How Do You Maintain Team Discipline During The Holidays?

Team Discipline

Managing a team especially in the last quarter of the year can be a problem. Aside from dealing with daily tasks such as attendance, absences, shift schedules, leaves, and schedule adjustments, you’d also have to make sure that you are providing discipline and motivation. And more than often, it can be very difficult to provide these especially in the months where attrition rate is higher than the rest of the year.

The work is no joke, especially for companies who are in the growth or expansion phase like in the business process outsourcing industry. According to a recent labor statistics report, the turnover rate of jobs in Metro Manila alone for Q3 2016 is at 3.67 percent since 2011. When you compare it to Q2 2016 (at 3.20 percent) and Q2 2016 (2.30 percent), the increase is pretty significant.

Traditional and Progressive Discipline

In a typical organization, traditional discipline involves building enough documentation of the erring employee’s actions to justify a disciplinary action. The communication style is similar to how a parent scolds a kid for eating dessert before a meal and is usually uncomfortable. It’s also time-consuming as well, considering the number of sit-downs a superior would need to allow time to discuss the infraction.

In the last few years, HR managers prefer this popular approach: progressive discipline. Progressive discipline involves four steps (verbal warning, written warning, final written warning or suspension, and termination) to address disciplinary problems like tardiness, excessive absences, or infractions that affect team productivity.

team discipline

Great Work Cultures breaks down the differences between traditional and progressive discipline.

While there are some good points in traditional and progressive discipline, they both do not always encourage a positive response from erring employees. Even with drawing up a standard warning letter can already build animosity, more so when you add this particular line (or something similar to this) to legally protect your company in the instance you have to meet out a disciplinary action:

“Failure to correct the problem may result in further disciplinary action, up to and including possible termination.”

Policies are policies, sure, but even the best members of your team or organization might react to a disciplinary action negatively. In the same labor statistics report, people who quit their jobs actually outnumber those who got terminated (7.94 percent to 2.94 percent).

Personal Accountability

There will always be that employee who wants to take advantage of the team and company’s expense. But you wouldn’t want to alienate the rest of the team and foster an environment that could disrupt productivity. So how then can you carry out your HR duties without acting like the “Judge Dredd”? You have to share accountability with your team.

Sharing accountability will make every employee feel part of the team or organization’s success. Showing how your employees can have a hand in working towards specific goals (zero lates and absences, staffing compliance) will make the organization more efficient and productive.

Here are the tools to help you accomplish these:

1. Easier Clock-Ins

selfie-biometrics-PayrollHero

At PayrollHero, your employees can clock in or out via #MyClock Web, TeamClock Web, or TeamClock Chrome App,  #MyClock for iOSand TeamClock for iOS/Android.

Most companies use fingerprint or ID scanners for employees to clock in and out for their shifts. This requires an employee to be physically present to carry this out, and reduces instances of “buddy punching.”

But for growing companies, a convenient and cost-effective way to allow team members to clock in using a web or mobile app. These apps utilize Internet connection and a camera, and is a godsend for those who are physically outside of the office but are on official businesses.

2. Time and Attendance Software

Time and Attendance

Employee clock in devices and apps are usually paired with a time and attendance software that has both an employee and manager interface. Employees can not only check their logins, they can also check any log in discrepancies that could have been resulted in device or software issues and resolve them using the interface in real-time. This eliminates attendance errors that could translate to payroll disputes and encourage shift accountability.

As for HR personnel, most time and attendance software have features that would notify, process and resolve any employee issues or requests. HR can also set up an automated email drip or response whenever an employee sends a request or a response. A feature like this helps foster and maintain open communication without spending so much time crafting every email response.

3. Analytics

team analytics

A time and attendance software like PayrollHero comes with data analytics that could provide real-time productivity metrics to both employee and HR. To the employee, there’s nothing more satisfying than checking out your progress in real time and having access to data that would help meet productivity goals.

HR will not only have access to employee data but will be presented with organizational data that’s easy to interpret. This way, you can spot out employee behaviors, recurring trends, or company issues that you can use to either improve your current company policies or create a highly-receptive employee motivation program.

Final Words

However you see an erring employee, remember that the rest of your team are still responsible adults. They are as much capable as you to address a problem once it is brought to their attention. Traditional and progressive discipline could work, but tools can help build a build a culture of accountability where employees to have the confidence to take charge of finding a solution.

New Feature on the PayrollHero App!

We have a new feature on the PayrollHero app!

Our Devs (developers) are constantly working towards improving functionality of the app. To that end, we have a new feature to enhance a human resource manager’s tools. It’s a simple addition to the app that allows the HR manager or payroll administrator to:

  1. check the GPS coordinates of employees who are clocking in.
  2. record which device they are clocking in from

The feature sits in the Employees tab and under the Rollcall Days section. You can see the list of days that the employee has clocked in, their IP address, GPS coordinates linking to Google maps and the device that they used: TeamClock or #MyClock. If there are any issues with clocking in with a particular device, the HR admin can point out what specific device the problem arose from. This information can also be used as Business Intelligence to make decision on staffing and installing the best devices in your outlets.

