Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software

When Used Properly, Analytics Can Help Businesses Streamline Payroll Costs

It’s no secret that attitudes toward cloud technology are rapidly changing, and discussions about the potential downsides of cloud deployment are quickly evolving into valid, evaluations of the risks associated with not making the move. Perhaps, it’s a combination of sober thought and some companies witnessing their counterparts in the same or different industries deploy cloud computing technologies, with success hence; the adoption of it. And, with the emergence of cloud-based technology, the use of analytics have also increased. In an op-ed by Rodger Howell, principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers for CFO magazine, he writes;

“Today’s technology, cloud, and IoT-driven world is continually generating a wealth of data, creating both opportunity and challenge for those tasked with deciphering and analyzing it. CFOs in particular are now facing increased pressure to connect the dots between multiple data streams to identify patterns that will optimize a company’s growth and align its costs with its strategy.”

Now, that a statement that packs a powerful punch and is noteworthy, if your company remains unconvinced about the rapid acceptance of cloud technology, and its plethora of advantages it can bring to your business.

Rodger Howell’s article provides a blue print for companies to follow when considering, cloud computing software solutions and analytics. In no particular order, it reads in part:

“Setting Goals and Objectives: CFOs should first identify the organization’s short and long-term objectives, developing key performance indicators to track progress. Consider this step the impetus that will motivate business leaders to introduce data analytics to their day-to-day operations and to assess their impact on business goals.

Proposing Pilot Projects: Once CFOs have buy-in from key players within the organization, they should use this support to introduce pilot projects rooted in data analytics. CFOs can start small by proposing new operations and always being sure to encourage participation from other members of the organization.

Seeking Feedback: CFOs must realize that ongoing feedback from other members of the organization, including its leadership, is necessary after introducing new data analytics platforms, and processes.”

Cloud computing and analytics is an increasing priority for companies of all industries especially, for business executives who want to streamline payroll and overtime costs and other related business expenditure.

When Used Properly, Analytics Can Help Businesses Streamline Payroll Costs

ATS Cloud-Based Time and Attendance is the industry’s most flexible and wholly integrated solution. It’s accompanied by best-in-class services across software as a service (SaaS), platform. ATS Cloud-Based Time and Attendance helps organizations drive innovation and business transformation by increasing business agility, lowering payroll costs, and reducing IT complexity.

To learn about ATS Cloud-Based Time and Attendance solutions, go to our website. You can also download a demonstration or register for one of our weekly webinars.

Analytics, CFO, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Overtime, Payroll, PricewaterhouseCoopers

Recruiting Methods Tells A Lot About A Successful Company

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.

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Recruiting Methods Tells A Lot About A Successful Company

HR, Marketing, Millennials, Recruiting, Talent Management

What’s Fuelling The Growth In Today’s Manufacturing?

Ask this question to executives in the manufacturing sector and you are bound to get several different answers, albeit there will be similarities in those answers. It’s no secret that the manufacturing industry has had to adapt and evolve to the rapid changes around them in order, to survive-while dealing with some naysayers who had left them for dead after one of this century’s worst financial crisis.

But who would know the inner workers of the manufacturing industry and its resilience and ability to adapt than anyone else? How about the President and Chief Executive Officer, Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation who penned a poignant article titled “Three Megatrends Transforming Manufacturing”. We tool the liberty of extrapolating some of paragraphs (in no particular order) which reads in part;

“We’re entering a new industrial age driven by digitalization, customization, and miniaturization that is transforming the nature of work in manufacturing. Since the turn of the millennium, the sector has evolved faster and more thoroughly than at any other time in history.”

The rise of the digital era has impacted all industries especially manufacturing. The article states that “The ability to collect and analyze large volumes of data in economic transactions has revolutionized customer care in the retail and finance sectors. In manufacturing, Big Data will accelerate the integration of IT, manufacturing and operational systems on the shop floor and lead to better forecasting and understanding of plant performance. Caterpillar is taking this a step farther, tracking the performance of its products in the field after purchase and offering maintenance and repair services based on real-time assessments.”

