Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software

Manage Administrative Data-Anywhere, Anytime

There is nothing more critical to an organization’s operations than making sure employees are paid on time with 100% accuracy, however it is just as important to deliver new capabilities to support your entire workforce. With ATSTimeWorkOnDemand you have a robust solution at your fingertips, with broad-based functionality—and the ability to adapt to the requirements of your business as it evolves.

Here are 3 ways ATSTimeWorkOnDemand helps businesses:

Optimize Productivity and Reduce Payroll Errors

ATSTimeWorkOnDemand provides a rapid return on investment by reducing payroll processing errors and overtime costs and planning more-accurate workforce utilization.
Reduce your unplanned overtime costs with digital enforcement of policies and real-time notifications that alert when your employees are working outside of their scheduled hours.
With ATSTimeWorkOnDemand your organization will gain a competitive advantage— with complete process automation that increases output, reduces compliance risk, and maximizes business growth.

Enhance Regulatory Compliance

Use key compliance criteria to determine applicable rules for absences, manage cases, and improve communication to mitigate costly fines and penalties.
The application has built-in best-practices to adapt to collective bargaining and other pay rules and regulations.
Keep current with changing laws with automatic updates from the compliance portal.

Simplify Time and Attendance and Optimize Data Collection

Give employees access to their time sheet on any device, while reducing payroll errors in a single, cloud-based platform.
Your organization can track time and attendance data in real-time with; ATS line of data collectors, biometric technology or other data sources.
Provide self-service capabilities (with any device with Internet connection) where employees can submit time-off requests, view messages, add and edit timesheet details, and benefit accruals. With direct access to personal information, employees can easily view and confirm their pay calculations before payroll is processed

ATSTimeWorkOnDemand helps companies create employee experiences that unlock new potential for innovation, resilience, and better performance. Interested in learning how ATSTimeWorkOnDemand, can support your workforce and business in a rapidly changing world? Go to our website to download a demonstration and to reach an account executive, call: 866.294.2467.

ATSTimeWorkOnDemand, Benefit Accruals, Cloud, Collective Bargaining, Employee Self-Service, Overtime, Payroll

How to Remain Compliant and Manage Pay During a Pandemic

Since the early days of COVID-19 pandemic several industries like grocery and retail jobs were deemed essential services while some others were furloughed or moved online. As some businesses slowly reopen it can be nerve-racking to head back into the office, while a global pandemic is still looming over everyone’s head.

Here are some useful tips, companies can take to help their employees adjust to the new conditions, and also ease their fears, as they slowly reopen:

Temperature Check Time Clocks
Some of ATS customers have migrated to a contactless and temperature check biometric time clocks. These data collectors offer an automatic, touch-free tool for accurate employee temperature screening. And, with real-time results, Payroll and HR leaders can create a policy for failed temperature checks to ensure a safe environment and a consistent experience for all employees at the point of entry to the workspace.

Pandemic Pay/Shift Differential
The high volume of shutdowns caused by the global corona virus pandemic has triggered organizations to consider salary continuance options to help employees through this difficult time and to retain their talent. While some industries, like grocery, healthcare and retail chains have eliminated pandemic pay, others have added shift differential to bolster employees pay. Whichever option you choose, ATSTimeWorkOnDemand will ease the burden for HR by seamlessly applying these pay codes through our software configuration.

Working from Home and Managing Childcare
The shut down of schools in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, had many parents working from home with their children-managing professional priorities, while helping their kids with school work. Some of ATS customers have made use of online timesheets and project tracking solutions for these remote workers.

Leave Management
While some parents are able to stay home with their kids, others are not so fortunate, and without access to childcare, like some of their colleagues, will likely find themselves in a stressful situation. HR can encourage these parents to request time-off by making use of existing vacation time they have accrued. This simple act, could alleviate some of the stress, these employees are trying to manage. And, don’t forget the employees who do not have children, they could also benefit from taking time-off, to deal with the stress of COVID-19.

ATS Workforce Planning
With COVID-19 showing no signs of abating, companies can make use of ATS Workforce Planning for employees who want some flexible options as they manage work and at life at home. ATS Workforce Planning gives managers a real-time schedule that changes with the organization’s needs. With ATS Workforce Planning managers gain immediate insight into how many staff members to schedule at any given time and optimizes planning breaks, setting vacations, adding time for training and addressing unplanned absences.

Bottomline; maintaining compliance, keeping track of employment agreements, and internal policies during these trying times can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. ATSTimeWorkOnDemand HCM suite is a comprehensive workforce management application with a— future-ready platform that addresses the unique requirements of a company. In short, we have got your covered.

