Time & Attendance for Care Homes

14 July 2020
woman in care home

Managing a care home can be a challenge. Care homes provide around the clock accommodation and personal care for people who need extra help and support in their daily lives. This in itself is no mean feat, with the absolute necessity of focus on every individual and their needs, safeguarding, care plans, reviews and incidents. Managing staff hours is an extra burden that should therefore be made as straightforward as possible so that focus can remain where it is most required: on the residents.

Time and attendance systems are the perfect solution for managing the complex shift patterns that are so often required within care homes and other healthcare settings. Such systems allow for effective scheduling and management of staff, whilst also helping with time management, payroll accuracy, and reducing administrative costs. Given the considerable list of advantages that time and attendance systems offer, care homes benefit significantly from implementation.

So, What Is Time And Attendance?

Time and attendance software tracks and monitors when employees work. These systems allow for accurate tracking of working hours, and record when employees are late, leave early, how much time they take on breaks, and when they are absent.

Automated time & attendance has evolved from the manual systems that used time-stamping to track working hours. Although these manual systems were helpful, they were troublesome and more time-consuming to use than modern software.

Today’s time and attendance systems are highly accurate, and can help users to improve the efficiency of a business. When employees arrive for work or leave at the end of a shift, they clock in/out at a terminal that will read a card or fob or even a fingerprint or iris. Their unique identifier is then logged in the system that tracks their working hours.

Modern day  time and attendance systems make use of biometrics, and so can eliminate any fraud through buddy punching. Biometric readers can utilise facial recognition, fingerprint scanning, or hand geometry. This means that employees can’t abuse the system and log incorrect working hours to increase their wages or hide their absences.

So How Is This Useful for Care Homes?

Working within a 24/7/365 environment, care homes need to make sure that all shifts are covered and ongoing care is provided to their residents at all hours of the day. Time and attendance solutions can help care homes manage their staff more efficiently and effectively.

Whether staff are hourly paid, contract or salaried, with a time and attendance system, managers can see exactly when their staff members clock in and out, so when the time comes to do payroll, they have an accurate report of how many hours each employee actually worked.

All of this data, including lateness, overtime, absence records, and sick days, are then recorded in one place. Managers can easily find staff time information for their administrative records and ensure legal compliance with the Working Time Directive (WTD).

For care home groups, time and attendance can also be very useful for managing staff who work across different locations. Having this kind of centralised system can help care home owners keep track of all their staff, even if their different care home sites have separate rules and contracts for payroll.

Time and attendance software for the healthcare sector also works in real-time. It can alert care home managers or supervisors when an employee doesn’t show up or is late. The manager can then take action to replace any absent employees and ensure that they still provide a high level of service to their residents.

The Benefits

Care homes can benefit a great amount by using a time and attendance system. Not only can it improve efficiency, but it can also help managers to better organise complex shift schedules and more accurately conduct payroll. Here are some of the many benefits of time and attendance software for the healthcare sector.

More Accurate Time Records

By using time and attendance within healthcare settings, care home managers can accurately track staff working hours. Managers can also monitor whether their employees meet their number of contracted hours.

These systems automatically calculate overtime and staff pay based on the care home’s rates. This eliminates the need for manual calculations for payroll, and cuts out the risk of human error. As well as improving efficiency, it also helps care homes to reduce the cost of payroll through its accuracy.

Full Reports And Analytics

Time and attendance systems for care homes can also help to track patterns and trends. By logging all staff working hours, they can provide a better understanding of efficient staffing, and help care home owners make better decisions.

With a centralised database, it is easy for care home managers to access time and attendance reports. They can spot employees who are often late or absent, as well as employees who are always on time and often work overtime.

Increased Efficiency

With manual systems, a lot of time is spent communicating with employees. There is also more room for error or fraud, which can end up being costly for the care home. Using modern day time and attendance systems in healthcare settings can help maximise the efficiency of many of the tedious, pain-staking daily manual tasks. In saving time on these elements, staff can focus more on providing a high standard of care for their patients. Not only this, but employees can see their shifts easily. This means less back and forth between managers and staff when organising the work schedule.

Easier Management

Time and attendance software can make the management aspect of a care home or healthcare facility much easier. A good system will have an intuitive, easy-to-use interface so that the manager can find everything that they need at their fingertips.

This kind of software can help to organise complex schedules and adjust them on the go when necessary. The software also makes it easy to keep track of employees in real-time.

Protect Sensitive Data

Payroll departments have the important job of maintaining the integrity of sensitive employee information. Time and attendance software can help protect this information and ensure privacy by allowing only authorised users to access or edit certain data, settings or sensitive information.

The Bottom Line

With its many benefits, time and attendance software can make a big difference within the healthcare sector and within care homes. By increasing efficiency and accurately recording staff working hours, care homes can save costs and ensure that they provide the optimal level of care for their residents.