Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software

5 ways HR leaders can stay on track during the Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has brought remote work into focus, while forcing many companies to accelerate their digital transformation plans. And, once the worse is behind us, HR will remain firmly in the driver’s seat of their organizations as the one who ignited digital the transformation efforts.

Here are 5 ways HR managers can help their companies maintain digital adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Maintain communication with remote employees: Employees are going to have different viewpoints on the coronavirus. Some may think the virus is not worth paying attention to, and others will take it very seriously. Regardless of beliefs, organizations must maintain clear communication with its workers.

Utilize modern technologies to your advantage. This may require a pivot of strategy, and investments in new technology to ensure that employees can work efficiently without disruption to customer satisfaction.

2. Invest in a cloud computing solution to improve efficiency:

Companies are seizing on cloud computing technology as the key enabler to complete their digital transformation, and COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated this mandate. Cloud computing solutions is becoming a top C-suite agenda item as businesses are transitioning from a piece-meal approach to a more holistic end-to-end digital transformation with cloud at its core.

Manually compiling spreadsheets and waiting days for different teams to get reports together is a flintstones era approach to business. Embrace access to real-time data and interactive user dashboards- thus, helping you make the right choices and engage with the appropriate partners to augment their own capabilities.

3. Change the way you hire and make easier for employees who commute: The pandemic has brought to the front what many experts have been saying for years. Companies need to be open-minded about hybrid work. For salaried and hourly employees’ location is one of the biggest — and often underestimated — drivers of effective recruiting. Many employees moved for family and Covid-related reasons in the last year and more are actively considering relocating, which implies that recruiting challenges can increase for employers whose approach to hiring have remained the same.

4. Continue to embrace innovation: Information technology, and particular, cloud computing solutions will remain central to the post-pandemic scenario, where innovations will drive the surge in use. The disruption caused by the pandemic is unprecedent. And, while, reducing costs during these challenging times should be a priority, businesses would be wise to search for areas, where they can find enhancements within their current product suite. That is far better than trying to identify an eliminator from your offering.

5. Be prepared to adapt to change: The ‘new normal’will include a hybridworkforce. A hybrid workforce is an operational model that combines remote and on-site employees. And, depending on the organization, it could look different, however, it typically includes the onsite presence of a skeletal staff (often deemed “essential”), while others can be fully remote employees or adhere to a fixed schedule of remote and in-person workdays.

HR leaders will be expected to drive several key initiatives to foster an environment of flexibility, equity, and trust where employees are valued and their wellbeing is prioritized. To succeed in this new and ever-changing role, HR leaders will need to remain focused on managing employee experience to attract, develop, and retain top talent.

To learn more call 866.294.2467. And, to register for one of our bi-monthly webinars, go to our website.

About ATS

ATS offers a broad portfolio of time and attendance solutions that streamlines the collection, calculation, and reporting of employee hours for workforce management and eliminates the manual tasks of payroll preparation, increasing efficiency and reducing errors in corporate payroll departments.

Thousands of organizations across North, Central and South America and Europe- including more than half of the Fortune 500 – use ATS TimeWork OnDemand, Workforce Planning, Employee Scheduling HR and payroll solutions to manage their workforce. ATS cloud services offer rapid deployment, support services, software updates, and enhancements; and consulting and training services.

Cloud Computing, Coronavirus, Covid-19, HR, Hybrid Workforce, Information Technology, Pandemic, Remote Work, Well-Being

Why are Some Employees Feeling Anxious About Returning to the Office?

Before COVID-19 the way we work have been defined by predictable patterns involving who is doing the work, where it occurs and when it happens. And, while technological advancements, have impacted some of these norms, the pandemic upended it altogether and, accelerated the arrival of new ways of working. Many employees who initially felt anxiety about working from home, have come to embrace it after 15 months of lockdown.

Today, as many employers start to unveil their post-pandemic plans for a return-to the office, they are getting pushback from some employees, who are keen to retain their work from home privileges. But is this indicative of a more widespread resistance among workers who do not want to revert to pre-pandemic patterns or is it something else? It is possible, that employees, after working remotely for so many months, feel they can be productive at home – and that the reasons their employers want them back in-office does not add up.

While there are several factors at play, as to why, some employees, are pushing back about returning to the office — below are 3 reasons for the possible hesitancy by some workers.

