Workforce Management Tips – Time and Attendance

October 23rd, 2011

Getting your workforce to work effectively is the job of any good manager. Here what you are doing is taking a group of people who have been thrown together and then transforming them into a well oiled machine that can pump out the maximum amount of work with the highest efficiency thereby getting you more output for the same amount of money and making your clients happy as possible as their products and services are completed to a good standard and in record time.

One aspect of your workforce management that will have a particularly large impact on the effectiveness of your team and the money that your company earns is your time and attendance system. You need to implement some method in order to make sure that your staff attend your premises when you have agreed, that they are efficient in arriving on time, and that they get paid for the hours that they do. How you do this will effect how much money you get from them and will effect their satisfaction also.

The main way to do this is with some kind of time clock. In the old days this worked by punching the time onto a small card that could be counted up at the end of the day, but technology has come on since then. By using digital time clocks it is possible to use a swipe card, PIN number or even biometric data (such as retinal scans or fingerprints) in order to identify workers when they arrive and then add their time to the system. This then is added up automatically which is the great news as it means that you are not paying anyone to count up lots of work times and as it means that you won’t make any mistakes.

When you are choosing time clocks it is a good idea to choose biometric time clocks as they will ensure that your staff don’t try and pull a fast one by getting anyone else to sign them in. You can also improve honesty and make sure that the machines are used as intended by employing CCTV around the premises. While you won’t often look this back, if ever there is a dispute as to the time someone signed in then you can use these records. Furthermore it will deter most people from trying to lie. At the same time it is a good idea to keep some kind of online element that allows your staff to log in from home. This is important as it allows them to signify that they have worked for you from home or from a business trip and this will ensure that they still get paid for that work without making your system more complicated.

Using some kind of flexible hours that allow your staff to work from home is a great option that will help to improve your time and attendance. As people can earn time at home or organize it, they will feel less inclined to call in sick or fake their attendance. This also helps to improve their work satisfaction as flexi time allows them to fit work around their lives.

For every growing business they have to be mindful of their workforce management skills. When staff numbers are growing, you also need to have a good time and attendance procedure.

Posted in Business Management

Matching Your Organisation to Your Sales

October 19th, 2011

This is the first in a series of posts concerning the successful management of high growth businesses. One of the most common problems high growth businesses face is how to match organisational growth with sales.

The Problem

Simply put sales can grow discretely and tends to be quite smooth. Organisations growth, by contrast, tends to be much more lumpy. This is because a certain staffing complement has a finite growth capacity and beyond that point just adding people doesn’t help. In fact at some point adding people reduces performance. What is required is an organisational restructure which will create a step change in a company’s ability to support its growth. However this is not easy to accomplish because most SME’s address this problem too late. This often results in business growth reverting to the typical “lumpy” organisational restructure rather than a smooth increase. The reason for this is that sales now have to wait for the organisation to catch up so you tend to end up with a year of rapid growth followed by a year or even more of no or even negative growth.

Typical Situations

Smaller Businesses tend to rely too heavily on a few key people, this results in a stagnation of performance of the remaining staff who have little or no chance to develop their skills. So when the time comes to reorganise the business owners or management are reluctant to make the step change necessary to reorganise the business because they cant see who, apart from the usual suspects, who will be able to take on additional responsibility. What this results in is either a re-oganisation which is often half-hearted or too late. To provide a sporting analogy, hammer throwers are always told that they must remain ahead of the hammer. So as they speed up their revolutions in the circle they can properly time an effective throw. Small businesses rather like a novice hammer thrower tend to end up behind the hammer (read sales growth) losing control and finding out the hammer is in the wrong place.

The Solution for a fast growth business

Set your organisations structure to handle larger sales volumes than your current predicted sales growth. Target reorganisations earlier than demanded by your sales forecasting so they are already in place to meet forecast sales.

Some key actions:

Always! Always! Always! Implement a reorganisation ahead of its need. This gives you time to fine tune it is also the only way you can maintain that rapid growth. Establish a model for organisational growth. That is how will your business deal with sustained and rapid growth. Your plan must also be able to estimate at what point (size of revenues) will you be needing to consider the next reorganisation.

Reorganisations must have longevity. Typically a major reorganisation should last about 24 months, with interim adjustments taking place yearly. Recognise that reorganisations get bigger and more complex as you get bigger, so have a post reorganisation quality control process so that you can check the success of your implementation. In a high growth environment keeping your growth momentum is critical, don’t allow your organisation to fall behind that demanded by your sales growth otherwise your only answer is to slow growth to catch up which can completely stall your momentum.

Posted in Project Management, Team Management