If you are still wondering whether the industry can adapt here is a final paragraph from the article; “Of course, manufacturers’ labor needs are changing as well: companies now rely on more automation and require fewer employees, and those they hire must demonstrate higher science, technological and math skills. Fortunately, the millennial generation—as large as the baby boomer generation—is more technologically sophisticated. And, as the manufacturing workforce has diversified over time, manufacturers are working to continually foster more inclusive environments.”

The title of this blog asked? “What’s Fuelling The Growth In Today’s Manufacturing”? The answer is simple-it’s the ability of the industry to adapt and evolve with the times. Many of today’s manufacturers face constant pressure to produce a top quality product on time, every time. And, the economic fluctuations, shortage of skilled labor and market governance, and adherence to workforce compliance mandates adds to the complexities that manufacturers face every day. To meet these challenges many of these manufacturing companies have adopted Workforce Management Solutions to help them keep pace with the digital era, streamline costs and improve productivity at all levels of their operations.

To download a free demonstration of ATS Workforce Management for Manufacturing, go to our website. And, to attend one of our monthly webinars, you can register online.

Big Data, Labor, Manufacturing, Shop Floor, Workforce Management Solutions

Can You Detach Yourself From Work While On Vacation?

June 7th, 2016 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Benefit Accruals | Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software | Time and Attendance On-Demand - (Comments Off)

In the North American culture of work, for some at least, it means responding to e-mails from your boss or other colleagues at all hours of the night, and/or working on your day off or while on vacation. In short, work has consumed some of us, to the point, that we are defined by it. And this can result in family and leisure time, ultimately, taking a back seat to work.

In a recent article by Jennifer Deal for The Wall Street Journal titled “The Neuropsychology of Working While on Vacation–and How to Overcome It”

She writes; “Some people blame the technology for infiltrating our lives to the point we are never away from work. And certainly remaining connected with work while camping or sitting on the beach or being on car trips would be impossible without the smart-phone.”

But is technology really to be blamed for this? Are there emergencies everyday at work that requires employees to be connected 24/7, even while on vacation? Jennifer Deal’s answer to some of this question is simple; “Another way is to turn the phone off and put it physically away, such as locking it in a safe. If you can’t look at it – that is, you can’t without going to substantial trouble – the brain itch will eventually die off because you can’t scratch it.”

Can You Detach Yourself From Work While On Vacation?

And for those of us who find it incredibly busy to turn off from work while on vacation or on our days off, we can also try this; “So the next time you want to relax but find yourself unable to because your mind keeps straying back to an unfinished task, figure out a way to make it impossible for you to complete that task right then. Your mind will be more likely to let it go if there’s no possibility of completing it, and you might finally be able to relax.”

Will any of these ideas work? Who knows, however, if you do not want to check e-mails or have your boss contact you while on vacation, leave your phone at home.

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Neuropsychology, Smartphone, Technology, The Wall Street Journal, Vacation

The Impact Of The New Overtime Rule Will Be Felt Across All Industries

The United States Department of Labor had been contemplating updating the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for quite some time and in December (of this year) 2016, this proposed update will take effect. And this will have wide-ranging effects in just about every industry and while is being instituted in the United States it will be felt in Canada as several Canadian companies have subsidiaries and/or remote employees in operate in the very regions where this propose overtime rule will take effect.

This change also means that, for several organizations, these upcoming changes will require adhering to; how employees are classified, observing hours worked, how time is tracked and, the manner in which overall compensation is paid. Once this law is enacted, it’s anticipated that companies will have 60 days to comply with these new regulations-and if companies choose not to comply, they will subjected to fines and penalties.

An excerpt from The Department of Labor, states, in part;

“The Department is proposing to update the regulations governing which executive, administrative, and professional employees (white collar workers) are entitled to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime pay protections. The Department last updated these regulations in 2004, and the current salary threshold for exemption is $455 per week ($23,660 per year). With this proposed rule, the Department seeks to update the salary level required for exemption to ensure that the FLSA’s intended overtime protections are fully implemented, and to simplify the identification of nonexempt employees, thus making the executive, administrative and professional employee exemption easier for employers and workers to understand and apply.”

