Time-keeping is starting to become a hot topic among senior living providers.
Perhaps as the industry heats up, folks are looking to optimize their human resource spend, or senior living professionals are looking to streamline their operations as more specialized HR software becomes available within the industry.
Either way, we’re here to help through your decision-making process with our list of why retirement homeowners should implement time-tracking solutions.
Here are 5 reasons why your community should consider implementing timekeeping software.
It's Friday, your star employee is wondering why her recent pay was shorter than expected; the manager is looking to clock out for the weekend but wants to make sure it's figured out first. Unfortunately, having already sent the payroll information to the accountant, the manager threw away her copy of the time worked and didn’t have a second set. So she calls the accountant to see where the discrepancy is. Unfortunately, the accountant only has the final numbers on file for the hours they spoke about, not the weekly totals.
At this point, everyone has lost source information and spent time trying to uncover the answer. Not to mention the disappointment of the staff member.
What if the manager could access source records showing how many hours her staff members worked, on each day, within only two minutes? All three parties would save time, energy, and aggravation. Moreover, the accountant would have needed to be called in the first place.
And the best part? What if this data is automatically kept.
With an intelligent time tracking system, you keep digital source records of all shifts worked, and thanks to the cloud, you can store vast amounts of data accessible by anyone on your team.
Whether your manager oversees teams with pen and paper, excel sheets, or word documents, they're essentially doing it manually. Using an intelligent tool can cut down on repetitive tasks. Here are a couple of low-hanging fruit tasks that can be streamlined to save managers and owners a large chunk of time every week:
Communities doing these time-keeping tasks manually are likely spending 10-20 hours per month that they could otherwise spend working with their team, tending to residents, or speaking with new potential move-ins.
Let me start this section by saying that most team members who work in senior living are amazing human beings who have the best intentions.
However, whether accidentally or not, people clock in at the wrong times. For example, if you have forty team members, it’s likely that at least two team members clock in late or leave early on any given day. If we estimate that period to be even as little as 15 minutes each time, then ,0-30 hours will be miscounted over a month. As a result, tens of thousands of dollars are likely to be incorrectly paid out throughout a year.
When you use a time tracking app in your community, you'll be keeping detailed records of all hours worked; if there are late or early clock-ins, you can account for that with the software. Which means things become automatically organized.
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Think of the data flow between a manager who has their team’s hours and an accountant who needs to record them and issue payroll. Do they communicate on the phone or by email? And if so, what are the odds that they’re losing information through the exchanges?
If they’re keeping paper records, the odds of miscommunication rise dramatically.
What if they could both look at the same system, with an accountant pulling exact data the moment they need it. You could cut out 99% of errors while significantly reducing the time spent communicating payroll information. Transforming a task with a high likelihood for error into a routine procedure.
At any given time, and without doing much work, can you see how many hours your home has logged this month compared to last? Do you know whether you're having a routine month or if you've been overspending your team’s time?
If the answer is no to any of these questions you may want to rethink how you’re collecting, and then repurposing your human resource data.
As an executive of a retirement community, it’s ideal to have pertinent data at your fingertips.
When you use a digital timekeeping system (regardless of the software you choose) it’s easy to take the data and input it into spreadsheet software, like Google Sheets.
This helps you ensure that your hours aren’t exceeding the required amounts, and thus increasing your costs unnecessarily.
Moreover, when you use software built specifically for senior living, you can track other key data like staff turnover and community-specific data like certification expiry or hourly breakdowns.
Labour is one of the most significant expenses for any retirement community, and for a good reason: it’s the backbone to the whole operation.
But in many situations, managers spend too much time manually recording and overseeing this data. Not only that, without proper controls, they frequently are overspending on hours, which can add up throughout the year.
When you implement time-keeping software, not only are you putting a system in place to keep better records of hours. But you’re also putting controls in place for your team and ensuring that you optimize one of your business’s most important assets.
In the process, you’ll significantly decrease repetitive tasks associated with this function, which gives your manager more time to spend with their team and residents. And provides your accountant and directors with more time to work on higher value-adding projects.
Some systems, like Huddle, will track and record certificate information (like first aid tests or COVID vaccination records) to ensure compliance.
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