To learn more, you can download a demonstration of our product or to reach us by phone, call: 866.294.2467.

ATS Workforce Planning, ATSTimeWorkOnDemand, Covid-19, Grocery, HCM, Healthcare, Leave Management, Pandemic Pay, Payroll, Retail, Shift Differential

Webinar: Streamlining Canadian Healthcare Operations

Many healthcare organizations are growing rapidly, against a backdrop of exceptional regulatory changes. As your organization tries to achieve scale, it’s challenging to monitor performance and control costs and, at the same time keep processes running smoothly—especially across multiple locations. ATS Workforce Management for Healthcare enables you to automate with greater efficiency, and provides the visibility you need to make operational improvements, now and for the foreseeable future.

ATS Workforce Management for Healthcare will help you build integrate and manage all your healthcare data cloud applications more efficiently with a comprehensive, standards-based combination of ATS open source technologies.

In this webinar, you will learn how to:

Improve workforce planning, forecasting and budgeting.
Improve Payroll and HR processes.
Save time, improve accuracy, and achieve operation excellence.

You can register here for this webinar. To download a demonstration of ATS TimeWorkOnDemand, go to our website. And, to reach an account executive by phone, call 866.294.2467.

ATS Workforce Management, Cloud Computing, Healthcare, HR, Payroll

Going To Install Biometric Time Clocks At Your Company? Don’t Forget To Inform Employees

The use of biometrics at theme parks, airports and in the workplace, has become ubiquitous. However, facial recognition for the purpose of recording an employee time in/out at work, is different than what it is being used at an airport. For example, a biometric time clock, in a workplace will record (for the purpose of payroll) the time an employee clocked in for a day or week-whereas, the purpose of biometrics at an airport will be for security and a range of other purposes.

Installing biometrics in the workplace can help with HR related issues like time theft, buddy punching and payroll errors. However, it is important to let your employees know if you decide to install biometrics for the purpose of tracking time and attendance, especially if your company, have been using paper time sheets to track hours before that.

In a recent article titled, Workers push back as companies gather fingerprints, retina scans by Te-Ping Chen for The Wall Street Journal amoung other publications, an excerpt of the article reads in part;

“As more companies track their workers with fingerprint and facial scans, employees are increasingly challenging firms in court over how that biometric data gets used and stored.

Scores of lawsuits have been filed following a recent state Supreme Court ruling in Illinois, which has the most stringent privacy law protecting such information in the U.S. The suits assert that employees weren’t told what would happen to their biometric data and that it is being put at risk.

Some workers said they don’t see the need for biometrics in the workplace.

“It’s not a secretive place that we work in,” said one worker at a country club outside Detroit, whose employer uses fingerprints to take attendance. She said she was uncomfortable with the practice, adding that she hadn’t been told how her information would be used or stored.

From warehouses to restaurants, the use of biometric data is moving from a niche practice to become a more mainstream way to verify employee hours and check workers in and out of facilities for security reasons. Among companies in the U.S., Europe and Canada surveyed in 2018 by Gartner, 6 percent said they track employees by using biometric data. Europe and Canada surveyed in 2018 by Gartner, 6 percent said they track employees by using biometric data.”

Bottom line: If you decide to explore the many options that a biometric time clock system offers, let your employees know of your intention. Chances are they will be more accepting if they know in advance and you will avoid issues of them not being receptive to it. Afterall, employees are familiar with biometric technology and have likely used them at airports or with their current smartphone.

To learn about ATS Biometric Time Clocks, go to our website. You can also download a demo, or you can attend one of our bi-weekly webinars. And, to reach an account executive, call 866.294.2467.

Biometrics, Gartner, HR, Payroll, Time and Attendance

Buying The Application Is A Good Start- Commit To Using It Is Even Better

Many of today’s mid and small size businesses understand the benefits of using modern-day business applications to drive productivity. And, while some of these businesses see a return on investment, because they start using the systems right away, others either delay their implementations, due in part, to unforeseen circumstances or simply because they do not have the sufficient personnel on staff to take steer the project. In reality, these delays in using the applications are no fault of these companies.

A recent article by Sarah Fister Gale for workforce.com Why SMBs Are Buying — But Not Using — HR Tech provides some insight into the reasons why this tends to happen.

“Small and midsized businesses may be investing in more HR technology, but they aren’t making good use of it, and that’s a shame. A new survey from HRIS provider BerniePortal found that while 64 percent of small and midsized businesses use HR software, few are using technology to manage the full scope of HR”.

