Purchasing a Time & Attendance System for your Construction/Field Service Business

Choosing a digital employee time tracking and attendance solution can be overwhelming, with numerous solutions offering varying features, pricing, and support. We appreciate that you will only want to go through this process once.

Our goal is to provide a clear, concise guide to help you identify the most important factors and features for your construction or field service business. Let’s begin with identifying the challenges with manual employee time tracking & attendance systems.

Identifying the Issue 🔎

Manual time entry systems can lead to inefficiencies and errors, resulting in a negative impact on overall productivity. We've put a table together that highlights the key challenges and opportunity costs in manual time tracking specific to construction and field service businesses.

Making the Switch 📝 ➡ 📱

By implementing a digital time tracking and attendance tool, construction and field service companies can streamline their payroll processes by automatically recording hours worked, reducing errors and saving valuable administrative time.

Real-time tracking ensures that management can monitor employees attendance and job projects accurately, allowing for better resource allocation and job costing. This also boosts accountability, as workers' locations and productivity are more transparent.

Overall, by embracing a digital solution, you're taking a leap towards improved efficiency, reduced costs and more informed business decisions moving forward.

We've touched on both the opportunity costs of a manual time tracking solution and the benefits that a digital system can bring. Let's move on to the step-by-step guide on how to implement a digital solution that can solve your challenges.

Step 1. Define your specific needs

From the outset, it is important to ask yourself what are the ultimate goals for implementing a digital time tracking & attendance solution? It can help to write a list of the outcomes you're hoping to achieve. For example:

• Employees to be able to clock in across multiple site locations
• Employees can only clock in when they are on site
• Ensure we can comply with Working Time Regulations
• Visibility across all jobs, projects and labour hours
• Streamlined leave management system
• Visibility of calendar events such as employee's annual leave, sick leave and bank holidays

Once the list of desired outcomes is established, the next step is to consider the features required in order to achieve them.

Step 2. Focus on the Core Features

Break down the essential features the solution must offer as it's important to focus on those that directly align with your objectives. From our experience, the questions below outline a lot of the key requirements construction and field service companies look for in a solution.

🕒 Real-Time Tracking
Can we know where our employees are working at any time?

📱Mobile Access
Is the solution easy to use in a construction/ field service environment?
What is it like to use in areas with minimal reception available?

🧩 Integration
Does the solution integrate with our existing payroll system?
Does the solution integrate with our ERP system?
Does the solution integrate with our project management system?

📍Geofencing
Can we ensure that employees only clock in onsite?

👤 User Experience
Is it straight forward for both tradespeople and admins to use?
Is it tailored towards our industry's needs?

📋 Compliance
Can the solution help us stay in compliance with labour laws?

⚠️ Alerts & Notifications
If an employee forgets to clock in/clock out, will they receive a notification?

 📄Timesheet
Can employees make adjustments to their timesheet?
How are timesheets approved for payroll?

💰Job Costing & Tracking
Can we track the cost and progress of jobs?
Is there a limit on the number of jobs we can have in the system?

📈 Reporting
Can we access insights into our labour costs, employee hours, overtime etc?

🌴 Leave Management
Does the solution a leave management functionality?
Can employees submit requests and can managers approve?
Can we view a leave wall calendar?

Step 3. Research & Compare

Create a shortlist of vendors that offer the features you need. Base the shortlist on the following:

• Stakeholder-specific needs
  Some providers offer features that are better suited to particular types of customers. For example, key features for different stakeholders within construction and field service industries are outlined in the table below.

• Case studies & testimonials from similar businesses
• Customer reviews & ratings
• Budget considerations

Step 4. Conduct a Pilot Trial Test

Most vendors offer free demos or trial periods - take advantage of these! Test the solution's ease of use, whether or not the tool fits your requirements, and the standard of customer support received during the trial period. The trial provides ample opportunity to:

• Set up employee profiles, job roles and departments, shift schedules and overtime settings
• Integrate the solution with your payroll process
• Tailor features such as geofencing, mobile app preferences, and reporting to workflows

Selecting a small group of employees to run with the tool helps to iron out any minor technical issues. It also allows for the gathering of initial feedback.
Additionally, the solution's performance in terms of user experience and data accuracy can be monitored.

Step 5. Review Trial

Upon completing trials of different solutions, it's time to assess each ones performance.

Review Functionality
Compare how each solution performed against your specific requirements and criteria.

Gather Feedback
Collect feedback from those who tested out the solution to understand their experiences and preferences.

Integration
Check how well each solution integrated with your current systems and processes.

Assess Support & Training
Evaluate the quality of customer support and training resources for each solution.

Cost Analysis
Assess the costs involved, including initial investment, maintenance and hidden fees.

Step 6. Crunch Time

Choose the solution with the features and performance that best align with your requirements and objectives. It is important to consider the total value the solution can bring you in the long run. Once decided, prepare for rollout.

Step 7. Rollout

• Set a deadline and plan a gradual rollout of the solution with specific departments & locations. A gradual approach minimises disruption and allows unforeseen issues to be resolved promptly.
• Migrate all existing time tracking, employee data and schedules to the new tool.
  It's important to ensure admins, managers, HR staff, and employees have the correct access and know their roles within the system.
• Offer training to staff to help them understand how to use the new system and the features it brings e.g. submitting expense requests, submitting leave requests.

Step 8. Monitor

The journey doesn't end with implementation. Ongoing support, training, and feedback are essential for maximising the effectiveness of your time & attendance system. It is important to evaluate its impact by comparing results against your original goals e.g. less payroll errors, increased visibility across jobs & site locations, improved time tracking. As the needs of your business change, you can continuously iterate and refine the system's settings.

We appreciate that the prospect of finding and implementing a digital time tracking & attendance system can be a daunting one. Half of the battle is making the first step to identify your business's challenges and the features needed to overcome those challenges. By doing so and with the help of this guide you can simplify the decision-making process and ensure the successful implementation of an employee time tracking & attendance solution that fits with your setup.

By investing the time and effort into choosing and adopting the right solution, you position your business for success today and into the future.