Time and attendance strategies - Part 1

How important is this data?...Very Much! We looked at derivative studies and used four key performance criteria to distinguish the Best-in-Class from Industry Average and Laggard organizations. The four metrics reflect an organization's ability to reduce payroll errors, minimize inaccuracies, and improve business outcomes

1. Payroll Mistakes: In addition to the time and cost associated with redoing a pay check, there is a risk associated with the increased burden on HR and reduced employee satisfaction. Over the past two years the burden on HR, as has the case been with duties in most other job descriptions, has increased substantially. HR Automation and HRMS is slowly becoming the norm for wmployee management. Adding more manual workflows to the process due to payroll errors will impact HR’s productivity and its strategic impact to the business. Moreover, payroll errors also impact employee productivity and satisfaction as they work to address them with HR / payroll staff. Therefore, it is critical that time and attendance data is accurate in order to ensure employees are paid what they deserve and also ensure that there is no instance of payroll overpayment. This metrics is defined by the average percentage of pay checks that require redo every period.

2.  Timesheet accuracy: This is defined by the per cent of time sheets that require modification on behalf of the manager or HR. When it comes to efficiency and the burden on the operational manager, modifying timesheets after creation to account for errors, addressing proven violations such as time theft or buddy-punching (not to mention consequent actions or reprimands), and working with HR on other related tasks, can be very time consuming. Accuracy is critical to maximize a payroll manager's time for, and attention to, the core competencies of the business. It also improves HR’s ability to focus on more strategic elements.

3. Paid time off accrual calculation and compliance: These two metrics are essential to the Best-in-Class definition. The third top-ranked factor driving investments in workforce management efforts is compliance. Since leave management, especially as it relates to paid time off / earned time off accruals and other regulation mandates (such as FMLA in the US), affects compliance, We decided to include these two indicators in its definition of the three maturity classes. Paid-time off accuracy is measured by the error rate in accruals, and compliance is measured by improvement in audit score over the previous period in which it was measured.

Other Metrics: Cost and Engagement

When used effectively with business performance data, time and attendance data can be used strategically to make better decisions that impact labour costs and payroll processing. It empowers the payroll manager with many advantages. Though not used to determine Best-in-Class performance, overtime cost analysis showed that capturing accurate time and attendance data does improve deployment decisions. Organizations that achieved top performance indicated that 6% of incurred overtime costs were unplanned versus 8% for all others. Another metric that respondents reported on was the change in manual transactions handled by HR as it related to time and attendances inquiries or cases. Best-in-Class organizations reported a 6% drop in this metric versus 1% for all others.  

The last metric worth mentioning that correlates to timekeeping and leave management is engagement. Follow-up conversations with several organizations showed that they were faced with employee reports of unfair preferential treatment among managers in awarding certain employees with overtime hours, certain shifts, or time off. And as a result, employee engagement has suffered. We found that Best-in-Class organizations on average reported 70% engagement versus 39% for their counterparts. In fact, 83% of Best-in-Class companies in our study directly attribute positive changes in revenue to improved engagement. 

HR Automation - Overview

HR automation is the transformation of the whole HR database to an electronic database interface. The HR department is one of the departments in most organizations that have the largest amount of paperwork and documentation. With such a load of documentation to be done, a lot of system errors can be incurred in terms of employee profiles, pension plans and account information. HR automation is the best course of action to take to create a high performance and easy access HR system for your organization.

