The COVID-19 pandemic encouraged multiple companies to implement HR management and time tracking systems. While the lockdowns are currently sealed off and the risk of pandemics appears to be mitigated by vaccinations, one should not abandon the implemented time tracking system so easily.
The COVID-19 pandemic was not only one of the most dramatic events of the XXI century and is yet far from being closed. It is also a wide-scale social experiment on the possibilities given by remote work and social activities.
According to European Commission data, before the pandemic, no more than 5.4% of EU employees have ever worked remotely. The first lockdown has been a game-changer, with up to 40% of the European workforce switching to telework. This was made possible by using cloud-based tools to track time and deliver results from home, with Calamari being one of the most interesting examples. The number of users of our software have risen by 33% from the first lockdown.
While the experts were talking about the “new normal” and the hybrid workforce, multiple companies sighed with relief when returning to work after covid. Some of them, having their employees back in the walls, prepared to scrap the time tracking and time off management tools. Yet doing that would be a mistake.
While the attendance tracking and leave management systems are considered typical, day-to-day business tools used in a variety of industries, these systems bring multiple advantages for a company. While these oftentimes come unnoticed, it is worth naming them, and by that, list the reasons why to keep these systems after the pandemic.
Tracking the time is literally writing down what is being done each particular minute. If done properly, it brings miraculous results when it comes to boosting productivity.
Avoiding multitasking – when there is a task to do, which is written down, named, and tracked, the temptation to multitask is significantly reduced. According to Forbes, multitasking reduces productivity by up to 40% - and for that only it is a good idea to keep it at bay.
Bringing focus – when not multitasking and having straight information about the work to do, the employee can focus on it. And with that, one can reach the heights of his or her productivity.
Supporting the planning – if there is a job to be done at a certain time, there is a strong need to name and manage tasks to be done. Time tracking is a great tool to encourage better project management in the company, simply to ensure that every employee can name the task to do and has a clear queue of things to deliver. Idling is cool, but not as a constant way of working.
HR attendance tracking and leave management system boosts the transparency to the levels unseen before. With such a system, every employee can check how many days off one has, how many have his or her peers, and when the upcoming leaves are planned.
Also, the system keeps accessible and clear information about the employees working at the moment – be that remotely, in the office, or anywhere else. Thus, getting the information about the estimated time of response (today after the meeting, tomorrow, or no sooner than after the vacation) becomes much easier. When there is a more sophisticated system used, like Calamari, one can add the information about a break that is occurring at the moment, bringing even more information.
The transparency comes with another advantage – it brings proof that everybody is equal in the company, there are no people with an unlimited number of leave days or working fewer hours than the rest with no consequences.
With transparency comes flexibility. When having access to a reliable time tracking system, one can manipulate his or her working day in many different ways unseen before. It can be either splitting it into parts, taking breaks to pick up a child from school, or taking a power nap at noon.
If the time tracking system is considered a reliable and trustworthy reference for the HR and operations team, employees get new ways to shape their workdays.
While it is necessary to attend meetings, many types of jobs (writing, data analysis, programming, preparing a presentation…) can (and should!) be done alone, for example early in the morning or late at night, depending on one preferred working time.
Time tracking is obligatory for legal reasons. In the EU employers have to track the time of employees after the legal battle between the Spanish branch of Deutsche Bank and trade unions. The European Court of Justice decided that tracking the time is the only way to prevent abuses and ensure fair treatment for all people employed.
The EU law is highly specific when it comes to the working time, breaks, and employees’ rights to rest. Time tracking is the only way the employer can prove that the compliance is kept and there are no violations.
In the US time tracking is the basis of counting the wage and is forced by the employment act. The Fair Labor Standards Act delivers an enumeration of the reasons why the employer needs to track the time of the employee and use cases that require the working time data.
Thus, keeping a convenient and battle-tested time tracking tool boosts compliance and ensures that this challenge is effectively mitigated.
Modern systems like Calamari are leveraging the power of the newest solutions and provide the users with multiple ways to clock in and out or to make leave requests. Users can use the mobile app to do so, and by that, they can request a leave without leaving the bed – assuming they are heavily sick it can make a difference.
The system is available also via a web app or a Kiosk, depending on the type of company it is used by. Thus, time tracking gets convenient this way, and getting back to the time of a stopwatch and notebook is counter-productive.
COVID-19 pandemic was a shock for the entire world. But one would be either foolish or overly optimistic to assume that there will be no surprises or unpredictable events in the future.
Yet the unexpected is undoubtedly coming with the climate changes that are already disturbing our daily lives and are going to do it further in the near future. According to a BBC report, 2020 was the hottest year in Europe in recorded history. The CO2 emissions hit record-breaking levels of 417 parts per million in 2020. The second-highest rate was recorded around four million years ago, in the middle Pliocene, when global temperatures were 2-4 celsius degrees higher and sea levels were 10-25 meters higher than now.
And the changes are occurring now – New York is sinking. There were wildfires in Australia just before the COVID-19 madness started. The world is changing and assuming that COVID-19 is the only unexpected event is irresponsible. With online HR tools for time tracking and absence management companies can manage their workflow in a more agile way, letting the employees work from nearly any place in the world – for example, unsunken or unburned ones.
Last but not least – implementing a solution like that is always costly. There is a need to train the team, get them used to the system and run new procedures. These start to be part of other activities in the company – for example, the payroll or invoicing can harness the data gathered from the HR system.
There can be multiple ways to use the data and the features of the HR system for the benefit of the company and employees have already seen that they are probably implementing the related workflows without the knowledge of their boss.
Apart from that, the company can see the benefits enumerated above. The tossing of the system will strip the company of them giving nothing in exchange. And implementing the system again would come with unnecessary and avoidable costs.
Implementing an HR tech is a relatively simple and avoidable way to boost the performance and productivity of the company. Thus, once implemented, the solution will work for the benefit of the company – and scrapping it is counterproductive.
If you wish to talk more about the benefits of the HR management system like Calamari, don’t hesitate to contact us now! We will be happy to talk! And if you want to be up to date about news connected to employee management, follow our HR blog.
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