Lockdown fatigue is real- COVID-19 has been debilitating for all of us and we’re tired of lockdowns. The constant anxiety of living and working through a pandemic has left many of us feeling low in energy, and the thought of driving and working in an office alongside others-in and of itself, is exhausting.
Office work doesn’t allow for a healthy work-life-balance-Lockdown has been isolating and although we have craved the company of coworkers, we have also been able to separate work and leisure time. We have been able to exercise, read and spend time with our loved ones without feeling guilty because we were late getting home for dinner, after the commute from the office.
Going back to pre-pandemic work is the cause of our anxiety- In addition to wearing face masks, we would be following social distancing guidelines and staring at stickers telling us how to behave correctly and politely, while on the subway or standing in a crowded elevator. This is an added layer of anxiety to an already stressful time, that not everyone is looking forward to.

Bottomline: It’s still early to say what the post-pandemic work environment will look like, and not all employers are scheduling employees back to the office. In fact, some are doing it in stages, while others are delaying a return to the office for some staff. Many employers are still being lenient with policies as the virus lingers, vaccinations continue to roll out and childcare situations remain erratic.

You might like:

Are Companies Going to Embrace A Hybrid Workforce Post COVID-19?

5 Tips To Stay Fit And Retain Your Sanity While Working From Home

Are HR Leaders Ready For The Future Of Work?

About ATS
ATS offers a broad portfolio of time and attendance solutions that streamlines the collection, calculation, and reporting of employee hours for workforce management and eliminates the manual tasks of payroll preparation, increasing efficiency and reducing errors in corporate payroll departments.

Covid-19, Fatigue, Mental Health, Pandemic, Telecommuting, Well-Being, Working-from-home

HR Task: Ensure A Safe Return To Work In The New Normal

COVID-19 has taught the business world, that business strategies and plans should not be set in stone and instead they should adopt agility as the preferred business model. This means, HR professionals, in addition to their current workload, have to ensure the wellbeing of their workforce during the pandemic and help navigate the new normal.

As your employees return to work, companies must prioritize their well-being while adopting strategies— to meet the needs of the current working environment to keep operations running smoothly. ATSTimeWorkOnDemand Workforce Management Suite helps you create, and embody, a culture of caring while increasing productivity.

And, regardless of what your company’s “new normal” looks like, a safe and productive return to work—that includes pre-and-post-shift screenings, contactless time and attendance, and contact tracing—can safeguard your employees and give you the best opportunity to thrive in these unprecedented times.

ATSTimeWorkforce Management Suite will help you with:

Optimize Scheduling and Manage Absenteeism
Create a few what-if scenarios to determine when to re-open based on social distancing guidelines, and demand requirements.

Make use of updated federal, provincial and local payroll and labour compliance— within ATSTimeWorkOnDemand to give employees the freedom to manage personal responsibilities— while meeting their work obligations, through leave management.

Contactless Data Capture
To minimize risks associated with shared data collectors, ATSTimeWorkOnDemand Suite supports multiple contactless time clocks clocking, including; proximity, face and IRIS Scan and mobile technology.

Managing Remote Work
The current pandemic has forced many employees to work from home and companies across the world have transitioned their employees to work virtually to support physical distancing efforts. With ATS Employee Self-Service options, employees can request time-off and punch in/out from a mobile device or PC.

The world has changed, with the current pandemic and it’s going to keep changing. ATSTimeWorkOnDemand helps your workforce adapt, evolve, and win by working more effectively within it. Spend less time focused on tasks and more time focused on strategy. Turn data into smarter decision making, and use modern technology to create experiences your employees will love.

In addition, ATS provides modular analytic solutions that includes; workforce planning, benefits management, employee self-service, business intelligence, human resources, payroll, and advanced analytics based on a robust cloud computing platform for information and data needs. It also offers design, rapid deployment, support services, software updates, and enhancements; and consulting and training services.

ATSTimeWorkOnDemand, Contactless Time Clocks, Employee Self-Service, HR, IRIS Scan, Payroll, Social Distancing

Grow Your MidsizeBusiness In The Cloud With ATS Time & Attendance

Your company is all about growth and, the time and attendance software you choose to deploy, should be too. With ATS, your company will scale effortlessly on a product that’s delivered proven results for Canadian companies over a decade and counting.

ATS Time & Attendance, is the choice for many midsize businesses to run and integrate their payroll, HR and ERP applications in the cloud. Companies turn to ATS Time & Attendance to help cut their IT costs, reduce payroll costs and improve productivity.

