How much is employee lateness costing your business?

Have you ever missed your train or gotten a flat tyre en route to work? Maybe your just not a morning person or you struggle to get the kids out for school before you head to the office?

Whatever the reason, when not measured and managed properly, employees’ lateness can cause businesses thousands of dollars each year in lost productivity and profits.

To understand exactly how much lateness could cost your organisation, let’s look at the example below.

Company ABC Pty Ltd has 150 employees.

10% of their workforce (15 employees) is persistently late for work by 10 minutes. Their average hourly pay is $25.00 p/h (10 minutes late represents $4.16)

Assuming there are 232 working days per year: 232 x 15 (late employees) x $4.16 ($ lost due to lateness) = $14,476.80 lost per year

Combine that with the lost productivity, extra overtime costs occurred when covering workload, and the order value of the contracts lost due to delays in delivery, and you can clearly see how just a few minutes lateness can really affect your bottom line.

So what can you do to address the issue? The Forum of Private Business proposes the following below steps:

1. Set boundaries

Your staff needs to know what you expect from them, therefore a clear lateness policy should be introduced and communicated across your workforce.

The policy should cover:

• The required standards of timekeeping, i.e. working hours, shift patterns, any flexi-time or flexible working arrangements
• Any consequences of persistent lateness
• What disciplinary action will be taken under the disciplinary procedure
• How your company will monitor time keeping, i.e. timesheets or clocking in machine
• If and how your staff will have to make up any time they have missed
• Who they should report lateness to if they know are going to be late and by when

2. Create a formal procedure

The Forum suggests that persistent lateness can often be resolved informally and the employee may be given an opportunity to improve.

This often proves to be a more effective way of resolving such an issue at an early stage - highlighting potential problems that you can quickly address and negating the need for an investigation and disciplinary meeting.

If after the informal action lateness continues to occur, it may create grounds for a formal disciplinary procedure.

3. Be fair and flexible

We’ve all been affected by unexpected events i.e. rail strikes, traffic accidents or inclement weather, which can impact on the time taken to travel to work.

Employers need to be realistic and understanding about occasional unavoidable problems with getting to work. They should always listen to employee’s reason for lateness, which may indicate problems concerning management, working relationships and work hours.

Where possible companies should plan ahead and be open to changing shift patterns, allowing temporary home-working or flexible working arrangements, if appropriate.

How to effectively monitor attendance and reduce the financial impact of Employee Tardiness

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that if you monitor employees’ attendance and absence patterns their overall presence rate will generally improve.

An automated Time and Attendance system can help reduce employee lateness by effectively monitoring and analysing working time and absence patterns. I for one know that if I have to register my attendance in the morning, I make double sure I make it into the office on time!

An effective Time and Attendance system also allows you to set up specific rules relating to your business operation. For example, you could set up a rule whereby once a person arrives late to work by 7 minutes, the system rounds that figure up to 15 minutes, meaning 15 minutes worth of pay will be reduced from your employee’s salary.

Continue to our website to find out more information about automated Time andAttendance systems and absence management modules.

Preventable job stress costs economy $730 million annually

Job strain related depression costs the economy an estimated $730 million every year, according to a new report released by VicHealth and Melbourne University this week.

Associate Professor Tony LaMontagne from the University of Melbourne School of Population Health, said that “job strain”, where workers have little control over their job, but who are under high pressure to perform, accounts for 13 per cent of depression in working men and 17 per cent in working women.

The $730 million price tag takes the costs associated with absenteeism, lost productive time, employee replacement costs, government-subsidised mental health services and medications for depression into account.

“These figures represent a significant burden on the Australian economy that is preventable by improving job quality,” said LaMontagne.

As such, it is hard to comprehend why more Australian organisations don’t rate employee wellbeing a core part of their business, since they would ultimately be the economic beneficiaries of taking steps to reduce depression among their workforce, through reduced staff turnover and recruitment costs and improved productivity.

“There has always been legal and ethical reasons for employers to address poor working conditions and to support staff, but these new findings add an economic incentive as well. Employers would be the major beneficiaries of reducing job strain over the long term, because the greatest costs fall on employers due to lost productivity and employee replacement,” said LaMontagne.

