Managing staffing costs is one of the biggest challenges for any business, no matter the size of your workforce. From absenteeism to recruiting, employees can take a big chunk out of your profit margin, so keeping costs to a minimum without harming productivity is non-negotiable.
Time and attendance systems, along with smart recruiting techniques, can all go towards keeping your costs to a minimum. Here are our tip tops.
Manual timesheets allow for human error, meaning you could end up accidentally paying more than the hours employees actually worked. By using a clocking-in machine and time and attendance software, your employees can clock in digitally even when they’re working remotely, ensuring you have accurate scheduling data and don’t waste money overpaying.
Absenteeism poses one of the biggest risks to your business’s bottom line. While staff will obviously occasionally take time off, and that’s a given, you can reduce absenteeism by keeping an eye on frequent absences and judging them against the Bradford Factor with time and attendance systems.
Plus, with time and attendance systems that allow for holiday requests and approvals all centralised on one dashboard, you can make it easier to ensure employees aren’t absent at the same time, which can negatively impact productivity.
By using employee self-service portals such as time and attendance software, you can automate complex processes and allow workers to take control of actions such as requesting days off and shifts and inputting their own digital timesheet with the help of a clocking-in machine.
Hiring is one of the highest costs to a business, but cross-training employees can reduce the need for new staff members. Cross-training employees allows them to cover multiple roles and responsibilities, meaning you can operate more efficiently even with a leaner team.
While this may require giving existing employees a model pay rise, this will still cost less than hiring an entirely new team member, so it makes sense to spend a little to save a lot.
Overtime is one of the biggest employee costs a business faces. Oftentimes, it’s unnecessary, especially if you have a robust scheduling system you can use to ensure your shifts are always adequately covered.
By monitoring work patterns with time and attendance software, managers can identify teams or roles that frequently exceed standard hours and work on spreading these shifts out to more workers, which would ensure you’re not paying more per hour for employees.
Recruiting costs more than you might think. Not only are there the costs involved in hiring, but also the work that doesn’t get done whilst there’s no employee in the role. While there are ways to cut recruitment costs, an even more effective technique is to stop workers from leaving in the first place.
Improve employee satisfaction and engagement by asking for feedback and implementing it where appropriate. Small incremental pay rises for staff who’ve amassed years of experience at your workplace are much more wallet-friendly than losing staff and having to replace them.
Automating manual processes by using software, such as time and attendance systems, can mean you require less manpower. This, in turn, reduces your staffing requirements and costs.
Using the data from time and attendance software can help you make more informed decisions. With a bird’s-eye view of where your money is going in terms of staffing costs, you can more accurately establish where you can save.
Recruitment is pricy, and some level of cost is unavoidable. You’ve got advertising, sometimes agency fees, and the cost of training a new staff member.
However, by streamlining the recruitment process, you can at least reduce these costs, even if you don’t eliminate them entirely. Internal promotions are much cheaper than hiring externally, so this should be your first port of call when you’ve got a role to fill. Plus, automated digital tracking systems save time and reduce your HR team’s manual workload.
If your budget’s tight but you still want to retain staff rather than face the cost of new employees, you can focus on keeping existing employees happy with perks that aren’t pay rises. Access to employee self-service portals, more annual leave, cycle schemes, and the offer of post-work social events can all keep employees happy and loyal without having to hand out huge pay rises.
Time and attendance systems boast a myriad of benefits, but one of the most significant is the way they can save money on staffing costs. Through a range of features from clocking-in machines with state-of-the-art technology to absence management, time and attendance software like Computime allows you to keep an eye on all employee data in one place and manage your costs and workload more easily. Start your free trial today and see how much you save.