So, why should you run your business in the cloud with ATS Time & Attendance?

Up-to-date: Automated upgrades deliver the latest innovations
Integrated: Payroll, HR, CRM, ERP, CRM and HCM suite cuts cycle times and errors
Visibility: Real-time dashboards and analytics that eradicates spreadsheets
Global: Multi-site intelligence scales as you grow
Efficient: Up-to-the-minute cloud delivery eliminates on-premise IT costs
Anywhere 24/7: Browser and mobile access lets you access from anywhere
Scalable: Configure to your company’s requirements with confidence

ATS Time and Attendance in the cloud utilizes emerging technologies and powerful predictive analytics to control costs and risks- manage increasingly complex transactions, and make better business decisions. When you deploy ATS Time & Attendance in the cloud you will:

Save time
ATS Time & Attendance is intuitive on-screen tips help you complete your payroll and HR tasks quickly and accurately.

Achieve piece of mind
ATS Time & Attendance complies with complex, ever-changing payroll regulations, collective bargaining agreements, municipal state and federal regulations.

Gain access to the software from anywhere
You can drive innovation, profitability, and growth, while making accurate, data-driven decisions. And, with anywhere access to your software you can run payroll at the office or on-the-road.

To learn more, go to our website and download a demonstration. To reach an account executive, call; 866.294.2467.

Analytics, Canadian, Cloud, HCM, Payroll, Time & Attendance

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

5 Ways to Curb the Challenges of a Remote Workforce, While Adhering to Labour Laws

The impact of COVID-19 has been felt by companies, of all sizes around the world. Today, many of these companies have pivoted to remote work, while we, all wait to see what will happen with the pandemic as time goes on. If your company, was using a physical time clock before COVID-19 where employees punched in/out at the start and end of their shift, and your workforce is now remote, don’t be disheartened. ATS has a range of solutions, that include; employee self-service, online timesheets and contactless time clocks that are designed for the remote workforce.

Here are excerpts from article by Elizabeth Arnold and Chester Hanvey titled Mitigating the Compliance Risks of a Remote Workforce . The excerpts espouse a list of solutions that companies can adopt as some of their employees are now working remotely.

Provide Clear Guidance to Employees: Supervisors play a critical role in guiding and enforcing employee time-management policies. The presence of sound internal policies can play an important role, as well. However, organizational researchers have found that policies alone are often insufficient mechanisms to ensure compliance. Direct involvement by supervisors can help achieve the organization’s compliance goals.
Explore Technological Solutions: A variety of tech options are available to help promote accurate time reporting. For example, you may want to create a mechanism that allows employees to quickly and easily record time spent on compensable activities outside of the work shift. The greater amount of effort required for employees to report time in these situations will likely contribute to employees underreporting time.
Another approach to maximize accuracy in tracking work time is to implement software that has a “timer function.” Employees can activate and stop the timer as they perform different activities. To increase detail and efficiency, “activity codes” can be created to reflect the activity the employee is performing. Tracking work at this level of detail and frequency can improve the accuracy of information recorded.
Scheduling Employees: Another strategy for driving compliance in some contexts is to create detailed schedules with specific time segments allocated to different activities, including meal and rest breaks. Schedules can be distributed through a shared calendar program, such as Outlook or Google, and can help to eliminate ambiguity about expectations concerning remote work.
Conduct Audits of Reported Time: Perhaps the best way to ensure that an employee is reporting time accurately is to perform an audit. Organizational researchers have concluded that monitoring of employees and administering visible consequences for noncompliance are often necessary for policies to be effective. Auditing time records provides a mechanism to evaluate compliance directly. It allows you to make corrections to reported time, which not only ensures that you pay employees properly for their work but also minimizes your organization’s legal exposure.
Driving Compliance Proactively: The rapid increase in the size of a remote workforce creates challenges related to compliance with labor laws. A variety of approaches exist to ensure that all work time is compensated for hourly employees and that the nature of the work is appropriate for exempt employees. The most effective strategy will depend on a number of factors, but you should be mindful and proactive about driving compliance.

While no one knows with absolute certainty what tomorrow might bring, we do know that change is sure to come. In order to truly pivot to a more digital organization, companies must be ready to adopt agile solutions that can easily shift gears, while adapting to new technology, and take on what’s yet to come.