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The feature is already live for all PayrollHero users!

PayrollHero Certification: Hands on Experience with the App

badge-payroll-certificationLast week, Kieran our Head of Client Success, conducted training sessions for the new PayrollHero team members in Singapore as well as a few clients. We got some hands on experience with the app, which helped us gain a deeper understanding of how the product works. As an intern who has been here for a few weeks, my knowledge about the product came from speaking with team members, listening to sales pitches and reading about the product online. So it was an interesting experience to use the product on a demo account and view it from the perspective of a payroll administrator. All new PayrollHero team members get certified on the platform so that they know exactly what the platform can do.

Kieran took us through every aspect of the product. My first thought when I was told about the training was, “Wow, a two and a half day training session? But I already know everything about it!” Which, as you may have guessed, turned out to be highly overstated. Within the first two hours of training, I came to the conclusion that the product was far more powerful than I had expected.

The first day was about Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS). The next day was spent on generating payroll and the final day was dedicated to understanding time, attendance and scheduling using the app.

The interesting part about the app is its customization capabilities. A human resources (HR) administrator can record the company’s organizational chart. The hierarchy allows you to identify employee types and positions. Thresholds allow you to set rules on what kinds of notifications you get based on the activities of employees under you in the hierarchy. The thresholds have multiple permutations and combinations that, once customized, help you prioritize information that you need instantly versus information that can wait till a more suitable time.

badge-tas-certificationIt didn’t stop there. Customization extended to how you segment payroll: employer contributions (CPF, SDL, FWL), bonuses, vacation payments, advance payments, claims that need to be redeemed. Any kind of payment outside of the basic calculation of an employee’s hourly wages can be segmented and customized so that all a payroll administrator has to do, is enter which segment the payment should go into. The app can take care of debiting/crediting the amount to the required account. It will notify you when the account is hitting a pre-recorded limit. The flexibility of the app went as far as allowing you to import data from a spreadsheet, allowing the app to automatically fill in employee details.

While all of this might seem like a rather dry topic to train on for nearly three days, Kieran managed to make the whole session more interesting by throwing in quizzes and having interactive sessions. Every demo account had characters from Kieran’s favourite fiction series. Homer Simpson got a bonus for his outstanding work (let’s pretend like that is EVER going to happen), Sherlock Holmes got promoted to the next level on the org chart, Buffy Summers asked for a change in her schedule for the next 3 weeks and Harry Potter recorded coming in early to work consistently. All these characters were a part of the certification exercises, which made the entire process not only informative but also engaging.

The time, attendance and scheduling part of the course was done through an online training portal on the PayrollHero website. Again, I was pleasantly surprised by how detailed the app was and how customizable the entire process of scheduling was. It was impressive that the app was user friendly and flexible with creating, adjusting or removing schedules based on timing, location and type of work: whether it was a routine desk job or a part time job that required changing schedules often. The app, as was intended, was perfectly designed for retailers and restaurant owners who deal with employees who have erratic schedules which require constant adjustments.

The exercises and quizzes were effective in understanding how much we grasped from the lessons. It was clear that working with app required you to be consistent and methodological with the processes for entering data, giving system permissions, organizing the company’s hierarchy and setting customized options especially since the data that the system works with is sensitive. Finally, the certification undoubtedly served its purpose: it gave us a complete picture of how the app works and how a payroll administrator can benefit by using all its features for time, attendance, scheduling and payroll.

Learn more about PayrollHero Certification in the Philippines and Singapore.

Apple Announces the Release of iOS 9 for September 2015!

The World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) last week saw a host of announcements by Apple, including the introduction of Apple Pay in UK, a new trackpad feature for the iPad and (what is now becoming) the customary announcement on iOS upgrades. iOS 9 is scheduled to roll out in September, with the public beta starting out in July.

What does this mean for PayrollHero?Singapore Payroll

There are currently 3 PayrollHero iOS apps: TeamClock#MyClock and Xray Insights. The launch of iOS 9 means that we will stop supporting iOS 7. PayrollHero supports the most recent version of Apple’s iOS and the one prior. (which is the same support Apple provides for their iOS)

The new versions of the iOS PayrollHero apps will have:

  • Full compatibility with iOS 9.
  • Performance tweaks – faster and smoother operation.
  • Improvements on the face detection system.
  • Enhanced security and data privacy.
  • Multiple code optimizations and bug fixes.

The announced list of compatible devices with iOS 9 is:

  • iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, iPad Air, iPad Air 2
  • iPad mini, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3
  • iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus
  • iPod touch (fifth generation)
  • Newer devices than these above should be supported, please contact us at support first to confirm.

If you are using a 5th generation iPod, an iPad 2 or iPhone 4s or any newer models and you haven’t already upgraded to at least iOS 8, make sure you get on that as soon as possible. As of September, we will not be able to fix any bugs that surface on the iOS 7.1.2 or lower.