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Change is often difficult for some organizations, in part, because fear of the unknown is at the heart of the decision making process of some businesses. By now, cloud software solutions should be no stranger businesses especially, when you consider how ubiquitous it has become. Yet, despite that, a small percentage of businesses still stick to their pen, paper and desktop software.

A Leap Of Faith Can Help Your Business Leverage The Benefits Of The Cloud

Here are some of the things you can look forward to, if you decide to take the leap, and embrace a cloud computing technology.

Say good-bye to that filing cabinet
Storing employee reports in a filing cabinet?  Just think about the amount of time, your payroll practitioner spends manually editing employee hours, chasing down department managers to confirm employees’ time- and then having to store that information in filing cabinet for future reference. Why bother? The cloud gives you the power to get up-to-the-minute reports all of which can be accessed, anytime, anywhere, 365 days a year.

Employee time-off requests
The days of employees walking to the HR office to submit a vacation request is quickly becoming a thing of the past and with good reason. With the surge of cloud computing apps that employees can access through their mobile device or workstations, requesting a day off makes the cloud an attractive proposition.

Vacation pay, overtime and accrual benefits
Spreadsheets can be a good tool for other tasks, but using it to track vacation, over time and accruals? With a cloud time and attendance, there is no need for spreadsheets. An ATS Time and Attendance Leave Management module automates the enforcement and tracking of provincial, federal, state, and employer-specific leave polices and requirements for a variety of qualified leave types, including family medical leave, and other related absences and provide notifications for managers and employees provide real-time updates on eligibility and case activities.

It should be noted, that resistance to change is inherent in all of us, even the ones who claim to be agents of change. If you are interested in learning how you can take a leap of faith and leverage the benefits of the cloud, you can register for one of our webinars, download a demonstration or contact ATS at 866.294.2467.

A Leap Of Faith Can Help Your Business Leverage The Benefits Of The Cloud

 

Want To Increase Workforce Productivity? Offer Employees Mobile Device Options

July 27th, 2016 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Benefit Accruals | Employee Scheduling | Employee Self Service | Leave Management | Overtime | Time and Attendance | Workforce Management Solutions - (Comments Off on Want To Increase Workforce Productivity? Offer Employees Mobile Device Options)

A recent article by The New York Times titled ‘The Long, Final Goodbye of the VCR’ encapsulates how technology continues to evolve. And, in a world where cloud computing technology has helped made previously mundane tasks easier to complete, many companies are embracing the use of cloud-based solutions, to help them save costs and remain competitive.

In today’s digital era for example, implementing a cloud-based workforce management solution is easier to deploy and provides a rapid return on investment (ROI). And with the added benefits of an on-the-go application that allows employees to punch in/out from their mobile device, they can; request time off, provide their availability, view shift schedules, overtime, hours worked and perform a host of other tasks that previously required a visit to the HR office. This on-the-go application provides managers with real-time reporting capabilities, an intuitive dashboard with workflows and, a messaging centre to review employee requests and respond in accordance.

Want To Increase Workforce Productivity? Offer Employees Mobile Device Options

So, if your company is looking to increase productivity, be sure to deploy a workforce management that can do more than having remote workers tied to a desktop on which to log in their hours of work. Thus, when workers are productive and happy, companies can expect a better return on their people investment and a better customer experience.

To learn about ATS Workforce Management mobile app, go to our website. And, to attend one our weekly webinars register online. To speak to one of our account executives call; 866.294.2467.

 

Is the recruiting process part art or science? Difficult question to answer when you consider employees, today, on average, leave companies in quicker numbers than in years past. Is it the type of employees that are hired or it is the workplace itself?

Jen Hubley Luckwaldt, wrote an article for PayScale, that says that the number one reason why employees leave their jobs is because of a bad manager. Ouch!

Recruiting Methods Tells A Lot About A Successful Company

Hiring great employees is one thing, keeping that talent is quite another. Millennials won’t put up with stodgy rules and policies that have no meaning behind them.  Meghan M. Biro, CEO of Talent Culture and regular contributor to a slew of well written articles on the world of Talent Management offers 5 tips that successful leaders use during the recruiting process. In no particular order we, have selected three of those tips which include:

  • Take A Workplace Culture Inventory. Take a good hard look at your current HR and recruiting practices. Put yourself in the shoes of a talented person who has never heard of your company. How are you trying to reach that person? Are you using filtering tools to target the right kind of talent you need?
  • Keep It Real. Your HR and recruiting process must be honest — a genuine reflection of your company’s leadership and workplace culture. Whether your organization is way zany, slightly playful, or downright dour, you want to attract talent that feels comfortable in your culture.
  • Engage Your Marketing Talent. HR and recruiting don’t exist in a vacuum. They may be the initial contact with talent, but the more input that other departments have the stronger and more integrated the process will become. This is especially true, of course, for the departments and functions that will be directly impacted by the applicant. Solicit input on specific job postings from people in the department where the job is.