One of the major benefits of HR automation is the amount of organization you get from compiling data. You could find yourself with a backlog of employee data that has not been properly filed or listed over the years when you don’t have a digital HR system. Digital HR systems are good for compiling and categorizing HR data in an organized electronic filing system that is more functional and organized than a manual HR processing system. Upgrading new employee information is even easier when you have easy access to a cluster of similar info.
HR automation enables easy access to record through one interface. This HR document management system enables an easier way to access large loads of information through the press of a button. Technology has extended to us easier and more organized ways of accessing information fast, with HR automation; you don’t have to go through piles of paperwork to find information. The document access is also secured for different user access levels. This is through identification systems that indicate the different employee and employer levels such as passwords and employee numbers.
HR automation offers content management solutions such as scanning and indexing of files for electronic storage. This is much better than the manuals filing systems since keeping track of filed information is easier and it takes less business hours that could have been spent on other levels of employee productivity. The scanning compresses large amounts of paperwork and therefore eliminates the cost of filing cabinets and offsite storage of large bundles of paper work. Condensing paperwork is also one of the most important elements of the digital HR. HR automation also allows for back storage of documents in various levels that don’t take large amounts of space.
Misfiled documents and missing data is a HR system nightmare that could cost an organization millions of money. The HR automation guarantees reduced chances of misfiled documents since the categorization of data is based on an organized system and digital HR systems can also locate errors in filing information with the right kind of enabled features. 
HR automation has facilitated a better and organized HR system of operations that requires less employee labor and takes a lot less time in processing, organizing and recovery of data. The Digital HR system is what gives your business a competitive edge in current technological advanced business fields. 

Minerva Time Office Implementation for one of the largest manufacturers of tyres in the world challenged by management of their shift cycles

The client was looking for a complete time office solution for their plant in the upcoming industrial belt of Chennai. They were facing stiff challenges in managing their shifts and rosters. Here is how Minerva Human Resource Management Systems from TenXLabs came to be their best choice.

Client Overview

The client is an OEM supplier to some of the most established commercial automotive manufacturers like Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland and Eicher from its Chennai plant. The relatively new Chennai unit has already produced 3 million passenger car tyres, a testament to the dynamics of the workforce in the facility. However, during the start of the operations, there was a pressing need to set up an effective time office system. The facility had a workforce of 3000 employees and required an effective Human Resource Management System (HRMS).

Challenges

The human resource management was handled by a team of three before our HRMS solution was implemented. The sole function of 2 members in the HR team was to collect data for processing attendance reporting and payroll for the entire staff. The labour work force did not have access to the in-house HR system because the data was scattered over spreadsheets and custom reports. All biometric reports needed manual follow ups to take stock of regularization errors and missing attendance details. With a workforce of 3000 employees, the HR division was looking for a customized HR Automation that could handle the full spectrum of HR functions.

Pain Areas

• Shift Creation and Management – There were three shifts to be managed. Two of the shifts were round the clock shifts that covered production on the floor. The third one was for the administrative staff.
• Roster Creation – Roster creation was a weekly manual effort that required hours of planning and involved dedicated time to be put in by the entire HR Team.
• Regularization issues – Problems pertaining to regularization like 'tailgating' etc. were manually tracked. This meant that the HR team had to look up month end raw biometric data and find missing inputs and cross check with the employees in person.

·         Leave attendance management and payroll manager – With a labour force of 3000 employees, the plant needed a robust and customizable HRMS platform that could reduce the turnaround time for processing attendance data and deriving payroll information for a given month within just a few hours.

Solution

A customized version of Minerva human resource management system hrms and PayGenie was implemented and launched within 14 days. TenXLabs provided a frugally engineered yet powerful software solution which could:

• Ensure that regularization was not a cumbersome process. For example, if there were missing biometric attendance data seen by the system, an alert was created and passed on to HR the same day. It allowed the team to cut down on collating information at the end of the month.
• Payroll processing was handled through a customized version of PayGenie. All data was designed to go through the system cutting down on manual data collection.
• The payroll engine had customizable rules that allowed the team to tweak. 
  
  Where there were instances of system side support, TenXLabs was available for assistance. However, such requests have been observed to be on the lower side.

