How a Telephone Time Clock Eases Management Frustrations

Here's a scenario many business managers hope to never experience again: At the start of a shift, remote employees arrive late or don't report at all. Because the manager is still using paper-based time attendance tracking, she doesn't learn of the employee shortage until she receives the first frantic phone call. She spends the rest of the shift scrambling to call in other employees to cover the workload. Her carefully planned schedule and payroll budget just flew out the window!

What could have happened instead? By employing a telephone time clock system, this manager would have known immediately that her crew was half-staffed. Today's telephone-based time attendance tracking, tied to an online interface for management, allows managers to see right away which employees are absent.

Imagine the advantage of knowing at 9:01 p.m. that your cleaning crew in Biloxi has three employees missing. From your central office in Tupelo, you are able to start calling in reinforcements. Doesn't that sound like a much better way to do business, rather than waiting for the cleaning crew's panicked call at 9:30? This kind of control, via a phone time clock system, is a major advantage for companies with employees clocking in away from the home office.

Here's a quick overview of how that type of system works to ease the burden of management.

Step 1: Employees at remote locations call a phone number connected to your timekeeping service and report for duty.

Step 2: Managers can pull up real-time information online to learn who clocked in at each location.

Step 3: Necessary steps can be taken to shift workers to cover gaps in work crews.

Step 4: Timecards are easily retrieved and printed for use by the payroll department.

There's another major advantage to moving to a telephone time clock system. Because overtime is a huge issue for managers, being able to know immediately which employees are close to earning overtime allows those managers to adjust employee hours. There's no reason, with the easy availability of phone time clock systems, for any manager to live with the headache of unintended overtime. There's also no reason for you to get a late start trying to fill shifts when employees fail to report.

A well-planned online timekeeping strategy based on a phone time clock for employees can ease the pain of management without causing budget convulsions. The money you'll save in unintended overtime and lost revenue due to poor employee coverage will more than pay for your new telephone time and attendance tracking system.