Today more than ever, there are better recruiting tools for companies. And, attracting the best and the brightest people to join your company is the goal of successful leaders-in fact, these leaders sprinkle their workforce with a diverse group of talent that includes, race, gender and age.  It’s 2016 and times are changing, even for stodgy workplaces.

Keep current with ATS:

Recruiting Methods Tells A Lot About A Successful Company

Canadian Federal Government Is Contemplating New Leave Management Policy

May 3rd, 2016 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Absence Management | Benefit Accruals | Employee Scheduling | Employee Self Service | Leave Management | Time and Attendance - (Comments Off on Canadian Federal Government Is Contemplating New Leave Management Policy)

The Canadian federal government recently mused about the possibility of updating parental leave, specifically for new dads. It made news and, for those who love and hate the idea both came out in full force and articulated their respective arguments through a variety of social media platforms. Whether you are or against it, one thing is clear, time is changing. This would perhaps be unheard of some 30 or 50 years ago. In actuality, there is nothing new about such a leave, because in the province of Quebec, new dads can take up five weeks leave while the province covers 70% of their salary.

The role of fatherhood has changed dramatically in the last several years. Josh levs a journalist for CNN wrote a book titled “All In” after he approached his employer to request time-off for the birth of his new baby. During an interview with Brigid Schulte of The Washington Post, he revealed, in part, “I’d been covering parenting issues for CNN, and then all of a sudden I was in the news. I was doing stories and columns on fatherhood, then my wife was about to have our daughter. My employer, Time Warner, had an extremely unusual policy: anyone could get 10 weeks of paid leave to take care of a new child – except the man who’d impregnated the mother of his child. Me. The biological father.”

Canadian Federal Government Is Contemplating New Leave Management Policy

So, will this type of leave management affect Canadian businesses? All indications are this is in the infancy stage. However, if you are one of those businesses who currently track employee vacation, and other time-off requests through a series of spreadsheets, it’s not too late to make the switch to an automated time and attendance system that will automatically track your company’s leave management.

ATS Time and Attendance Leave Management System automates employee time-off request. With ATS Leave Management System employers can accurately enforce leave management policies, and approvals based on an organization’s unique business processes.

To learn more about ATS Time and Attendance Leave Management System, go to our website to download a demonstration or a brochure. To reach an account executive by phone, call 866.294.2467.

Infractions: Poor Record-Keeping, Unpaid Overtime and Holiday Pay

January 26th, 2016 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Benefit Accruals | Biometric Time Clocks | Collective Bargaining | Labour Analytics | Labour Costs | Leave Management | Overtime - (Comments Off on Infractions: Poor Record-Keeping, Unpaid Overtime and Holiday Pay)

A recent article in the Toronto Star newspaper, based, on a blitz by the Ontario Ministry of Labour into workplace violations by some companies, revealed, that a staggering number of these violations had to do with poor record-keeping, unpaid overtime and holiday pay. The issue of unpaid overtime is one that has lingered over some companies for the past several years. ATS cloud-based time and attendance was designed with built-in Canadian work-rules, can be deployed in only a matter of weeks and will help your company eradicate manual paper-based time tracking. And the best part, overtime is tracked and paid in accordance with jurisdictional pay policies.

If your company is considering deploying a time and attendance solution but remain ambivalent about its advantages, below, is a list of the three top benefits of an ATS time and attendance solution:

Infractions: Poor Record Keeping, Unpaid Overtime and Holiday Pay

Labour
Reducing costly calculation errors is just one reason to consider automating time and attendance management. Recent surveys from Aberdeen, Canadian Payroll (CPA) and American Payroll Association (APA), report that human error in manual time-card calculations is likely to cost a business between one and one-half to eight percent of its gross annual payroll. The manual calculation of employee time sheets takes an average of five minutes of administrative time per time sheet, equating to a loss of more than eight hours of productive time per pay period for an organization with 100 employees. These are alarming statistics, and frankly, not many companies would want to use valuable resources to track employee time manually, when this time could be spent with their customers, generating revenue.

