VCS Blog

The public sector is responsible for ensuring public safety while effectively managing their workforce. With such important jobs on the line, it’s imperative that government workforces are armed with robust time, attendance and workforce solutions that best serve their most complex scheduling needs.

If you’re in search of a time and attendance solution for your agency, use the checklist below to make sure all your boxes are ticked to ensure you’re getting the most bang for your buck, all while reaping the best benefits.

Anyone who has tried to track employee time manually knows just how time-consuming it is to complete a weekly schedule, never-mind the fact that they know how frustrating it is. Entering employee work information is traditionally done by filling out an Excel spreadsheet, but in government workforces such as a police department - where extra duty and overtime calculations are commonplace - it is very difficult for administrators to keep track of day-to-day developments.

In addition to being equipped to handle complex shift patterns that often come along with the public sector workforce, time and attendance solutions can benefit government entities in a variety of ways. Read on below to learn more about the top 5 ways your workforce can benefit from tracking time and attendance.

Think time and attendance data can only help you in properly paying out your employees? Think again. While these systems are beneficial in automatically merging your data into payroll services, reducing the risk of human error, there’s much more they’re also useful for.

In the public sector especially, employees work around the clock, which translates into complex schedules. With so many on the workforce, and each with very important jobs to do, it is crucial that employees with the right skills are place in the right position at the right time – to put it simply, there isn’t any room for scheduling errors.

Public safety employees have enough tasks on their plate, but the good news is: automated scheduling technology can help relieve some of that administrative burden – this way, they can remain more focused on the frontline.

Today’s business leaders are leveraging their employee’s time and attendance data to help make informed and impactful decisions for their respective organizations. 

While many might think attendance data simply notes who’s on the clock and who’s not, it actually goes far beyond those walls, making tracking employee activities and measuring engagement easier than ever before.

Read on below to find out more about what you can learn from time and attendance data.

If you’ve been searching for the perfect way to keep track of your roster of employees – when they clock in, when they clock out, and what tasks they’re tackling throughout the day in between – then you’ll likely want to consider implementing a time and labor management solution for your workforce.

No matter the industry, employee satisfaction should be a topic that's valued and held in high regard within your workforce. In fact, a recent Gallup pole has revealed that 51% of workers are looking to leave their current jobs. So why is over half of today's workforce looking to jump ship from their current employer?

Proactivity is the key in managing one’s workforce scheduling processes. Ensuring that you are always scheduling the right employees to work the right positions at the right times is paramount for any manager. A schedule needs to be determined before a shift starts, not configured during the shift. This simple paradigm shift of practicing proactive (instead of reactive) scheduling saves organizations tens of thousands of dollars by reducing overtime, fairly awarding extra duty, minimizing grievances, and cutting payroll processing time in half.

Shift bidding, the process of allowing employees to bid on shifts, is of the most effective components of a proactive scheduling philosophy. Businesses that practice shift bidding allow employees to view available shifts and rank those shifts in order of priority selection.

Biometric time clocks are a savior for fledgling HR departments attempting to use traditional punch or card swipe time clocks to accurately track their employees’ hours. Employees can punch in and out for work using a unique physical characteristic like a fingerprint. The technology stands in stark contrast to traditional systems, making it near impossible for buddy-punching to survive, and nearly eliminating the potential for fraud. The benefits aren’t exclusive to employers, though. Employees won’t have to worry about remembering a code or losing a swipe card, rather, they simply must scan their fingerprint or other feature into the system and they are ready to begin work. Despite the various benefits for both employers and employees, skepticism remains concerning the use of biometric employee time clocks. Most of this fear is rooted in misinformation, or a lack of understanding. So we have compiled a brief list of the most damaging myths concerning biometric time clock technology, as we attempt to debunk them and improve your workforce.