

Set realistic deadlines and follow up to make sure employees know you care about the procedure.

Software Training

You will want to make sure your employees understand how to use your easy time clock software. An orientation will ensure that employees have no excuse when it comes to punching in or out on time.

During the orientation, you should cover breaks, scheduling, and regulations. Walk your employees through the process of punching in to reduce mistakes. Show them how to interact with the scheduling feature and how to request time off. Empower your employees by allowing them to take part in self-service.

Buddy Punch makes it easy for employees to track their time, attendance, and scheduling. Help them learn how to use the software to ensure your business is running as efficiently as possible in real-time.

Employee Accountability

Employees must realize they will be accountable when it comes to learning, understanding, and adhering to your time clock software policies.

You should clearly define the consequences of late punch-ins or even missed punches. Be transparent with your employees and let them know your time attendance clock will track and report any potential problems. 

Buddy Punch can help you manage employee time and attendance. Administrators, managers, and employees can be notified by email or push notification if the employee is early, late, or has missed a shift altogether.

It's important to continually monitor employee time tracking information. You can use this data to take corrective actions if necessary. You can also determine which employees are working hard and if they require a raise or promotion.

Tracking and reviewing employee time is an important part of reducing tardiness. If you don’t know who’s chronically late, you can’t take corrective action steps. Time clock software can be set up to notify you if an employee is late or has missed a punch altogether.

2. Track

You aren’t able to manage what you don’t measure. Once you’ve instructed employees and have set your expectations, it is time to track performance.

Track Time Easily with Time Clock Software

If you aren’t tracking time and attendance with software, then now is a great time to start. Buddy Punch includes a rich set of employee time and attendance tracking features.

Tracking employee time and attendance has never been easier. There are several options for tracking time, which includes biometric time clock software, mobile app, PIN punch clocks, and more. 

Regardless of the time punching method you choose, measurement is your goal. After all, tracking employee time and attendance is at the core of your workforce strategy.

What To Watch For

Buddy Punch allows you to monitor employee time tracking. You will be able to see early punches, late punches as well as missed punches.

Employees will inevitably make mistakes, but it’s the chronic problems you want to keep an eye out for.

You will want to pay specific attention to reports and automated alerts. Look for frequent offenders and address employees early in the process. Catching tardiness problems early means following up and correcting action before the problem becomes more substantial.

Streamlining and Optimization

You also can’t improve what you don’t measure. Tracking time and attendance can reveal potential ways to optimize your processes. You can see which employees are performing better and how they may be eligible for advancement. 

You can also see which employees are underperforming. Take the time to meet with your underperforming employees one on one to come up with a plan to reduce tardiness. Track their progress and respond accordingly to any pre-determined consequences for not changing behavior.

By tracking employee time and attendance, you may also discover where process problems exist. For example, if an employee is continually late for a specific job, it may be due to poor working conditions. Look for ways to make improvements that translate to motivated employees.

Managers should have one on one meetings with employees who are chronically late to help them take step to correct their behavior.

Employees need to understand that you take your time and attendance policies seriously. You can convey this by taking corrective actions whenever an issue arises.

3. Enforce

Enforcing your time tracking policies will streamline performance and optimize efficiency. As you learn more about employee behavior, you can make appropriate adjustments to enforcement. Automated restrictions, such as punch limiting, will guarantee employees are working on what they should be and at the right time.

Schedule Enforcement Reduces Tardiness

With Buddy Punch, you can set schedule restrictions that prohibit early punch in or late punch outs. It won’t take long for employees to realize they are on a schedule with punch limiting.

Punch limiting means employees have a specific window of time they can punch in or out. Missed punches should result in a meeting with HR and an opportunity for you to reinforce rules.

Automated time clock software can help reduce errors by presenting only relevant options. For example, if an employee punches out for lunch, their only option is to punch back in once their lunch is over.

With Buddy Punch, you can better enforce your work schedule. Together with punch limiting, you’ll be operating at peak efficiency.

Focus On Continual Tardiness

Reporting and notifications can help you find employees with chronic tardiness. Based on the protocol set up, you should confront continual offenders as early as possible. 

Set deadlines for correction will help you steer chronic offenders in the correct direction. Doing so also signals to other employees that you are serious about time and attendance tracking.

You should share tardiness data with repeat offenders to remind them you are paying attention. Data will reinforce your position on time tracking and can provide a legal groundwork for future actions.

Consistent Enforcement

Apply your rules and consequences consistently; stick to your policies and procedures. Fairness can provide a solid legal footing and remove the politics of favoritism.

Buddy Punch allows employees to view all vital information. They can log in and view their time and attendance records. They are also able to see historical time card information, estimated pay rates, and past as well as current schedules.

Don’t forget, employees who have access to policies and procedures are more likely to follow them. Employers who track engagement are more proficient and less likely to have problems.

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