Reduce Compliance Risk
ATS Time and Attendance has a set of built-in Canadian work rules to ensure pay compliance through automated wage and hour rules. ATS time and attendance will improve transaction times and information access through an intuitive user experience, thus, increasing profit margins while enhancing employee productivity. In other words, the tracking and paying of the appropriate; overtime, vacation, and other time-off request can be managed by our cloud-based time and attendance with ease.

Savings
An ATS time and attendance solution provides both direct and indirect investment returns. Automating your time and attendance process results in ongoing cost savings, such as a reduction in human-generated payroll errors, elimination of time theft from “buddy punching” through the use of biometric time clocks and overtime costs, as saved wages from enhanced productivity.

For example, when tracking time manually through spreadsheets or outdated methods, it’s not unusual to have employees claiming missed overtime and hours worked on their pay. Attempting to rectify this issue by counting hours collected on paper time-sheets can lead to additional errors. Perhaps the answer to this prevailing issue; is to automate the collection of employee hours, thereby gaining valuable data analytics, to help your organization, make effective business decisions that impacts, payroll cost and the bottom- line.

Infractions: Poor Record Keeping, Unpaid Overtime and Holiday Pay

Through the use of an ATS robust time and attendance solution, organizations are able to fully automate pay rules, work rules and benefit accrual rules as well as leave management, collective bargaining agreements (CBA), and exception-time (such as overtime) reporting. By having up-to-the-minute access to this information, organizations will gain complete and accurate visibility into their operations, thus, enabling them to meet production, forecasting and scheduling demands and stay compliant with the many federal and provincial, municipal and state laws, as well as company policies.

To learn how ATS time and attendance solution can help your organization keep accurate records of employee hours, pay overtime hours based on company’s pay policies and assign the requisite statutory holiday, you can download the white paper titled “Benefits of an ATS Automated Time and Attendance Solution”. And to view a demonstration, go to our website. To reach one of our account executives, call: (866) 294-2467.

 

3 Tips For Dealing With Holiday Stress

December 3rd, 2015 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Benefit Accruals | Labor costs | Leave Management | National Football League | Payroll | Web-Based Time and Attendance - (Comments Off on 3 Tips For Dealing With Holiday Stress)

You would think we had some kind of coping mechanism to handle the holiday season. After all, it’s an annual event which many of us look forward (especially the retail sector) to, for the; shopping, eggnog drinking and corporate parties. Ok, some of us look forward to this. And, maybe some or many of us are simply dreading the holiday season because we have to visit with family members that we would rather avoid. Regardless of how we approach the season, the stress permeates the air around us.
In an article penned by yoga trainer, Dana Santas for pros in the; NHL, NFL, MLB and NBA- she offers 3 tips that will help you get through the holidays season with a little less stress if you follow her advice. The following tips are:

3 Tips For Dealing With Holiday Stress

 

“Breathe your way to calm and control
Relax your shoulders, neck and upper back. Inhale through your nose and exhale out your mouth, emphasizing your exhalation. Be sure to release your rib cage downward as you exhale fully.

Get-off-your-feet pose
Simply lie on your back with your legs elevated by a pillow, up on a chair or even straight up the wall (known as legs-up-the-wall pose in yoga).

Stretch away your stress
While standing, simply raise your arms above your head at shoulder distance. Take five long, deep breaths. Then inhale as you reach and hold your left wrist with your right hand; exhale as you side bend your entire body to the right, stretching out your left side. Hold for a breath or two. Inhale as you return your arms straight above your head.
Repeat on the other side.”

You can read the article in its entirety at cnn.com. Hopefully, these tips help you navigate the hustle and bustle that has become a part of this holiday season.

To learn more about ATS you can join follow us on Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn or Pinterest to join in the conversation. And to register for a free webinar or download a demonstration, go to our website.

 

How’s That Spreadsheet Working Out For You?

November 25th, 2015 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Benefit Accruals | Labour Costs | Leave Management | Overtime | Payroll | Time and Attendance - (Comments Off on How’s That Spreadsheet Working Out For You?)

Over the last several years, the issue of overtime has become, somewhat of an albatross for some companies but, in reality it does not have to be. When you consider how easy it is to automate employee attendance. And, with the advancement of cloud computing it has now become inexpensive and faster to deploy a time and attendance solution that will accurately track overtime hours. So, why do some companies consistently rely on paper time sheets when they can save costs by using an attendance system?

