Work in manufacturing? These 4 issues will be very familiar…
Let’s start by prefacing this article by stating the very obvious: working in manufacturing is not for the faint-hearted. It’s an industry constantly on the go: Machinery, materials, people and especially ideas move extremely quickly. Production cycles often run around the clock and employees need to cover all manner of shifts, sometimes this means every minute of every day. If you aren’t using an efficient, cloud-based time and attendance system, there’s a good chance you are making life considerably harder than it needs to be for your business operation.
In such a dynamic sector, having a reliable time and attendance system is an essential part of managing your workforce. Let’s explain why.
Like everything else in life, tracking and managing employee attendance has undergone dramatic changes over the years – for one thing, it had to – in the face of ever-changing legal regulations. Managers nowadays want and need access to accurate data in real time and employees also know their rights with regards to fair pay, the amount of holiday they are owed and overtime rules.
Take a minute to look at these 4 issues. How familiar do they sound?
- Not knowing which employees are on which site. Knowing your staff are at work is one thing – knowing where they are is another essential piece of information. Manufacturing is an industry in which it’s not at all uncommon for a company to be operating across multiple sites simultaneously. Keeping track of where workers are clocking in to and out of from is vital and helps to eliminate time theft. This is especially the case in the event of an emergency, when having an accurate headcount at your disposal can be a literal lifesaver.
- Planning holiday requests is a struggle. Production usually comes with a deadline, so you cannot afford to suddenly find that 20 members of staff have somehow booked the same week off. Paper request forms can be a logistical nightmare, and are often lost, misread, not handed in or misinterpreted. This can lead to having to take temporary staff, which brings with it a series of challenges – and extra expense – that could have been avoided.
- Managing different payroll rates takes hours. Even if you’re accurately making a note of your employees’ hours, do you still need to manually calculate their pay rates? A line manager won’t earn the same as a general worker, and the night shift will, more than likely, be paid at a premium rate. Guaranteeing your workers are paid correctly and on time is hugely important, especially when it comes to having an accurate picture of the true cost of all your overheads. Manually processing payroll is often laden with errors.
- Making sure you stay compliant with the latest labour regulations is tough. Just like other industries, manufacturing managers need to make sure their firm is legally compliant with matter such as: working hours; health & safety in the workplace; statutory leave and time off; break and lunch times.
With its easy-to-use format, uAttend can make issues like these a thing of the past. Its cloud-based software allows you track employees’ attendance effortlessly, by capturing and storing their clocking data on your account, which you can access at any time.
It also gives you real time data of who’s in, out or missing from work, as well as where they clocked in. This allows you to check they are where you need them to be.
Other features of uAttend include: Anytime access to real-time clocking-in data, including break rules and lunch deductions; managing holiday requests; Creation of reports and exporting payroll data (including overtime).
For a full description of uAttend’s many features and benefits, click here.
If you like the sound of what you’ve heard so far, contact us and we will happily explain more. Tell us about your unique business needs and we’ll show you how uAttend can make your life easier from day one.
Or, read this case study from one of our many happy customers in the manufacturing industry.