In recent years, there has been a huge spike in the number of businesses offering flexible hours and remote working, as increasingly more and more of us crave being able to escape the 9-to-5 and a culture of presenteeism and dominating office hierarchies. The coronavirus outbreak has brought this straight to the forefront, with at least one in five UK employees potentially having to work from home in the coming weeks and months.
Yves Hiernaux, CEO of time tracking experts Beebole has urged decision makers not to see remote working as the enemy. He says it is vital that organisations have the correct policies and procedures in place – like an effective time tracking system – which not only enables flexible and home working but also combats the age-old problems of absenteeism and presenteeism.
No matter your business size, time is your greatest commodity. It’s how you utilise your time- and the time of all of your employees- that determines efficiency, productivity and, ultimately. success. By implementing a cloud-based time tracking system, employers can ensure projects stay on track even if their teams are forced to start working remotely in the coming weeks as the country comes up against coronavirus.
“Employers should trust their employees are working, whether they’re in the office or not. The coronavirus is clearly going to have a huge impact on the UK workforce. If employers are truly worried about their team working remotely, employers can see how many hours were worked (and from where they were registered) if using a cloud-based time tracking system,” said Yves Hiernaux, CEO of the time tracking tool BeeBole Timesheet. “Presenteeism and absenteeism are very much alive and well in today’s work culture, so remote or not, the real key is being able to measure productivity in other ways. Remote working is not the enemy.”
Absenteeism and presenteeism are constant strains on the time of all organisations. The UK government says an estimated 141.4 million working days were lost because of sickness or injury in the UK in 2018, the equivalent to 4.4 days per worker. This is costing UK companies around £77.5 billion each year according to Vitality Health. When an employee is either absent from work due to disengagement or physical or mental illness, or is present at work but under-performing, it impacts organisations across the board. It lowers morale by increasing others’ workloads, forces meetings to be rescheduled and can even put projects at risk. It places added pressure on everybody’s time and is one of the biggest threats to productivity.
Today, many businesses throughout the UK are realising that implementing an easy and efficient time tracking system is no longer simply about clocking in and or clocking off. It’s about the type of business intelligence that data holds. Imagine knowing your employees’ absenteeism rate at a glance or being able to pinpoint when they might be burning out. This opens the door for a very necessary conversation perhaps even before any serious issues have arisen. Not keeping track of this data or having the context to really understand what you’re seeing are missed opportunities.
BeeBole Timesheet was founded in 2008 when founders Yves Hiernaux and Mic Cvilic realised there was a need for a cloud-based HR tool for small and medium sized businesses. BeeBole believes in easy time tracking for everyone, everywhere. BeeBole Timesheet is now used by more than 1,000 customers spanning 63 countries, including companies like Zurich and Michelin, as well as more than 1,000 other companies worldwide.
Hiernaux adds: “By empowering your business with an effective time tracking system all aspects of your business are likely to improve, from efficiency and productivity to employee health and well-being. An effective time tracking system will not look the same for all companies, and needs to be fast, easy and flexible, enabling companies to track time daily, weekly, monthly and in real-time. It needs to be specifically designed for a company’s convenience and provide management with a real insight into workers behaviours and performance.”