A recent article written by Eric B. Meyer for Eremedia says that although, the new overtime rules by the department of labor may not be enacted until the end of 2016, there are some steps that companies can take ahead of this law. They include:

 “Ensure that non-exempt employees receive minimum wage and overtime when they work more than 40 hours in a work week.
 Double check employee classifications to confirm that exempt employees truly are exempt (and vice-versa).
 Do you have independent contractors? Or are they employees whom you’ve simply labeled independent contractors? Now, may be a good time to vet that.”

Tracking employee overtime through the use of spreadsheets is a time-consuming process, but don’t fret, there is a better way. ATS TimeWork OnDemand is a cloud driven time and attendance application that delivers, on-the-spot predictive analytics, of employee attendance at your fingertips. And with ATS TimeWork OnDemand, you get:

Benefit Accruals-Choose to accrue employee hours daily, weekly, or bi-weekly—or even monthly—and based on time passed or employee’s time logged.

Alerts-You can get automatic alerts sent to your mobile device so you know when an employee punch in or out and warnings about employees that are approaching overtime so you can take necessary action.

Leave Management-Your employees can now request any time-off from their mobile device or any workstation with Internet connection.

We’ve only scratched the surface of the many things that ATS time and attendance can do. If you are interested in learning more, register for an interactive webinar, Controlling Overtime Pay through Automation’ on Friday, November 27th at 1:00pm eastern.

To download brochures, go to our website or call (866) 294-2467.

How’s That Spreadsheet Working Out For You?

ATS Modern-Day Cloud helps the Public Sector to Increase Productivity and Streamline Costs

October 13th, 2015 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Business Intelligence | Employee Scheduling | Forecasting | Leave Management | Overtime | Payroll | Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software - (Comments Off on ATS Modern-Day Cloud helps the Public Sector to Increase Productivity and Streamline Costs)

Today’s public sector is faced with shrinking budgets, aging populations, and are under pressure, to streamline payroll costs and improve operational effectiveness. So, how do these public agencies and governments guard the public purse, share information, integrate business processes and, at the same time, reduce costs? The answer for many of them has been to embrace the cloud and the many benefits that come with it.

ATS cloud-based time and attendance is truly unique and helps public sector agencies address pressing issues that include: proper application of overtime, adherence of collective bargaining agreement work-rules, pay compliance and daily time and attendance business operations. ATS cloud-based time and attendance is compliant with Canadian and US; provincial, federal and state regulations.

ATS Modern-Day Cloud helps the Public Sector to Increase Productivity and Streamline Costs

Benefits to government agencies using ATS Cloud-Based Time and Attendance include:

Work and pay rules enforcement
ATS time and attendance data flows to multiple databases including; HR, ERP and payroll thus, reducing manual effort and ensuring that work hour policies and pay rules are correctly applied. ATS time and attendance provides instant exception alerts to users, based on government agency-specific rules, empowering managers to catch and correct errors at the source.

Employee Scheduling
You can give employees access to view their shifts and schedules. They can also define their availability and collaborate time-off requests through the intuitive cloud-based interface. With ATS employee scheduling, you can eliminate costs, time, and errors from budgeting and planning, integrate forecasting activities, and automate the planning cycle.

Choose your deployment
With a complete range of flexible deployment options, including cloud, and hybrid configurations, ATS offers rapid implementation to get your agency up and running fast. ATS cloud-based time and attendance helps the public sector eliminate license-based maintenance costs, manage payroll costs, while enhancing workforce productivity— in a cost-effective manner that delivers flexibility, security, reliability, compliance and efficiency.

The powerful and robust ATS Cloud-Based Time and Attendance database allows public sector agencies to replace outdated time tracking methodologies, with —a modern-day platform, that enforces standard public sector-specific policies and regulations.

Want to know if ATS operates in your region or province and can meet the business requirements of your public sector? Contact us by phone at 866.294.2467. You can also go to our website and download brochures, join in a weekly webinar or download a demonstration and view the product at your leisure.

ATS Modern-Day Cloud helps the Public Sector to Increase Productivity and Streamline Costs

How To Streamline Payroll And Avoid The High Cost Of Overtime

July 29th, 2015 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Forecasting | Hospitality Industry | Labour Analytics | Leave Management - (Comments Off on How To Streamline Payroll And Avoid The High Cost Of Overtime)

Business owners in small and large organizations are fearful about the proposed overtime rule. This bit of news is not sitting well with several businesses and, has caused sleepless nights for some executives, as they come to terms with trying to find ways to adjust in their daily operations. If your business is going to be affected by this proposed legislation, one of the best tools to use, to capture overtime is an ATS time and attendance solution. Payroll is one of the largest expenses of any business, regardless of size and automating employee time and attendance can be a good first step to controlling overtime.

