Having worked in the school system for over 18 years, I have seen it all when it comes to employees trying to increase their hours. I learned over the years that employees highly intent on doing this get very creative. Yes, it is stealing indeed. You are not actually taking a physical item away from the job site, but you are stealing from the company’s profits. In the long term, this will eventually cause both the company and employees problems in the form of less raises and bonuses.
We always used a spreadsheet type time sheet that had our name and title on it. Each employee had to make sure that the actual time they entered the building was put on this time and attendance sheet as well as the actual time left. There was even an employee time tracking chart for when we left the building for errands or emergencies. This meant that our poor payroll clerk had to keep up with two employee time and attendance tracking spreadsheets.
There was something called comp time that meant just that. It was not really approved by the school system but if we kept track of our hours over the usual 7:45 to 3:30 (meaning we had to keep our own spreadsheet or go back over the old time sheets), the school principal (my boss) would sometimes allow us time off without showing it on the employee time sheet. Of course, this led to discord among the employees that may were not as well liked by the principal. There was never any overtime paid. This was just how it was. I remember one time when I had about 13 hours over the regular tracked time and wanted a half a day off. At this time, the principal knew I was about to quit and she told the payroll clerk to dock me for the time off. After a brief but lively discussion, I was allowed not to count my time for the one half day.
Enter Employee Time Clock Software
The next school I worked at was installing a really impressive program where all you had to do was run your pre-programmed badge through an employee time clock and the time and your information was automatically entered into an employee attendance and time tracking software program. This actually tallied up your hours. Now I could see a great benefit to this program. Employee time theft would become a thing of the past. (Or so I thought).
Since overtime was not paid for employees of the school system unless you were in maintenance, it was stressed to the employees that they only clock in at their designated time and clock out at the same time. Well, can you imagine the backlog at the time clock this caused? Those of us that wished to continue working off the clock still had to clock in and out at designated times then go back to work. Not a great scenario.
Many times I consistently saw late arriving teachers have others run their time badge through the time tracking software by actually giving them their time clock badge! This was so they could arrive late and not be caught. Shame on them.
Another disadvantage of this new employee time tracking software was the problem with inservice days. Teachers often had to go to other schools for inservices and never set foot in their home based school to clock in and out. This created another dilemma for the payroll clerk trying to keep up with their time. It was soon discovered that not enough research went into this employee time keeping software. It had major flaws. What was needed for our school system was a time and attendance software product that would allow for changes in schedules and add comp time. It needed to be able to flexibly track several situations of when employees take time off, not just attaching attendance times to names. Employees have many different types of situations that require time off, and each needs to be associated to a different rate of pay to keep all time off events separate and accurate.
One product I found called Clock Real Time can keep track of as many types of leave time or time away from work as needed. There are no limits to the types of Leave allowed.
Account for Multiple Reasons Employees Take Time Off
It’s easy to add a leave type in a few clicks, and it can be counted as work time or not with each type having its own pay rate. This makes accounting for any variety of time away from work effortless — no calculations or time tracking issues. At the end of a pay period a report from Clock Real Time can be handed to payroll without editing or totaling of any kind.
Tags: employee time tracking, employee time tracking software, time and attendance, time and attendance software, time theft