How to Track Employee Time Without Insulting Them

There comes a day where you as a small business owner find that you need to start tracking your employee's time. Thoughts of employee rebellion and havoc in the office fill your mind. How is my team going to react?  Are they going to hate me? Will they think I don't trust them?  They just might, unless you follow these 4 simple steps.

Step 1 - Buy Your Employees Some Pizzas

Schedule a company wide lunch meeting by letting everyone know that it’s going to be a free lunch. People loves pizza and I suggest ordering several variations so every team member gets what they like. Also, let it be known that you need to talk about something after eating lunch; this can help prepare them for any information that you will be giving them. 

Step 2 - Explain Why Implementing An Employee Time Clock Was A Difficult Decision

Explain that the decision to implement a time tracking system was one that you pondered for a long time. Be honest and let your employees know that you were worried how they would feel about punching a clock. Go ahead and get a little emotional here - no crying please. The idea here is to let them know that you really care and that this was not just a way to crack down and control your employees.

Step 3 - Explain How A Time Clock Benefits The Employees

Many employees view tracking time as a negative thing, but there are many upsides for your team.  Here are a few examples you can use to show that moving to a time clock system will be in the employee's interest.

• More Accurate - Few things are more irritating than getting shorted on your paycheck. Using a modern punch clock eliminates these errors.
• It’s Easy & Cool - Using an online time clock is easy for you and your employees. They can log on, see their time cards, message you and even request PTO.
• Keeps Thing Fair - Explain that you trust your employees and give a scenario where a new hire is constantly late or leaves early. Then ask how would the team feel about this? The employees can possibly look at the situation differently from another perspective. 
• Keeps The Company Accountable - Time tracking systems add a layer of protection for the employees. The employer cannot fudge hours in excel or on paper. An online time clock keeps everything stored digitally with a change log (audit trail).

Step 4 - Explain How An Online Time Clock Benefits Your Company

In this last step, we will talk about how a punch clock helps the company. Start off by reminding your employees that you are all a TEAM and that if it benefits the company it will benefit the employees. The main benefits to the company are that is saves time and money for producing time cards for payroll. Time and money are saved in many ways, here are a few big ones:

• Faster Employee Hours Collection - no more handwritten hours, emails or I thought I told you this many hours.
• Eliminates Manual Time Card Calculations - Up to an 8% error rate according to the American Payroll Association in hour calculation can occur. Using an automated system will auto calculate employee hours.
• PTO Tracking - Modern time clocks offer integrated PTO (Paid Time Off). Employees can request PTO and managers can approve or deny it. Easily customize allotments and accruals.
• Access Anywhere - An online time clock can be accessed from anywhere. Adjust, approve and send timecards to payroll from work, home or on vacation.

If you follow these 3 steps when implementing a punch in/out software, you will find that most employees are actually a bit excited for the change. It’s really about how you frame the change and if you frame it correctly, your employees will accept the new system without a problem. After a few weeks your employees will love tracking time and won’t want to work without it

OnTheClock has a system just for you, please check us out or give us a try.