White Paper
Time and Attendance Strategies
for the Modern Workforce
Moving beyond yesterday’s solutions
in workforce management
Time and Attendance Strategies for the Modern Workforce
Executive Summary
Organizations today are operating in a period of breathtaking technological
change and integration. Technologies that were viewed as groundbreaking only
five or 10 years ago are now deemed almost out of date. From separate devices
such as the iPod®, GPS units, and digital cameras, we’ve seen the emergence of
the iPhone® and tablets that contain all of that functionality — and more — in a
single device. Users have become accustomed to an unprecedented level of ease
and access with regard to the information they need in their personal lives, and
this trend is driving expectations in business applications and communications.
The result is a new generation of workforce management solutions for today’s
modern workforce. With access to technologies that are easy to use, personalized,
and intuitive, employees are happier, more productive, and require little — if any
— training to navigate tools. Leading to a fundamental shift in the ways in which
organizations manage the workforce.
Along with the recognition that solutions must adapt to the modern workforce,
organizations are learning that the way they implement workforce management
solutions can play a critical role in success. Recent research presents compelling
evidence that the integration and automation of time and attendance with key
workforce management processes is a true driver of performance. According
to the Aberdeen Group, integration with payroll, scheduling, and leave
management distinguishes best-in-class organizations from average performers
and laggards.1
Aberdeen identified three critical factors for best-in-class success:2
•Integrating time and attendance with payroll, HR, scheduling, and leave
management to drive performance
The proof is in the results.
Best-in-class companies
are achieving stunning
performance in their efforts to
manage time and attendance.
HOW DOES YOUR
PERFORMANCE COMPARE
TO BEST IN CLASS?3
•Improving employee engagement and accuracy with self-service access to
timesheets, schedules and HR information
• 0.5% error rate in payroll
•Having visibility into time data, utilizing business intelligence tools, and
integrating with business data for improved decision making
• 0.6% error rate in earned
• 0.5% error in time tracking
time/paid time accruals
• 9% improvement in
By integrating time and attendance with other workforce management functions,
companies can support organizationwide and global initiatives and take
advantage of emerging technology trends such as easy-to-use consumer-oriented
user interfaces and dashboards, cloud services, and mobile access.
1-3
compliance scores
Jayson Saba, Time and Attendance Strategies (Aberdeen Group, 2011), 2.
2
Time and Attendance Strategies for the Modern Workforce
Consumer products are changing the landscape
Technology products have made tremendous advancements in recent years. What
was once considered cutting edge is now generally accepted as commonplace
and maybe even outdated. Our expectations for how we interact with these
devices have also changed. Just a few years ago it was common to use a laptop
to work remotely and access the Internet. Mobile phones were ubiquitous and
smartphones were increasing in popularity. Digital cameras made it easy to
share photos online. Portable game systems offered high-definition graphics. We
carried portable CD players and copied music to MP3 players and iPods. GPS
navigation systems were becoming more widely used.
Fast forward to today, when an Android®, iPhone, or iPad® delivers all of that
functionality in a single device. Features can be personalized for each user, and
applications are so user friendly that manuals and documentation have almost
become a thing of the past. And one multifunctional system is much more
affordable than several single-function devices.
As a result of these changes, today’s business users have a fundamentally
different attitude toward workplace technology:
•They have been rewired to expect everything they touch to do more in a more
intuitive way, and they want it personalized to their needs
•They want instant access to everything
With technology dominating
every aspect of their
[millennials’] lives, it is
perhaps not surprising that
41% say they prefer
to communicate
electronically at work
than face to face or even
over the telephone. They
routinely make use of their
own technology at work and
three-quarters believe that
access to technology makes
them more effective at work.4
•They want to manage work from anywhere
•They want a simple, easy-to-understand user experience
Pressures are coming from inside — and out
Aberdeen has found that the uncertainty surrounding the
economy is still forcing organizations to confront cost control
through efficiencies and more optimized deployment.
Other challenges reported by survey respondents include
meeting changing customer expectations and using time and
attendance data in tandem with business performance, enabling
decision makers to optimize staff deployment and improve
business processes.5
72%
Economic
pressures
forcing cost
control
51%
25%
Changing customer Regulatory
demands driving requirements
better staff
or union
allocation
agreements
FIGURE 1 Top pressures driving
workforce management6
illennials at work: Reshaping the workplace, PwC, accessed January 16, 2012,
M
http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/managing-tomorrows-people/future-of-work/key-findings.jhtml.
Survey of 4,364 recent university graduates about their expectations of work.
5-6
Saba, Time and Attendance Strategies, 4.