Here are some immediate benefits that can be derived by using the business productivity solution that your company recently purchased:

Gain a single view of your workforce by: Leveraging data and HR analytics with greater speed and ease when making business decisions. ATS TimeWorkOnDemand HR analytics solutions for small and mid-size businesses, provide data-driven insight across the entire company—and simplifies workforce planning to help eliminate errors that impede business success.

Reduce business complexity with: 21^st century data collectors that captures and reports information in real-time through payroll, thus providing user-friendly tools that help your employees work more efficiently and support your business as it grows.

Eradicate stress by maximizing workforce visibility: with ATS HCM cloud-based workforce management software. Consolidate all employee information into a single system, automate employee intuitive dashboards and manager workflows, facilitate, and develop, data-driven HR strategies.

The article goes on to say; “For very small companies just beginning the HR software journey, LaRocque encouraged them to start with core HR solutions. “You want to get payroll, benefits, time and attendance, and paid time off in order, and there are a lot of platforms designed to help small companies do all that,” he said. “Then you can start looking at purpose-built solutions to meet your specific workforce needs.”

The HR problems a company faces will determine the kinds of tools they should deploy — but they shouldn’t delay. “If you think you don’t have time for technology you’ve got your head in the sand,” he said. The time savings that HR leaders achieve by automating laborious HR tasks make these tools immediately worth the investment, especially for small companies with under-staffed HR teams”.

Bottomline-if you have taken the time to invest in the technology, your company will realize a return on investment (ROI) if you are engaged from inception to completion.

To learn more about ATS HCM Workforce Management Solution, go to our website. You can also download a demo, or you can attend one of our bi-weekly webinars. And, to reach an account executive, call 866.294.2467.

HCM Workforce Management Solution, HR Analytics

The World Of Work Is Changing: Is Your Company Prepared?

Where you are a CEO, HR executive or small-midsize business owner, the world of work as you know it is rapidly changing. And, if you are in a management role, you should make sure you are prepared for these changes. Here is small sample size of what’s being considered and some of them will likely come to fruition:

Minimum wage hike, addition of paid sick leave, overtime, vacation pay, minimum wage

Employers will be required to pay employees for sick days taken
Overtime pay will kick in at 40 hours, from the current 44 hours.
Paid vacation will change to three weeks per year from the current two weeks
Employers will be required to pay their part-time workers the same as full-time workers, doing jobs that are similar in nature
Student and people under 18 who server alcohol will no longer be subjected to the lower minimum wage

While these changes are in Ontario, virtually every province and territory of Canada and across several US states, have changes that are similar in nature are going to be enacted by policy makers. And, the regions who have not updated their workplace laws recently, will be using Ontario as a case study. If you are still using paper time sheets to handle current work rule policies, it might be time to starting thinking about implementing a time and attendance solution to help you handle and adapt to these new laws.

In this blog, 7 Smart Reasons for Your Payroll Clients to Use Time Clocks authored by Louie Calvin for Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting, a clear case is made for deploying a time clock solution:

“Collect employee data faster — There’s nothing more frustrating to a payroll preparer than waiting for, or chasing down, clients to get what’s needed to process payroll. Time clock applications manage employee changes and hours/time data throughout the pay period in electronic format — much easier than fielding phone calls or emails.

Correct and accurate payroll calculation and reporting — Anytime your team can reduce human error, you’ll spend less time correcting or delaying payroll. Time clocks today are smart devices — they can automatically log out or deduct for meal periods for people who forget to punch in or out, — and technology like data-sharing and use of APIs eliminates double data entry. An automated time system also makes recording hours easier for remote workers, or when employees travel. Depending on the system, reports upload directly into your payroll software, reducing the need for manual entries. The payroll preparer has the benefit of documented client sign-off on the data they submit, and direct import into your payroll application. This eliminates manual data entry and payroll checks are automatically ready for your review.

Ensure employees are accurately reporting time — With a time clock system, you can set up security parameters to make sure the employee is the one reporting their own hours — and that they’re reporting them accurately. You also have the ability to monitor time in and out, meals, breaks and more. Remember, wages that are overpaid or underpaid can result in liabilities that put your business clients at risk for fraud, with the statute of limitations up to three years.”

The proposed employment laws have not taken effect yet, but soon they will and you want to make sure you are prepared.

To learn about ATS time and attendance solution or to register for a bi-monthly webinar, go to our website. To speak to an account executive; call; 866.294.2467.

Minimum Wage, Overtime, Payroll Time Clock, Sick Leave, Thomson Reuters, Time and Attendance, Vacation Pay

If You Are An HR Manager Add This Solution To Your Hiring Tool Kit

Speak to any HR manager about the list of challenges they face each day and, hiring and retaining talent is likely to top that list. As an HR manager, have you thought of about introducing fingerprint technology as a tool to help with the recruiting process?

