Are you thinking of implementing a new Time & Attendance system? Working out Why, What, Who, When and How before you start will ensure you get the result you want.
The key to maximising the benefits of an automated/cloud Employee Time & Attendance system is, first, to conduct a thorough “needs analysis” of your current time and attendance needs. If you then choose a system which meets those needs, you can be sure to save yourself time and money.
The decision to implement a new time and attendance system is a decision that will affect everyone in your company and therefore should be considered like any other strategic decision. A systematic approach to analysing your needs will help in the ultimate selection of a new system. In this worksheet, we will cover the key information and considerations required to ensure you implement a system that will not only meet your needs today but will help you improve the time & attendance and payroll management processes into the future.
Analysing your time and attendance needs
The first step to implementing a time and attendance system is to carry out a detailed “needs analysis”. Through this, you can gain an understanding of the technical/functional requirements of your time and attendance structure as well as consider the aspects of your current processing method that you like and dislike. You can also consider what you would like in a new system that you do not currently have.
We have created a “self-analysis” worksheet to assist you in this process. When performing this initial review, we suggest you consider the following analysis technique:
Current situation - What is the current situation you face with your existing system? What are your specific “non-negotiable” requirements?
Problems - What prompted you to look at a new Time and attendance system. What are the problems or deficiencies of the current system? Be ruthless here. People often say, “We know the existing system has problems, but we know what they are, and we know how to work around them”!
Implications - Having identified the problem area, try to assess what the implications of these problems are on you, your staff or your business (e.g., if you ascertain that not having detailed historical reporting is a problem, why is it a problem and what is the negative implication of this?)
Benefits of change - For each of the problems you have identified and found a negative implication for, consider what the positive implication would be of having a solution to your problem. For example, using our “reports” scenario above, the “benefit of change” would be that you do not have to do vast amounts of manual analysis of paper-based reports. This would save you time, increase accuracy, and so on.
This is only a guide and you may have other methods you prefer to use when doing this type of analysis. In addition to the worksheet, we have included a “system functionality” checklist. The key benefit of this is to clarify your functional needs; the other benefit is that this process creates a “specification” document that can be used as a benchmark against which to compare prospective systems. This can avoid the situation of businesses going to the market for a new time and attendance system and be being “sold” a system rather than “purchasing” a system suited to their needs.
To request a copy of our “self-analysis” worksheet or if you would like to have one of our consultants assist you with this analysis please just email ontime@timehub.co.nz or call 06 8800664