Through the use of an ATS Time and Attendance solution, here are some ways your business can control overtime:

Overtime Equalization: In the retail, hospitality and healthcare space, overtime is almost unavoidable and that’s due, in large part to the nature of these industries. Therefore, accurately tracking and paying the correct overtime is paramount. ATS Overtime Equalization solution provides managers with timely visibility into key workforce performance indicators such as labour, overtime, and attendance. Real-time alerts notify managers when performance thresholds are breached; helping prevent labour issues such as excess overtime, budget variances and compliance violations.

Choose The Right Data Collector: Not all employee time clocks are created equal and, so selecting an employee time clock is as important as making sure you have the right time and attendance software for your organization. For example, putting a fingerprint reader in a very dusty environment or food processing plant, for is a recipe for disaster. ATS Time and Attendance data collectors are fully optimized, feature-rich employee self-service platform and are capable of serving the full spectrum of your requirements. Through the use of ATS time clocks, your business is transformed into “On the Spot” information that helps managers and supervisors control overtime and keep jobs on time and within budget.

How To Streamline Payroll And Avoid The High Cost Of Overtime

Real-Time Business Analytics: If a business is not using the right tools to control overtime, this can lead to an unhealthy balance-sheet. And, when left unchecked, overtime can become an uncontrollable payroll nightmare. While not completely unavoidable, reining in unnecessary overtime is critical to bringing down expenses and ensuring the most effective use of labour resources. ATS Time and Attendance Analytics allow for a complete view of your business landscape and includes actual versus budget hours. The intuitive dashboard contains future schedules, and alerts managers of preventable overtime situations and incidental overtime occurrences.

Bottom-line, getting a handle on your company’s overtime should be an important first step but the impact of overtime extends far beyond a balance-sheet. Controlling overtime is a healthy strategy for financially sustainable organizations in uncertain times.

To learn more, you can attend one of our monthly webinars or download a demonstration. We also have an active user-group on our LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus pages. To speak to one of our account executives call; 1-866.294.2467.

How To Streamline Payroll And Avoid The High Cost Of Overtime

In order to quantify the benefits of a time and attendance solution, you first have to know what to look for. ATS time and attendance solution can help your company cut payroll costs and, at the same time, enhanced employee productivity.

Benefit of an ATS Time and Attendance Solution

If your company is using paper punch clocks or paper time sheets, and you are interested in automating the process, here are some key benefits you can expect after implementing an ATS Time and Attendance Solution:

Reduction in the use of paper and fraud

  • ATS time and attendance solution will reduce the cost associated with creating and distributing paper timesheets
  • No more transferring of time sheets from employee to supervisor for review and then onto payroll and HR department for processing.
  • Employees can fraudulently increase the number of hours they get paid for by having a coworker punch them when they are late or not at the work site.

Improved Data Quality

  • Through the use of ATS time clocks, Employees can find out how much overtime they have accumulated during the week, review schedules and request time-off.
  • Employee hours can be sent automatically to your payroll software with the click of a mouse.
  • By eliminating the administrative tasks of paper time sheets you improve workforce productivity, and your employees are now free to focus on more value-added activities.

Let’s face it, how many employees complain if they get overpaid? If a small fraction, of your workforce is consistently getting over paid, it will affect your company’s revenue. And, when employees get underpaid they will complain, thus, resulting in the company having to make adjustments, and that in and of itself is costly.

Employee pay is one of the biggest controllable expenses in most organizations. As an organization, you should have accurate information about; employee attendance, vacation eligibility, the ability to schedule accurately to meet customer demands, the number of projects your company completed in the last two months, and access to real-time analytics to help you make informed decisions. Manual time sheets will not help you with those objectives and will waste time and take a bite out of your profits. In an ever increasing global and competitive business landscape, wouldn’t it be better to identify and eradicate manual time and attendance bottlenecks?

So why go with ATS? Because our time and attendance solution is easy-to-use and they deliver, up-to-the-minute and high-quality information you need to make better decisions

To explore our solutions, you can download brochures; sign up for one of live product demonstrations. You can also reach us by phone at; 1.866.294.2467.

Benefit of an ATS Time and Attendance Solution