If your organization is interested in deploying a fingerprint solution to streamline the process of hiring, here are some suggestions from an article titled New Fingerprinting Tech Gives Hiring a Hand by Meghan M. Biro of Talent Culture:

“Check the requirements for your field. Depending on industry and state, you may be required to fingerprint your new hires. This includes a number of licenses, public, and private agencies.

For instance, fingerprints are required for those working with pari-mutuel betting and racing. Indian tribal governments may require fingerprinting for anyone who is going to have regular contact or control over Indian children. Private security officers, criminal transporters, adoption or foster-parent evaluators, and school employees may all be subject to fingerprinting. (Fingerprints are processed for a reduced fee for a number of organizations or firms whose employees will work with children.) Other common industries that may require fingerprinting include healthcare, insurance and financial services. Other dependencies include whether or not applicants are located in or out of state.

Don’t expect fingerprinting to do all the heavy lifting. If you think one fingerprint can magically produce everything you need to know about an applicant, think again. For example, a fingerprint may disclose an arrest record, but not a conviction. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), it’s ill-advised to deny someone a position solely on the grounds of an arrest record. A summary of the EEOC’s guidance with regard to conviction record screening policies is provided in HireRight’s white paper, Checking in on Employment Background Checks: Are You in Compliance with the EEOC, FCRA, Federal and Local Requirements?

Keep in mind, the FBI database may not receive a record of all outcomes of all arrests, and in some cases, a state may have chosen not to fingerprint. Certain issues may not even appear on the database, which could cause problems later — including possible litigation.

Use fingerprinting to confirm the identity of your hire. Fingerprinting is the best way to confirm identity. It’s been called the gold standard of identity confirmation — and for a background check, this is the straight line between your potential hire and the FBI database. In terms of employee experience, there are plenty of complications involved in the hiring process already. You can eliminate one by making sure your new hires understand the purpose of fingerprinting. Now that identity confirmation is becoming a new normal, and technologies like biometrics are commonplace, you may be pleasantly surprised by younger generations who are comfortable with fingerprinting — many already protect their smartphones with their fingerprints, for example.”

Fingerprint technologies have been around for a while and are used across many industries to track and report on employee time and attendance. That being said, no two fingerprint technologies are the same-for example, biometric fingerprint technology used to track employee time is different from the ones used by law enforcement.

If you decide you want to use fingerprint technology for hiring employees, make sure you are using a reputable company. And, if your company is unionized, also be prepared to get challenged by either your shop steward or the local President of the union. When selecting a vendor, make sure you choose one that has deep industry expertise, and who is able to clearly espouse the virtues of fingerprint technology, discuss the pros and cons and ally the fears of all stakeholders.

Keep current with ATS:

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Biometrics, Employee Time and Attendance, Fingerprint, HR, Talent Culture

Is Microchipping The Wave Of The Future Or An Invasion Of Privacy?

When biometrics was introduced as a way to avoid buddy punching, and thus, replace time and attendance swipe card technology, many thought these data collectors were part of a futurist Star Trek movie. Fast forward to some decades later and recent news that a company was about to microchip its entire workforce has privacy advocates scratching their heads in frustration.

Here is a description from the company, who has decided to deploy the technology to throughout its workforce;

“Three Square Market (32M) is offering implanted chip technology to all of their employees on August 1st, 2017. Employees will be implanted with a RFID chip allowing them to make purchases in their break room micro market, open doors, login to computers, use the copy machine, etc. This program, offered by 32M, is optional for all employees. The company is expecting over 50 staff members to be voluntarily chipped. 32M is partnering with BioHax International and Jowan Osterland, CEO, based out of Sweden.

RFID technology or Radio-Frequency Identification uses electromagnetic fields to identify electronically stored information. Often referred to as “chip” technology, this option has become very popular in the European marketplace. The chip implant uses near-field communications (NFC); the same technology used in contactless credit cards and mobile payments. A chip is implanted between the thumb and forefinger underneath the skin within seconds.”

The reaction to employees being microchipped has been swift with labour experts and lawmakers citing privacy concerns and appealing to HR professionals to proceed with caution. One lawmaker in the state of Nevada has introduced legislation to prevent companies forcing employees to get microchipped as condition of their employment.

So will the idea of microchipping employees gain widespread acceptance? Only time will tell.