The Impact Of The New Overtime Rule Will Be Felt Across All Industries

Here are some suggested steps you can implement to align your organization with the upcoming changes:

Deploy a time and attendance solution
Accurately tracking employee time and being able to get real-time reporting be an essential part of complying with the proposed FLSA overtime rule changes. An effective time and attendance solution will make it easy for businesses to know when an employee is approaching overtime, track hours of employees who work on weekends and remote workers who use mobile devices.

Classify Salaried Employees
If some of your employees are making over the threshold amount they may be exempt from overtime if their job duties fall under the category of; administrative, managerial or executive as it’s defined under the regulations. That said, you should be careful, as employees who have, in the past, fallen under these categories have made case they should be paid overtime. Prepare a list of employees whose salaries do not exceed the threshold because they may be entitled to receive overtime once the changes are enacted. Best case, scenario implement a leave management tool that will help automatically monitor and send alerts if when an employee is approaching overtime.

Control Overtime Costs
On the surface, controlling overtime may seem difficult but in actuality it’s not. If you are using paper time sheets to track and monitor overtime, then yes, it does become a herculean task. By why bother using such antiquated methods, when you can deploy a time and attendance solution that which will automatically tell you; which employees that are scheduled for overtime, show you all overtime costs for each day, and distribute hours evenly between employees (using an overtime equalization tool) so, don’t have to employees for overtime hours, when you do not have to. Now isn’t this better than the spreadsheets, you are currently using?

Ultimately, the most important thing is going to be accuracy. Companies need to have an effective system in place, to accurately track time worked by employees and determine any changes they may need to make to ensure, they are in compliance.

To learn about the benefits of a time and attendance solution and how it can help your organization minimize the impact of changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act, go to our website or call us at ; 866.294.2467.

The Impact Of The New Overtime Rule Will Be Felt Across All Industries

Department of Labor, Fair Labor Standards Act, FSLA, Overtime, Payroll, Time and Attendance

Do You Feel Trapped With Your Time And Attendance System?

Organizations face many challenges, including; retaining a competitive edge, managing employees and keeping them productive and motivated, keeping cost low and increasing customer satisfaction. And, with all this to manage, you are likely not thinking about the negative impact your current time and attendance is having on your business. Here are five ways, your time and attendance system may be having a negative impact on your business:

Your company is losing money
If your current time and attendance is paper-based, there is no doubt you are wasting money by having someone manually calculate employee time, vacations, statutory holidays and host of other things that could easily automated. If you are using some off the shelf or outdated time and attendance solution, you will, at some point, have to pay for new versions, annual maintenance and software bug fixes. Wouldn’t it be nice, if you could have a solution that did not include these ongoing costs?

Limited Choices
You believe that the current version you have works. In other words, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Sometimes, these words tend to be the last ones uttered before the system breaks down, or you come to the realization, that your system is not keeping pace with your business.

Lack of Integration
Let’s say you have a mid-size company with 500 employees, wouldn’t it be awesome to have a time and attendance solution that’s intuitive, and can integrate to your; financials and job costing, payroll, human resources information system (HRIS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM)? Moreover, your company cannot take advantage of real-time analytic reporting if you are using an outdated time and attendance solution. A 21^st century cloud-based time and attendance solution connects to mobile devices and is available from anywhere, at anytime propels your business further and provides greater efficiency.

Upgrading will be a piece of cake or, so you think
Upgrading can sometimes cost the same as what you spent a few short years ago on a new time and attendance system. Also upgrading to a new solution will likely require stakeholders to ensure the business requirements are met. After all, your business requirements have likely changed from a few years ago when you first implemented the solution. In short order, that quick upgrade you were going to get, might end up lasting longer than you had planned for.

