Managing Overtime with Your HRMS

Overtime can strike fear in the hearts of any budget owner as it will quickly attack the bottom line. Are you keeping tabs on overtime costs? Read on for some common time and attendance overtime struggles and how your HRMS can help you to overcome those challenges.

Lack of information means that we cannot effectively plan for headcount”

Having employees work overtime is like using contractors, sometimes it’s the best short term fix, but it’s an expensive one for the longer term. Are certain teams consistently mandating overtime? Or is there a difficult to fill position that necessitates overtime until someone is found? If you do not have access to data such as hours worked at hand, it’s not surprising that overtime costs are not controlled. It is necessary to have HR analytics in order to analyze the root causes for overtime, and this is where the HRMS comes to the rescue! By reporting on overtime figures and then drilling down, you are able to present some recommendations to management such as when a new headcount is justified or when the open position’s salary needs to be increased to attract the right candidate.

It’s just not possible to get enough good staff, overtime is part of the cost of doing business”

I once reviewed data in a major retail establishment with a large number of hourly staff. There was a discrepancy among teams; certain managers needed people regularly on overtime while others only used it during the busy run up to holidays. This is precisely where the right HRMS can provide the guidance needed to tackle the problem.

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Some managers would just allow the computer to generate the schedules while others would take the default schedule but modify it to make a better fit, knowing the staff. The more astute managers knew that certain profiles of employees would be dependable on an early Sunday shift and wouldn’t be calling out sick. They could even predict with ease and not knowing the person, but by knowing a few key aspects about the employee such as length of service, whether or not the employee was a part-time student, etc. The HRMS data can help for better decision making, using predictive analytics in such circumstances.

Overtime can have a heavy impact on the budget as well as staff productivity. Your HRMS is a valuable tool to help manage overtime as long as you make the investment in storing and maintaining the data.