Hybrid Work is making a positive impact on the lives of many employees. In contrast, for others, it has opposite effects. However, employees and employers are struggling with various processes and changes in this “new normal”.
Some employees feel the need for a hybrid mode as they need to
Some employees feel the need for a hybrid mode as they need to
- Socialise in person with co-employees
- Gain knowledge and skills to deal with modern HR tech
- Offer better outcomes for emotional well being
But, do organisations really need to implement a hybrid working model?
The hybrid working model enables businesses to downsize their investments, restructure workspaces, and use integrated workplace digital tools.
According to a survey by Upwork, 73% of all firms will have a hybrid working model by 2028, owing to their astoundingly great results.
Thus, a hybrid model would benefit both employees-employers. But administering and tracking attendance in that mode would be no less than a challenge.
In this blog, we’ll assist you with the most challenging aspect of managing a hybrid workforce:
Employee Time And Attendance Management.
Before we dig deep into employee time and attendance management in a hybrid working model, let us understand hybrid mode in brief.
Hybrid Working Model: A Quick Overview
“We are now hybrids in addition to being remote-friendly.”
Most organisations are referring to their work practices as “Hybrid” post-pandemic.
Meaning
Three distinct work modes—collectively referred to as the hybrid workplace—are fully supported and accepted by businesses more than ever before:
Hybrid Work Modes
- Working entirely from a distance (remote location)
(from wherever your employees may be or would like to be), without being present in office
- Performing roles and responsibilities from a corporate office
(a most popular choice for many of employees who lack focus at home)
- A unique combo of TWO
(3 days at the office and 2 days at home) whatever works best for your organisation
*Since modes may be swapped and blended, no one needs to even mention which mode they prefer.
But that begs the question: what do employees want next?
Employees Want Flexibility
Hybrid work is an idea that will probably dominate the rest of 2022 and the future of work. Giving your employees the freedom to choose where and when they do their job would be the best way to offer them flexibility at work.
Advantages
Significant advantages of a hybrid workplace include:
Increase Productivity
Just as every person is different, so are the times and locations where your employees are most productive. Give your employee the freedom to decide when and where they prefer to work.
Less Prone To Burnout
Burnout is frequently caused by long commutes to work and after-hours obligations like childcare and housekeeping. Your employee may save a tonne of time and energy by having the choice to work from home and avoid the drive.
The Mental Health Foundation and LinkedIn jointly commissioned research that revealed- “ 54% of employees say they value the advantages of working remotely and would prefer to have the choice. 45 per cent of respondents claim to feel closer to their relatives.
Improve Talent Pool
A hybrid hiring technique provides organisations with access to a larger pool of candidates. It not only attracts more job applications from a particular location, but it also enables you to recruit various skills across the globe.
Boost Smart Coordination
For businesses with an office setting, smart coordination between remote and in-person work hours might reduce the amount of overall space an employer may require, perhaps resulting in inexpensive rent even if the business is expanding swiftly.
But all these advantages can benefit your business when you understand the attendance patterns in changing times.
Attendance Management in Hybrid Work
Employee Attendance Patterns
Attendance patterns have become increasingly unpredictable because of increased interest in flexible working hours and environmental variables. As both full-time on-site employees and remote employees have to be administered at the same time.
Employers should reconsider their strategy in favour of a more agile, adaptable approach with multifunctional spaces since employee attendance now looks dramatically different than in 2019.
According to research by Harvard Business Review,
32% of employees never want to return to work, commonly ascribed to having small children at home and a long commute due to living on the outskirts. However, 21% of respondents are ready to return to work full-time, generally younger people who reside in the city and are tired of working from home.
Companies worldwide require a robust, flexible and secure tech-based solution allowing employees to-
- record their attendance from anywhere, anytime, on any device
- meet new attendance and leave policies and varying work hours needs.
So what exactly is the solution?
Automated Attendance Systems and Breakthrough Feature
Today’s HR-tech-based time and attendance systems are reliable, efficient, and simple to set up and administer. From a time-office perspective, attendance software is far more than just an attendance tracking tool.
How?
Thus, there is nothing that an automated attendance system cannot offer to meet the demands of a hybrid working model.
For the majority, having the automated tools at an early stage is crucial
The manual attendance has been replaced by the automated attendance management system. Businesses that successfully address the issues with attendance management and hybrid working options will have less effect and succeed where others fail.
Automated Attendance Management System Can Resolve Challenges Of Hybrid Mode
In a hybrid work model, managing time and attendance have several unique difficulties. The following significant inquiries might be in the minds of forward-thinking managers:
- How to ensure the working location of employees
- How to organise work schedules for employees who work varied hours
- How to manage time for employees that could clock in from different locations during the week
- How to maintain compliance with employment and labour law & regulation in various work situations
- How to retain productivity while maintaining attendance data for employees for payroll processing
Here are effective solutions that can be offered by Automated Attendance Management Software:
- Time tracking options to allow employees clock in/ out from anywhere
- Intelligent clock prompts to reduce mistakes and notify managers of unusual situations, like a missing punch
- Geofencing options to provide more information and alerts about whereabouts of employees during clock in and out
- Intelligent and easy-to-use tools for staff scheduling and shift planning
- Pre-define leave and attendance policies to avoid the hassle of manually recording hours
Attendance Management Policy
When it comes to hybrid work, many inconsistencies might be prevented with a well-written set of regulations. We’ll offer you a few suggestions for drafting better policies:
- Shift Policy
Let’s not waste any time and jump to the key pointers of Shift Policy:
- Schedule multiple shifts: To simplify the hybrid working process, create as many different shift types as necessary
- Set up the regularisation: Regulate the shift policy at your convenience to accommodate the requirements of different departments
- No last-minute rush: Managers often rotate shifts to avoid any last-day calculation that ultimately leads to errors; HROne puts a stop mark on it.