4
3
Time and Attendance Strategies for the Modern Workforce
Among the barriers to efficiency that come from within is a lack of
process and policy standardization across the enterprise coupled
with the inability of business leaders to leverage workforce data
to drive better operational results.
Bringing your time and attendance
up to date
It’s simple, really. Outdated time and attendance systems are
painful. For managers, employees, and the business. Errors
increase costs and compliance risks. And because outdated
systems fail to leverage new technologies, they are difficult to
navigate, leading to low user adoption rates.
48%
41%
Inability to leverage
workforce data
to make better
decisions
Too much
time spent
on manual
transactions
Organizations that are still using simple time and attendance solutions, or
worse, relying on manual, semiautomated, or disparate systems could be
falling behind the times. By automating and integrating workforce management
processes, you can increase visibility and control of labor costs and mitigate
compliance risk.
The lack of integration with other systems, such as payroll, HR, absence management, and scheduling, makes it almost impossible to get a single, trusted view
of data, forcing managers to make decisions based on incomplete, inaccurate,
and often anecdotal information. This lack of visibility and control hampers
the organization’s ability to respond quickly to changing business conditions.
Other challenges include difficulties operating across a global environment and
increased challenges with legal, union, and regulatory compliance.
36%
Data integrity —
lack of high-quality
data or multiple/
disparate data
sources
FIGURE 2 Internal HR and
payroll challenges7
TRACKING TIME WITH
SPREADSHEETS?
Eighty-eight percent of
spreadsheets with more than
150 rows contain errors.8
Could you be a laggard?
The mature, integrated use of automated technology contributes significantly to
whether an organization can be deemed best in class, average, or a laggard. The
Aberdeen study shows that workforce management tools have a positive impact
on productivity, efficiency, and compliance.
How do you compare?
Best in Class9
•0.5% error rate in payroll
•0.5% error in time tracking
•0.6% error rate in earned-time/paid-time accruals
•9% improvement in compliance scores
Jayson Saba, The Future of Core HR (Aberdeen Group, 2010), 5.
Raymond Panko, What We Know About Spreadsheet Errors (University of Hawaii, May 2008).
9
Saba, Time and Attendance Strategies, 6.
7
8
4
Time and Attendance Strategies for the Modern Workforce
The difference between best-in-class organizations and those that don’t measure
up also extends to the hardware that supports workforce management functions.
Thirty-four percent of all surveyed organizations still use a fixed-mount time clock,
32 percent are using the phone to capture absences, and 31 percent still use
spreadsheets. In contrast, best-in-class organizations are 67 percent more likely
than their counterparts to use mobile access to punch in via a wireless device.10
Striving for best in class
As we noted earlier, best-in-class organizations use time and
attendance data to drive strategic business decisions that further their
long-term goals. These leading companies share a number of common
characteristics, including:11
•Automating timekeeping and leave management processes and
integrating these systems with payroll
•Utilizing analytics and reporting tools to leverage time data to
make better deployment decisions
“We expect to see significant
movement in transforming key
processes, including performance
management, as well as adoption
of mobile and social technologies
for processes such as recruiting,
workforce management, and
learning.” 12
•Empowering employees and managers to be self-sufficient through
self-service
Forrester Research
Integrating your time and attendance with payroll, HR, scheduling, and absence
management is critical to your ability to drive performance. This integration
empowers self-sufficiency through access to timesheets, schedules, and
HR information, improving employee engagement, manager productivity, and
accuracy. And with full visibility into time and attendance data, you can use
business intelligence tools to plan for growth, innovate, and foster continuous
improvement.
The workforce technology
adoption curve
The level and complexity of the technology you’ve adopted determines where
your organization falls on the workforce technology adoption curve, and
more importantly, provides a roadmap for steps you can take to improve. As
organizations move from laggard to best in class, they continue to automate and
integrate workforce management processes — moving beyond just time and
attendance data to full integration, self-service, and analytics. The strategy for
reaching your fullest workforce potential includes:
Saba, Time and Attendance Strategies, 17.
Saba, Time and Attendance Strategies, 2.
12
Forrester Research, Inc., Trends 2011: HRM Processes and Applications Move Ahead Despite Mixed Employment
Outlook, January 2011, http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/trends_2011_hrm_processes_and_
applications_move/q/id/57458/t/2?src=RSS_CustomFeed&cm_mmc=Forrester-_-RSS-_-Document-_-7.