Keep current with ATS:

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Biometrics, HR, Microchip, Star Trek, Time and Attendance

5 Benefits Of A Biometric Time And Attendance Facial Recognition Solution

Biometrics technology has gained in popularity in the last 10 years. Many of today’s technology companies including; Apple, Samsung and Google, have opted for biometric authentication with their hardware to prevent theft. ATS biometric time clocks are designed to recognize employees’ unique physiological characteristics-and these data collectors include; face shape, iris, fingerprint or hand shape. And, unlike card-based time and attendance systems, employees cannot punch in/out for each other.

When combined with ATS award-winning TimeWork OnDemand or On-premise solution for mid-to large enterprise; biometric facial recognition helps to increase payroll accuracy by eliminating errors associated with outdated manual data collection, reduce administrative time and eradicate employee time theft from tardiness and “buddy punching” (the practice of employees clock in and out for one another), and long unexplained lunch breaks.

Here are the top 5 benefits of a biometric time and attendance facial recognition solution

Individual tracking: detect an employee based on their individual physiological characteristics

Eradicate time-theft: accurate tracking of employee time, by verifying the identity of those clocking in, thus creating a digital audit trail that cannot be altered. By automating the tracking of employee time an organization, has proof of hours worked.

Reliable and Accurate: Employee biometric templates cannot be duplicated. Managers can remain confident that they are tracking employee’s time and attendance accurately.

Buddy Punching: Since employees cannot use the face of their co-worker to punch in for them, you can now say good-bye to buddy punching!

Data Integration: Employee hours easily integrate with your Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS), Payroll and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), systems.

Today’s workforce is constantly evolving and keeping pace means using an advanced biometric technology solution to increase employee productivity. An ATS biometric face recognition solution will help to increase payroll accuracy by eliminating errors— associated with manual data collection thus, reducing administrative time and eradication of employee time theft.

To learn more about ATS TimeWork OnDemand, the wide array of biometric time clocks or to register for a bi-weekly webinar, go to our website. To reach an account executive, contact us by phone: 866.294.2467.

ATS TimeWork OnDemand, Biometrics, Dell Computers, ERP, Google, HRIS, Payroll, Time and Attendance

Want A Better And More Effective Alternative To Spreadsheets? We’ve Got It

Tracking and monitoring the time of employee hours sound straightforward, but in reality, it can be a quite difficult process to manage. The complexities and globalization of today’s organizations, translates to increasing regulations, and these are just a few of the factors contributing to challenges in time and attendance tracking. Knowing when your employees are working or not, is only the starting point; and, along with daily employee activities, you also have to carefully maintain accurate readings of overtime hours, statutory holidays, vacation days accumulated, and sick days used.

In an effort to increase accuracy and productivity—and decrease costs—many of today’s organizations are not only integrating sophisticated time and attendance applications with their existing applications but they’re also carefully considering how to collect employee data to feed these applications. The right time and attendance data collector can help you automate time-consuming payroll and HR processes and provide both your employees and managers with more options. New, innovative data-collection tools, like ATS biometric time clocks, are helping organizations improve the management of data capture. Technologies like these can help you more easily manage various types of employees, reduce payroll cost and employee theft, and mitigate risk.

Welcome to the World of Innovative Data Collection
Beyond a modern time and attendance solution, ATS PeoplePoint Plus™ delivers rich graphics and video on a 7″ widescreen display. Optional speakers and camera, a fast processor, and expandable memory will allow users to interact with detailed content.

With ATS PeoplePoint Plus™ users can easily navigate employee self-service functionality on the generously sized screen. Custom programs, training videos, video chats, web browsers, and other custom content have a new, more effective platform now. PeoplePoint Plus™offers exciting programming and content delivery opportunities.

To download a brochure or demonstration of ATS workforce management software, go to our website. And to attend one of our bi-monthly webinars, you can register here or contact an account representative at; 866.294.2467.

Biometric Time Clock, HR, Overtime, Time and Attendance, Workforce Management Software

How to Remain Compliant and Manage Pay During a Pandemic

Going To Install Biometric Time Clocks At Your Company? Don’t Forget To Inform Employees

In a recent article titled, Workers push back as companies gather fingerprints, retina scans by Te-Ping Chen for The Wall Street Journal amoung other publications, an excerpt of the article reads in part;

Buying The Application Is A Good Start- Commit To Using It Is Even Better

The World Of Work Is Changing: Is Your Company Prepared?

If You Are An HR Manager Add This Solution To Your Hiring Tool Kit

Is Microchipping The Wave Of The Future Or An Invasion Of Privacy?

5 Benefits Of A Biometric Time And Attendance Facial Recognition Solution

Want A Better And More Effective Alternative To Spreadsheets? We’ve Got It

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