The capacity of a team to work efficiently and constructively is critical to the success of any project. Adopting various workforce management software and time-tracking tools improves labor tracking usefulness and performance.

Leveraging labor tracking, companies can evaluate actions to boost employee performance.

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What This Guide Covers:

• Labor Tracking vs. Labor Management System
• Why Is Labor Tracking Important?
• Primary Benefits
• Key Features
• Additional Requirements
• In Summary

Labor Tracking vs. Labor Management System

We’re dissecting the differences between labor tracking and labor management system frameworks to show how efficient labor tracking provides your management team with the tools they need to transform your surroundings into sustainable, high-performing operating conditions.

Labor tracking software frequently gathers employee data from scans as staff process assignments. This information is then entered into a digital document to show managers how much the worker accomplished or their given production volume during their shift.

Labor management software, as opposed to labor tracking software, provides real-time monitoring, the ability to create precise and reliable multi-determinant standards, and, most notably, the management tools required by your managers to run a high-performance function.

On the other hand, labor tracking is all about accessing employee data in an organization, analyzing metrics, and tracking attendance and performance using technological capabilities to make better, more rational decisions through facilitated reporting.

Important Differences

One of the most contentious issues in today’s marketplace is whether to use a labor tracking or labor management system (LMS). Of course, each has upsides and downsides, and you should carefully consider both options to determine which is a better fit for your organization.

You may access essential labor tracking functions that will help you process the experiment if you have an efficient workforce management system.

Basic labor tracking capabilities present in your workforce management software can help you analyze a worker’s or unit’s overall performance trends. However, it will not provide the functionality necessary to start objective standards and accomplish your true performance potential the way a labor management system will.

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Why Is Labor Tracking Important?

Staff performance is typically one of the most expensive aspects of any industry. HR departments are under so much pressure to steer outstanding results while controlling costs. Developing the ideal recipe by leveraging labor tracking can significantly impact a company’s success.

What is a stable and reliable method for demonstrating ROI in your business? The solution lies in tracking your labor and collecting data on employees’ accomplishments. Checking your ROI is critical because it generates leads, which contribute to more significant profit growth. This tracking can help you manage expenses, which will lead to better practices and economic expansion in your business.

HR departments stand to benefit significantly from tracking employees. Management can derive valuable data and deeper insights from revealing the possible cause of low employee performance and turnover, whether it is work overload or other personal factors.

This labor tracking mechanism can assist businesses in assessing and prioritizing modifications to their ideology or practices to reduce attrition and maintain employee retention in the long run. Employee turnover can inevitably result in the depletion of company resources, increased training time and expenses, and a flush on your company’s bottom line.

Primary Benefits

Implementing labor tracking into your HR processes can help you improve finances, accountability and accuracy at your organization — to name a few of the benefits.

Here are some significant benefits to consider:

Improve Money Management

Why waste money on initiatives that are ineffective for your company?

Properly tracking labor lets you see how much you’re spending on individual projects or to pay specific teams and positions. Additionally, you can monitor special rates, like overtime pay, to determine where additional help is needed to reduce overspending.

Monitor Field Workers

Labor tracking makes use of GPS to monitor mobile workers. This ensures that employees are where they say they are. With multitudes of staff to manage, managers can be confident that their workers are in the right place at the right time. This prevents employees from being paid for the work they did not perform and minimizes unnecessary payroll costs.

Ensure Worker Accountability

Labor tracking ensures that field workers are held responsible for their actions. Employees cannot add additional work hours because you can require them to be on-site to clock in.

It is worth noting that labor tracking can result in employee dissatisfaction in some instances. To mitigate this discontentment, be open and honest with your performance reviews. Disclose how and why you’ll be tracking labor to create transparency with your workforce.

Monitoring workers, when done correctly, can improve performance and enable better behavior. This also aids in the identification of staff who may have taken full advantage of the previous payroll system. Unmotivated employees have nowhere to hide with labor tracking.

Minimize Unpredictability

A project’s complexity can result in delays, hidden expenses and various risks. Managers can access real-time information about the position and status of their workers thanks to labor tracking. This data enables managers to deal with potential issues more quickly to reduce risks, delays and additional bills, thereby protecting team members, maximizing time efficiency and avoiding unexpected costs.

Provide Back-office Advantages

Collecting print time cards and manually adding them to a desktop isn’t pleasant. Worker handwriting can be challenging to read, and mistakes are common.

The accounting office does not have to manually process payroll because of labor tracking. Instead, time records are transmitted wirelessly from the ground. This enables back-office staff to seamlessly aggregate time punches, operations performed and operational deployment.

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Key Features

If you’re looking to leverage labor tracking software to boost your workforce management processes, there are some capabilities you’ll want to keep an eye out for. At the end of the day, what you need from a product really comes down to your unique requirements, but we can help you out with some of the essential labor tracking functions.

We’ve listed a few major features of labor tracking below.

Time Tracking

Time tracking software is essential for effective labor tracking. Organizations suffer the most as a result of employee time theft. Managers can effectively control shift work and minimize costs due to time theft if they have a time tracking feature.

Attendance Tracking

Keeping attendance records and creating periodic reports can be difficult in large companies with a large staff. You’ll want to make sure any solution you choose comes with out-of-the-box attendance monitoring. Managers can keep a real-time view of their staff per location when they clock in and out. This tracking feature saves a significant deal of time and effort.

Data Visualization

Time tracking records can be helpful in a variety of situations. But handling timesheets for multiple staff members working on numerous projects can result in a humongous amount of data.

You should be able to visualize data in whatever time and attendance software you use, whether Hubstaff or Clockify. Following data visualization best practices helps you compile data in a meaningful way so you can analyze and use it to drive decision-making.

Auto-scheduling

Many labor tracking apps do not include an auto-scheduling feature. However, automated and optimized scheduling is a very appealing feature to mention.
Reducing scheduling tasks invariably frees up a manager’s time to focus on higher-value tasks. Shifts for team members can be aligned to customer requirements while increasing employee satisfaction.

Additional Requirements

Along with the features listed above, there are some other requirements considerations you’ll want to keep in mind — namely usability and security. While not features themselves, they’re integral to user adoption and overall effectiveness.

Simple User Interface

Usability should be the first consideration in labor tracking. Consumer expectations tend to climb as digital software advances.

Check for basic, user-friendly functionalities like automatic notifications, an authoring tool that integrates computer and mobile interfaces, and simple labor monitoring. Managers should also be able to use features like drag-and-drop, duplicate templates and save shifts to improve their usability even further.

It is critical to accumulate this pertinent employee data in a user-friendly configuration so that it can be fully absorbed and circulated to the rest of the organization. This valuable information can assist HR departments in identifying warning signs or leveraging the insights they’ve gained to forecast future turnover trends.

High-level Security

Accepting a new program with a considerable amount of employee data is a concern for any company, especially one that deals with highly confidential information. As a result, labor tracking software must be highly secure to protect data for large enterprises.

Check with vendors ahead of time to determine what security measures they use to keep your data safe.

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In Summary

Managers must monitor the stability, efficiency and effectiveness of projects, which is a challenging task. Labor tracking makes this process a little easier. Managers can better regulate projects and boost efficiency and speed with improved exposure to field worker action. Labor tracking not only protects your employees but also boosts your profits.

If you’re planning to introduce a time tracking solution but aren’t sure which one to choose, consider our comparison matrix. It assists you in evaluating different products and creating scorecards.

What do your labor tracking procedures involve? Let us know in the comments below!