You can explore ATS range of modern HCM solutions that include: ATSTimeWorkOnDemand, Payroll, HR, Employee Self-Service, Online Timesheets, ERP and analytics to help you drive productivity now and into the future.

To reach an account executive by phone; call 866.294.2467. You can also download a demonstration or a pre-recorded webinar from our website.

Analytics, ATSTimeWorkOnDemand, Covid-19, Employee Self-Service, Employee Time Clocks, ERP, HCM, HR, Online TimeSheets, Payroll

Managing Risk During A Pandemic: How To Bring Employees Back

It’s a risky proposition yet, companies far and wide, are struggling with the decision of how, to bring employees back while making sure their health and safety remains intact. The economic fallout from COVID-19 have an economic blow to many businesses-and, unlike, other disasters (natural or otherwise,) such as IT outage or an extreme weather event, this global pandemic does not have a definitive end in sight.

If, like many businesses, you are in the processing of bringing some or all of your employees back to the office, here are some tips from an article titled Ready to Bring Employees Back to the Workplace? Here Are 12 Things to Consider from Sharlyn Lauby of HR Bartender

Before employees return
Organizations will want to consider these activities before the first employee comes back to the work environment. It’s possible that some of them are already in motion, especially if you’ve had employees occasionally visiting the office space while most employees are working remotely.

Put together an “opening team.” The team’s first task should be to understand what the requirements are for your geographic area and industry in terms of safety requirements (i.e. numbers of employees allowed onsite, customer capacity, distancing requirements, etc.)
Look at the work layout. Discuss what should be done with workspaces to permit proper distancing. This includes individual desks, conference rooms, employee break areas, as well as customer areas.
Talk with legal and risk management. Find out the answers to questions about bringing back employees from furlough or terminated status. Be prepared to address onsite testing as well as contact tracing policies and procedures.
Ask managers to begin talking with employees about returning to work. Find out if managers have any questions that will need to be addressed. Consider giving employees who are apprehensive about returning some additional time working remotely.

During the employees’ return
I’m sure there will be a phase-in period where employees start showing up to the office. It’s also possible that employees might work in a transition phase where they spend a couple of days working remotely and then a couple of days in the office. Workplaces will have to be flexible during this time.

Establish a monitoring committee. This group will have a different task from the opening team and could be in place longer. This committee will be responsible for monitoring local updates and communicating to employees any changes in protocols.
Create a welcome letter. This correspondence can be done via email or video and it’s designed to tell employees what to expect in the new office environment. In fact, it could make sense to have a general message from the CEO and another one from the employee’s direct manager.
Give managers flexibility. Speaking of managers, it might be helpful to give them more flexibility than usual in offering employees staggered shifts, flexible work hours, and the ability to approve remote work.
Put a procedure in place for employees to express their concerns. No one wants employees to choose between their safety and their job. Let employees know if they see something that makes them uncomfortable, how they should address it. The goal here isn’t to get people into trouble. It’s to keep everyone safe.

After most employees have returned
As more employees return to the office, the organization will want to figure out how to get back to “normal”. Frankly, employees will be looking for that as well. It helps everyone stay focused and productive.

At this point, organizations might be thinking about business travel. It might be necessary to redefine what’s considered essential and non-essential business travel. Some of this might tie into a revised budget.
Evaluate technology needs. Hopefully, we won’t face another pandemic, but employees might need better technology that gives them the ability to be productive while working remotely. Make sure they have the right technology to support their work.
Conduct a debrief. Organizations will hear that the government is permitting them to do something but that “something” may/may not be best for the organizations’ business model and employees. Companies will have to start deciding how – as restrictions are relaxed – they will make decisions.
Finally, put together an emergency plan for next time. Again, hopefully you’ll never have to use it. While all of these thoughts are fresh in everyone’s mind, put a plan on paper.

Bottomline: The COVID-19 pandemic “new normal” has forced business leaders and their HR departments into some of the most challenging times on record-whether its adapting to new workforce demands, managing dispersed teams or maintaining employee engagement in a time of volatility.

To learn more about ATS you can register for our next webinar. To download a demo of our time and attendance app or reach us by phone call; 866.294.2467.

Covid-19, Employees, HR, IT, Remote Workforce

Why are Some Employees Feeling Anxious About Returning to the Office?

How to Remain Compliant and Manage Pay During a Pandemic

5 Ways to Curb the Challenges of a Remote Workforce, While Adhering to Labour Laws

Managing Risk During A Pandemic: How To Bring Employees Back

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