As a franchise owner, running your business, putting out fires, and trying to manage day-to-day operations can make it a challenge to keep up with workplace trends and legislation regulations.
Human resources (HR) technology can solve many HR-related issues by improving your time and attendance reporting, recruiting efforts, and overall management.
Some solutions have a direct feed into a payroll system, so you don’t have to worry about managing your payroll and HRMS relationship. Consider the following ways HR technology could take the load off your shoulders.
Note: Certain technologies may not be available to use in certain franchise models.
Time & Attendance Tracking
Time and attendance tracking technology, like PrimePay’s Time Clock, provides franchisors, franchisees, and small businesses alike the opportunity to have more accurate reporting, integrated with payroll, keeping your business safe from compliance penalties.
Hours Worked
One common issue faced by small businesses and franchises is time theft. This happens when employees are given leniency in tracking their time which can lead to inaccuracy and sometimes dishonesty in how many hours they worked. When an employee is compensated for work that wasn’t done, that is time theft. Common types of time theft are when the employee asks another employee to clock them in even though they are running late or aren’t at work, or the employee is doing something other than the work they are assigned, like reading a book.
Whether reporting inaccurate hours is intentional or unintentional, it can still cost you avoidable expenses.
Human Error
It’s human nature to make mistakes, which means whoever is in charge of adding up the timesheets may miscalculate hours. However, according to the American Payroll Association, the error rate of a time card calculation mistake is only 1% – 8%.
Human error can and will add up. Not only that, handling these operations manually takes time out of managers, accountants, or the owner’s day. Managing timecards, collecting them, adding them up, and entering the information into payroll is racking up more time in which the employee doing the work needs to be compensated for. Let’s do the math:
Let’s use a 50-employee company that pays its employees $12/hour, bi-weekly as an example. If the company’s employees waste 5 minutes a day, the costs for wasted minutes for all 50 employees is 250 min/day. At $12/hour that’s $13,000 wasted just by employees fudging 5 minutes.
HR Technology Solution: Time & Attendance System
When a time and attendance system as part of an all-inclusive HR solution, you can avoid the costs related to time theft and human error. With the rise in wage and hour litigation, tracking employees’ time accurately is more important than ever.
How a time and attendance system can help:
- Rounding of employee hours.
- A neutral rounding system is put in place to benefit both the employee and employer. When an employee clocks in 5 minutes before or after the time they were scheduled to come in, a time clock system will round that number to the time it is closest to.
- To put this into perspective, if an employee clocks in at 7:55 a.m. and clocks out at 4:55 p.m., the system will round this to 8-5 to ensure the punches add up to the required eight hours.
- Note: this is all up to the discretion of the employer.
- Did you know? PrimePay’s Time Clock system can make sure that only neutral rounding is applied to avoid any compliance issues.
- Auto-deductions.
- With time clock technology, an employee can dictate whether to clock in or out for lunch, that is if they take it and for how long.
- Since the Department of Labor declares that employees need to be paid for all time worked, it is important to be aware of your state’s rules and regulations regarding lunch breaks to avoid any penalties if employees are working during their lunch breaks.
- Overtime Regulations.
- With a new overtime rule to take effect Jan. 1, 2020, it is crucial to establish a clear time and attendance policy to ensure you are keeping an accurate record of an employee’s hours works. Failing to do so can result in legal action for unpaid hours.
- Accurate timecard editing.
- Keeping accurate documentation on timecard edits allows the employer to recall when and why an edit was made to an employee’s timecard to prove justification.
- With PrimePay’s Time Clock software, a manager can fix employee hours in a matter of seconds.
- Simplifies Timecard Retrieval.
- A time and attendance system eliminates the stress of rummaging through old records.
Employee Recruitment
Investing in an HR solution that will allow you to hire the right candidate can be one of the best decisions a franchise or small business owner can make. It can also help to ensure that you are meeting all HR compliance requirements.
An HR solution can help you:
- Write job descriptions.
- A well-crafted and compliant job description includes a catchy title, an overview of the responsibilities, requirements of the position (including skills, education or special certifications), and employment status. It should also capture your company’s culture.
- Conduct pre-employment screening.
- To help give you comfort in knowing whether or not you chose the right candidate, running a background check may help you have more confidence in your decision. HR technology could ensure that you comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act umbrella background checks fall under.
- For more information about background checks, click here.
- Manage applicant tracking and onboarding.
- According to our partners at ThinkHR, 70 percent of your budget is spent on your people.
- Here are the ways in which an online on-boarding solution can help you.
Enhance Your HR Processes
Streamlining your HR processes could assist your franchise by:
- Having fewer errors in payroll.
- Miscalculations can occur much less when automation is in place.
- Enhancing security.
- HR technology takes measures to protect your personal and business information. These solutions allow you to keep track of security updates that will, in turn, allow you to be less susceptible to a security breach.
- Saving money.
- The more time your employees are spent handling operations manually, the more money needs to be compensated. HR technology can take that time off your shoulders and add it back to your paycheck.
Put Time Back into your Business
Being a franchise owner calls for a busy schedule, however, you can make that schedule much more efficient with the use of HR technology. HR solutions ensure peace of mind that your employees are happy, your business is compliant, and you are able to do the things you love doing most.
Collect Useful Data to Help your Business Grow
Data is crucial in your business’s growth. It helps ensure that you understand what happened, why it happened, what is likely to happen next and what action can be put in place to improve and to make more money for your business. It is the best opportunity to get a good view of your business and make well-founded choices because you see the entire image.
According to Forbes, 95% of businesses are facing some sort of need to manage their unstructured data and only 53% of businesses are adopting big data analytics.
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