- Shift allowance provision: Set the scene and amounts for which you wish to provide shift allowance to your employees so that no additional effort goes unrecognised
- Weekly Off and Holidays
The most anticipated times of the month or year is the one when weekly off and the holiday season arrive. Employees make plans to take time off work to spend more time with their family and friends at that time.
But how can organisations support employees when employees are diversified into work from the office, remote and hybrid modes? The weekly off and holiday policy have all the answers.
Here’s what you need to remember while crafting one:
- Create a holiday calendar as per the needs and structure of an organisation
- Specify rules requiring employees to submit requests for extended vacations a specific number of days in advance
- Specify the maximum number of vacation days that may be accumulated
- Give specifics on what will happen to leave if vacation days are not used
- Specify the maximum number of carryover vacation days used each year
- Review your holiday list to ensure it is complete and complies with regulations
If you’re using excel or emails to track time off, this might be the best time to automate not even attendance but the entire HR function.
- Leave Policy
A clearly stated leave policy demonstrates the professionalism of a company. In addition, you promote employee trust and happiness by establishing explicit norms and openness. All of these assist you in creating a powerful employer brand.
Here’s what you need to remember
You must establish different regulations for each form of leave after determining the types of leaves an employee is eligible to take.
- Grant/entitlement: Frequency, duration, and timing of leave to be approved
- Availing rules: how frequently an employee may use a leave, any limitations, etc.
- Eligibility: Who is qualified to take this kind of leave?
- Approvals: Who may approve and the requirements for leave approval.
- Encashment: Determine what kinds of leaves are eligible for cashing out
- Year-end activity: Specify carrying forward lapsed leaves up to a specific limit
Most decisions while designing the policy rely on the requirements and culture of an organisation.
- Check-in/Check-out Policy
When an employee fails to check in or check out at the specified time, some organisations consider this activity a violation.
While this might be a bit harsh, here’s what you can do to make the check-in/ out policy suitable for employees:
- Offer check-in and check-out flexibility to make employees more regular and punctual.
- Create a policy that incentivises good attendance records with rewards
- Ensure issues in the check-in and check-out policy can be identified easily
- Make sure the check-in and check-out policy doesn’t affect one’s payroll
Here are effective solutions that can be offered by Automated Attendance Management Software:
- You should examine whether being in the office premises is more crucial for specific teams or people while drafting attendance policies
- For example, you may want managers to be in the office more regularly to strengthen connections with direct reports and offer them in-person assistance.
- Similarly, for critical meetings with prospects, you may want to have the sales team in the office; meanwhile, you can allow the marketing team to work in a hybrid model.
- While drafting your policy, keep these diverse expectations in mind.
Attendance Management Templates
You may monitor employee attendance by month using the Attendance Template. And if you may ask what the attendance template is, then the answer is simple.
First, you specify the month and then provide all the necessary details for each employee (name, position, and department).
The template automatically calculates the sums for each employee when you record whether they came to work, were absent without cause or calling in, were on sick leave, were on personal leave, or were on vacation.
Best for what and whom?
The attendance template is great if you want to track employee attendance, sick leave, personal leave, vacation, and days they either showed up or called to announce their absence monthly. It’s also great if you want to track this data for each employee and your team in total.
The following are some benefits of Attendance Templates
- Quickly calculate salary, pay, and overtime.
- Keep a close check on employee attendance.
- Saves time and money for SMEs and organisations with limited resources.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of teams or each employee individually.
- Assists HR managers and employers in discovering attendance problems.
- Maintaining Attendance ensures that employees are paid on time and correctly.
Key things to remember while choosing templates online
The best approach to monitoring employee attendance is employing templates, which is a quick and straightforward process.
However, it has several drawbacks.
In other words, using a template to manage Attendance is only appropriate if your business employs fewer people, making it easier to track and manually enter accurate data for everyone.
The ideal option in this situation is to use a time tracking platform, such as HROne, that not only offers templates but also enables automated attendance monitoring for your team and makes the process as smooth as sailing in the calm ocean.
Start Tracking Attendance with HROne.
Wrapping Up
How reliable is the hybrid working model?
With new COVID variations appearing regularly in various regions of the world, it’s reasonable to assume that the hybrid working model is here to stay.
According to recent research,
73%
of employees desire to work a combination of hours from home and office
I.e., they want flexible work options.
42%
of employees said they would look for a new job if their company didn’t provide flexible work schedules.
Companies have changed their work environments to fit their work models. Additionally, they devote time and money to making remote work as effective as possible for employees.
Automated Attendance system, policy and templates as survival tools
Attendance management in a hybrid working model is a necessity. So, you need to understand the importance of three pillars to make it work-
- Automated Attendance Management Software benefits almost every workplace with the flexibility offered by cloud-based computing. When teams use competent time and attendance systems, productivity can actually rise, according to employers who support hybrid working models
- Attendance Management Policy enables optimization considering the effects of varying clock-in times and shifting schedules. Well-crafted policies improve operational efficiency while maintaining the effects of flexibility
- Attendance Management Templates let managers and HRs in creating policies for attendance, leave, weekly off, holidays, and shifts
Flexibility is clearly no longer simply a “great bonus,” but rather a fundamental attraction that may shape the whole work experience of your employees.
Some employers are still hesitant to permit their employees to work totally from home. The hybrid work paradigm is therefore the ideal middle ground for all the stakeholders involved.