Customized System
If your current system is customized, it can create problems with upgrading or its ability adhere to bug fixes – more often than not, this can lead organizations to defer upgrades, sometimes indefinitely. Who wants to be stuck with a time and attendance system that is so heavily customized that it prevents a company from taking advantage of newer versions? With an ATS cloud-based time and attendance upgrades are built-in and takes place without interruption to your company’s business operations.

Deploying a best-in-class time and attendance solution based on today’s technology, enables businesses in various industries, to adhere to multi-jurisdictional and legal compliance differences at the local, provincial, federal and state level. ATS TimeWork OnDemand provides real-time visibility, streamlines payroll costs, increase workforce productivity and gives you access to multiple levels of consolidated reporting and enterprise-wide Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), all displayed in real time, on dashboards.

To learn more, go to our website and register for a free webinar, download brochures or a demonstration. You can also join the conversation through LinkedIn, Google+ or Twitter.

Cloud Based Time and Attendance, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), GooglePlus, Human Resources Information System (HRIS), Job Costing, LinkedIn, Payroll, Twitter

We Do Not Use Or Believe In The Cloud, So What?

Saying your company does not believe in the cloud or even plan to use it is likely hard to believe as the dominance of cloud-based applications are showing no signs of abating. Some companies have dedicated IT teams and servers on which they can store their own data, foregoing the need to use cloud-base solutions and in the short term, this will work. However, there will come a time when these companies will have to upgrade their servers and apply software patches and this will inevitably become cost prohibitive-even for companies with large IT budgets. Businesses and their shareholders are interested in streamlining costs and increasing workforce productivity and since the cloud provides that, more businesses are choosing not to buy new servers, and instead, deploy cloud-based applications.

David Goldman of CNN business wrote an article titled “What is the cloud?” and states in part; “You can run from the cloud — but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to hide. Your job might require you to log onto cloud-based software. Microsoft’s next version of Windows is expected to run some features of its operating system in the cloud.”

So, can your company reap some benefits if we decide to move our current, employee timesheet to the cloud? Yes, you can! ATS TimeWork OnDemand is a robust cloud-based time and attendance solution that provides companies with a unique advantage while addressing employee time capture through an integrated, intuitive, flexible and comprehensive workforce management solution.

The article by David Goldman goes on to say “Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook are among the biggest data center operators for consumer cloud services. There are 320 million iCloud users. Facebook users have uploaded more than 400 billion photos and add an average 350 million a day. Amazon’s cloud services operate in 190 countries around the world.”

In closing, there are lots of benefits to migrating your time and attendance to the cloud, while at the same time maximizing the value of your company’s most important resource, its workforce. In addition, as your organization grows, you need a cost-effective, flexible solution that will grow with you. And, that’s where a cloud-based solution like ATS TimeWork OnDemand, comes in handy.

To download a return on investment (ROI) calculator or to attendance one of our monthly webinars, go to our website.

Amazon, ATS TimeWork OnDemand, Facebook, iCloud, Microsoft, Time and Attendance

Are Your Spreadsheets Giving You Headaches?

March 16th, 2016 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Software-as-a-Service (saas) Workforce Management Software | Time and Attendance Canada | Time and Attendance On-Demand | Workforce Management Solutions - (Comments Off)

If your business is an advocate of spreadsheets for tracking employee time, allocating vacation and statutory holidays, it might be time for you to take a hard look at how this time tracking methodology may be making things more difficult than they need to be. The manual calculation of employee hours and data entry into your payroll, HR or ERP system can cause undue headaches for the even most seasoned Payroll, or HR manager. The end result could lead to, inaccurate pay and missed overtime on employee’s paycheques–or to put it mildly a disaster waiting to happen.

Are Your Spreadsheets Giving You Headaches?

Here’s a break down of some the benefits of what an ATS Time and Attendance Solution can deliver, thus, eradicating payroll day submission headaches:

Capturing Employee Data In Real-Time
Imagine how easy and simple it would be if you could capture employee hours as soon as they punched in out? HR and payroll departments would be doing back flips with joy, because that would mean they now have quicker access to data to make quick decisions and complete tasks. By integrating all data sources into one central source of record with the help of a Business Management Solution, employees can find everything they need, whenever and wherever they need it.