Benefits

• Minerva HRMS suite cost approximately 4 to 5% of what they would have spent for an enterprise resource planning system – with extended benefits and flexibility.
• 90% of online entry and data related tasks were reduced. Data is not aggregated monthly but daily – giving instant insights.
• Data is not collected manually. One person for the team can now take care of the plant's entire HR function with just the help of the Minerva HRMS suite.
• Now the labor force can also access the system through HR Automation function. 
  Developing a World Class Integrated HRMS is our Mission We take deep interest to assist your company's most important assets – human assets. HR automation is a critical process for boosting productivity within the organization. HRMS tools give management the ability to recruit right talent, improve employee morale and retain talent among other benefits. A system that automates these, if implemented correctly, will pay for itself and save the company much pain.

TenXLabs' PayGenie Software Implementation for a dynamic Wealth Management Company with an ever-so complex HR environment

They required a system that could manage a complex HR environment with a dynamic payroll scenario that required custom rules to process payroll. This was needed because they had both high attrition levels as well as aggressive hiring every month. As a result of continuous changes to payroll, payroll management was becoming a complex task for them. The firm had to have a human resource management information system in place in order to maintain its large amount of data transactions in an accurate manner.

TenXLabs PayGenie implementation was chosen for its scalability and ability to handle a complex rule based payroll management module.

Client Overview

The client's tryst with excellence in customer relations began in 1987. Today, they have emerged as one of the most respected Stock-Broking and Wealth Management Companies in India. With its unique retail-focused stock trading business model, this broking firm is committed to providing excellent value for money to all its clients. The Group is a member of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the two leading Commodity Exchanges in the country: NCDEX & MCX. They are also registered as a Depository Participant with CDSL.

Pain Areas

The custom requirements of this firm needed a bundled Payroll Module with Human Resource Management System (HRMS).

·                     The firm’s reports were manually processed for payroll. This led to payroll errors.

·                     Improper leave/attendance management led to persistent gaps in loss of pay instance tracking, and made leave processing and leave balance calculation for each payroll cycle difficult.

·                     Attrition and frequent change in staff data mandated by new hires and inter departmental human resource allocations was posing a challenge in maintaining the HR information system.

·                     Due to the lack of HR automation, the existing payroll software was not scalable to handle a large employee database (Estimated at around 10,000 employees and rapidly growing).

·                     Due to improper salary management system, full and final settlement for exits was a challenging process in terms of accuracy, cost and effort factors, and this demanded accurate payroll processing.

·                     The company was organized into multiple legal entities. The management information system was not up to date. Hence, there was no fluidic system at the given time that could amalgamate data across entities into a single front end.

·                     An estimate of one or two business days for getting the data in-line with the HRMS database and cost of errors.

Solution

TenXLabs' customized version of PayGenie took care of the firm's Payroll solution needs. PayGenie saw the need for a payroll manager who could manage and control the payroll errors and put in place a salary processing system.

·                     In terms of scalability, the implementation used state of the art SQL Express based processing standards, ideal for an organization with this transaction volume.

·                     Technical handshake was achieved within 10 days.

·                     The implementation of PayGenie integrated with the firm's existing HRMS seamlessly.

·                     The implementation included powerful customizations like the auto payroll calculator (deriving custom rules basis business inputs from the HR team), which improved payroll accuracy and brought down errors like payroll overpayment.

·                     As the salary payment software was put in place, the calculation of settlement numbers for the bulk employee exits were processed without any stress on the available resources.

·                     With the introduction of the HR software for payroll and with subsequent and extensive support, the firm was ensured of smooth transition into HR automation.

Benefits

·                     With the custom reports payroll software in place, excel based data inputs were cut down to zero. The payroll software seamlessly worked with the HRMS.

·                     The pay management system, reduced the time required for auto calculation of the payroll by more than 50%.

·                     The salary processing system, auto calculated the bulk upload of salary and exit settlement and resolved the need for HR to review it manually.

·                     PayGenie implementation managed all legal entities through a single front end console.

TenXLabs provides user friendly, dependable, cost effective payroll software. Flexibility is the key, whether the requirement is a simple payroll software or a complete solution by integrating other systems in HR domain namely Employee Self Service, HRIS etc.