In addressing the issue, employers can start by making changes to job control, moderate job demands and by introducing a support structure to foster the development of their people.

Interestingly the release of this report coincided with R U OK? At Work Day, an initiative that recognises we spend a lot of time in the workplace, and that staff should be given the opportunity to connect with family, friends and colleagues and ask "R U OK?"

The initiative aims to help employees feel good about themselves by connecting and supporting others within the organisation, and through that connection and support, reducing workplace stress and depression.

Download the VicHealth and Melbourne University Report here

Mitrefinch Absence Mangement, a component of the Mitrefinch Time and Attendance System, measures the work absences of individual employees and how this impacts the organisation's overall productivity. Real-time colour coded reporting allows management to quickly identify potential problem areas and resolve any issues before they get out of hand.

For more information contact Mitrefinch Sales on 1300 884 831 or visit us online.

Australian employees say profit sharing would boost productivity

More than half of Australians surveyed in the 2010 Kelly Global Workforce Index believe they would be more productive if they were able to share in profits or have an ownership stake in their employer’s business.

The survey also found 30 per cent of workers currently have an arrangement whereby some of their pay is tied to performance targets. Gen Y (aged 18-29) and Gen X (aged 30-47) employees are much more likely to be on some form of performance-based pay than those in the Baby Boomer generation (aged 48-65).

However, of those not receiving performance pay, more than a third (37 per cent) say they would be more productive if they had their earnings linked to performance outcomes, with Gen Y the most attracted to it.

Many employees indicate that they would be quite comfortable with some element of their compensation being tied to their individual or group performance. This shows that most are confident in their ability to perform their jobs well and believe they can share in the rewards of improved workplace productivity.

Other results from the survey, with regards to employee benefits and perks, reveal that aside from salary, the benefit that rates most highly is training, followed by flexible hours, vacation or personal time-off, and health benefits.

The Kelly Global Workforce Survey obtains the views of approximately 134,000 people, including more than 20,000 in Australia.

Mitrefinch’s Time and Attendance system, TMS, can take the stress out of employee management by easily managing performance related pay incentives. Real-time information and detailed reporting facilitates up-to-the-minute tracking and evaluation of the performance and work activities of employees against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

To find out more contact Mitrefinch Sales on 1300 884 831 or sales@mitrefinch.com.au

Employees turn to flexible working to boost employee performance

Randstad’s 2010 World of Work Report has found that the need to improve employee productivity and performance remains a major challenge in the minds of employers for 2010.

Budget constraints and cautious finance departments, are driving management to look at ways to increase productivity and performance of those already employed by the organisation rather than increasing headcount.

The Report, based on a survey of more than 3,000 HR professionals, business managers and CEOs across the Asia pacific region, found that the top motivators for employees to perform well were:

• Having a strong understanding of their role in achieving organisational goals (25% cite this as their 1st motivator to perform well, with 18% citing it as their 2nd motivator)
• Good relationship with immediate manager (17% cite this as their 2nd motivator, 3rd motivator for 20% of respondents)
• A competitive remuneration package (3rd motivator for 21% of respondents).

This would indicate that improving staff retention and performance should no longer be solely centred on increasing the employee’s pay packet, but more about creating a work/life balance.

As a result, many organisations are now turning to flexible working and other creative and tangible benefits to foster employee retention and boost overall employee performance. These include:

• Paid Parental Leave
• Additional Annual Leave
• 4.5 day working weeks
• Salary sacrificing
• Paid Study Leave

Similarly, “Managing Tomorrow’s People”, a new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in the UK, has revealed that flexible working is the most prized benefit for employees, ahead of performance-related bonuses. Of the 1,167 professionals surveyed, 47% rated ‘flexible working arrangements’ as their most important benefit, compared with 19% who opted for bonuses.

To facilitate flexible working practices, Mitrefinch’s automated Time and Attendance System, TMS, can be customised to match an organisation’s specific working patterns and legislation, supporting flexi-time and shift work across multiple sites and pay centres, while seamlessly integrating with other business, HR and Payroll systems.

For more information contact Mitrefinch Australia on sales@mitrefinch.com.au or 1300 884 831