Spreadsheets Inhibits Productivity
Spreadsheets are time-consuming and deprives your company of productivity gains. Various studies report that nearly 9 out of 10 spreadsheets, a whopping (88%) contain errors. A majority of these errors were from human error and could have been avoided. An ATS Time and Attendance solution removes manual time collection of out the equation, and in doing so, reducing errors and streamline your workflow and increases productivity.

On-The-Spot Information That Will Help Your Business Grow
By and large, having access to intuitive business intelligence is the dream of every organization. ATS Time and Attendance embedded business intelligence tools will help you to perform efficiently and make based on the on-spot-information. With ATS Time and Attendance your organization can manage future contingencies and be ready when business condition changes.

As financial consolidation of businesses becomes more prevalent and complex, automating employee time becomes even more important. ATS scaleable Time and Attendance Solution will dramatically improve your decision-making capabilities and support your business growth by helping you to automate, collaborate and analyze all employee data, across multiple locations, countries and the enterprise at large.

To learn more, visit our website and download a demonstration of ATS Time and Attendance Solution. And to reach an account executive by phone, call: 866.294.2467.

Business Intelligence, Payroll, Spreadsheets, Time and Attendance, Workforce Management Solution

On-Demand Webcast: How Businesses Can Use Analytics To Achieve Profitability

Today, leveraging analytics is an absolute must for most industries and it has become more feasible as economic approaches have emerged to cultivate the velocity and variability of data, formerly too massive for traditional time and attendance database systems to process. ATS Software Engineers will give an overview of our workforce planning and analytics module built within ATS cloud-based time and attendance and address its challenges for today’s growing industries.

In this webinar you will learn how you can have a real-time view of your business and events as they occur. You will also learn how other companies are utilizing analytics to give them a competitive edge in shop floor data collection, financial data, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), up-to-the minute data metrics and more.

Webinar details: Friday, October 9, 2105 at 1:00pm Eastern. To register for this webinar go to our website. To reach us by phone call: 866.294.2467.

On-Demand Webcast: How Businesses Can Use Analytics To Achieve Profitability

Analytics, Attendance OnDemand, Cloud Based Time and Attendance, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Webinar, Workforce Planning

Why Should I Register For ATS Workforce Management Software Webinars?

ATS webinar series are designed for companies researching and evaluating the capabilities and functionality of Workforce Management Solutions. During the demonstration, you will gain valuable insights into specific features and functions that address the unique business requirements of manufacturing, healthcare, retail, life sciences and hospitality.

These in-depth demonstrations are interactive and you will learn how ATS has helped rapid-growth companies to improve operational performance by streamlining payroll costs, accelerating global financial consolidation with analytic reporting, and eliminating disjointed and manual based time tracking processes.

All of our webinars feature a CEO/COO, finance or HR executive guest speaker from a from a mid to large size company, who will outline how they transitioned from manual time tracking to modern cloud-based time and attendance.

Our attendees include:

 CEOs/Chief Operating Officers
 CFOs/ Financial controllers
 VP/Director/Manager of Human Resources/Payroll Managers
 VP/Director of operations/manufacturing
 VP/Director supply chain

To learn about ATS, you can take advantage of our library of learning materials and stay up to date on the latest in business software and best practices.

You can also join our LinkedIn business group or follow us on Pinterest and other social media channels. To reach one of our account executives, call (866) 294.2467.

Healthcare, Hospitality. Workforce Management Solutions, Human Resources, Life Sciences, LinkedIn, Manufacturing, Payroll, Pinterest, Retail, Supply Chain, Time and Attendance

Recruiting Methods Tells A Lot About A Successful Company

What’s Fuelling The Growth In Today’s Manufacturing?

Can You Detach Yourself From Work While On Vacation?

The Impact Of The New Overtime Rule Will Be Felt Across All Industries

We Do Not Use Or Believe In The Cloud, So What?

Are Your Spreadsheets Giving You Headaches?

Why Should I Register For ATS Workforce Management Software Webinars?

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