Why your staff resent your time and attendance module

Time and attendance modules can deliver strong benefits and cost savings that impact the bottom line. Users often resent this module which can influence the level of usable data that it generates. Why is your staff resentful of your HRMS T&A and how can you improve their perception of it?

It’s always used for negative rather than positive purposes

Management is quick to see the benefits of data that spots trends when they are fixable issues. Employees who are coming in late or absent for shifts can swiftly be picked up and disciplined. Employees began to see the time and attendance module as big brother, missing nothing and unforgiving.

If you want to change the perception of your time and attendance module you need to use it for good reasons as well as bad. Celebrate wins such as an employee who reaches one year of perfect attendance or the team who collectively has the best timekeeping results. When you use the data to publicly congratulate and reward employees the resentment factor will decrease.

Paperwork for the sake of paperwork

A frequent complaint from time and attendance end users is that the system is an administrative burden that detracts time from doing their jobs. Are you operating a streamlined, efficient module that adds value for both employees and managers?

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Employees resent overhead activities that do not help them to do their job in a better way. Review your processes to ensure that the level of data and approvals are relevant. Do a cost benefit analysis of the user’s efforts to log and approve time versus the benefits that the company receives from utilizing this data. Work on a communication strategy that conveys to users the reasons for data and how it improves the company’s operations.

The computer says no

When you introduce your time and attendance module to employees a relevant question is, ‘how does this improve the current process for team members?’ An employee who previously had holiday requests approved in a day will be frustrated if the T&A approval process requires a week. A time and attendance module should be configured for rules-based holidays and work shifts. If your T&A is overly strict or cumbersome it will cause resentment as employees and managers want to take care of time tracking tasks in the fastest manner possible. When your T&A is not set up appropriately it can require an admin’s manual intervention which will cause frustration and resentment at the lack of self-service and automation.