10
11
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Time and Attendance Strategies for the Modern Workforce
•Automating and streamlining processes such as
time and attendance, HR, payroll, data collection, and absence management to control labor
costs and minimize compliance risk
Laggards
Best in Class
Labor Analytics
•Planning strategically with forecasting, scheduling, and hiring tools that help you get the
right employees at the right time and improve
productivity
•Executing your strategy to create operational
excellence by leveraging easy-to-use tools and
mobile technology that help guide decision
making
Average
Scheduling
Operational
Excellence
Activities/
Labor Costing
Self-Service
Absence
Hiring
Payroll
Data
Collection
HR
Timekeeping
Transactional
•Innovating through analytics and budgeting to
plan for growth and gain visibility and control
to foster continuous improvement
Automate and Integrate
The Foundation of Workforce Management
Going beyond time and attendance to integrated
workforce management
Most organizations implement time and attendance systems to address a
common business pain. It may be to control labor costs. It may be to improve
payroll accuracy and efficiency. Whatever the business driver that leads to
the investment, the data collected is primarily used for paying employees and
tracking their work time.
FIGURE 3 The workforce
technology adoption curve
THE ROADMAP TO
BEST IN CLASS13
• Gain senior executive buy-in
for the importance of time and
attendance strategy and tools in
However, there is a lot more value in this data than just punch-in and punch-out
information. Best-in-class companies track and analyze the data between the
punches and use this valuable information to reduce employee turnover, improve
business productivity, and help transform business processes.
When organizations integrate workforce management processes, high-quality
information becomes a reality. This data represents a single version of the truth,
allowing you to integrate analytical tools to get instant access and visibility and
make fast, accurate business decisions. By further engaging the workforce
with self-service, you actively empower your employees — increasing employee
engagement, improving satisfaction, and significantly reducing the number of
manual transactions. The end result allows you to control labor costs, minimize
compliance risk, and improve workforce productivity.
13
achieving business goals
• Provide operational managers
access to technologies to
leverage time data to improve
decision-making ability
• Continue to automate and
integrate systems to increase
accuracy and relieve HR and
business unit managers of
manual workflows
Saba, Time and Attendance Strategies, 2.
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Time and Attendance Strategies for the Modern Workforce
The impact of technology trends
As your organization moves toward best-in-class workforce management, IT
can be a proactive business partner in driving growth and innovation. Emerging
trends such as ease of use, mobile access, and cloud computing are helping
organizations increase responsiveness to user and business requirements and
speed reaction times for greater competitiveness.
Make it easy
The easier the solution, the higher the adoption rate. And without high user
adoption rates, you’re not going to achieve increased productivity, reduced labor
costs, and minimized compliance risks. Some of the hallmarks of usability and
ease of use include:
According to Gartner,
fewer than 30 percent
of the potential users
•Consumer-oriented interface
of organizations’ standard
•Easy access
business intelligence tools
•Personalization
use the technology. 14
•Integrated external content
•The information users want to see, when and how they want to see it
Make it mobile
Mobile management empowers managers and frontline employees by enabling
real-time communication that connects them to each other. The generation of
employees entering the workforce has become accustomed to iPhone-like ease
of use and instant access to information. Dated, cumbersome technology solutions are likely to face low user adoption and satisfaction rates.
Mobile technology can play a critical role in improving your workforce processes:
•Improve collaboration and communication
•Submit time-off requests, approve timecards, submit punches, and more
•Resolve exceptions and respond to employee requests in real time
•Use employees’ smartphone preferences to access familiar applications
•Leverage the GPS capabilities of your smartphone to track punch locations
Use the cloud
Rather than committing in-house resources, consider using cloud computing to
take the burden of hosting and managing workforce management applications
off your shoulders. The many options available today make technology solutions
attainable for a business of any size. And with cloud and SaaS services, you can
realize the added advantage of freeing your IT staff to focus on implementing
other strategic projects.
14
“Gartner Says Consumerization of BI Drives Greater Adoption,” Gartner, Inc., July 20, 2011,
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1748214.
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Time and Attendance Strategies for the Modern Workforce
Summary
Aberdeen found that nearly 60 percent of the organizations it surveyed
have implemented automated timekeeping.15 While important,
this step is not enough. Truly successful organizations go beyond
simple automation to integrate HR, payroll, scheduling, and absence
management; deliver self-service; and use analytics to drive decision
making. They leverage technology solutions that are easy to use, are
accessible where and when they are needed, and fit within each organization’s budget and IT requirements. This kind of single, centralized
workforce management solution gives organizations a foundation for
operating to their fullest workforce management potential.
“... true success lies in leveraging
self-service tools, analytics, and
integration with other core systems,
specifically scheduling, payroll,
and leave management. Ultimately,
the goal is to drive business
performance, where alleviating
tactical burdens on stakeholders
and leveraging valuable data are
the main ingredients of the recipe
for success.”
Jayson Saba
Aberdeen
15
Saba, Time and Attendance Strategies, 2.
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