By now you know that labor is one of the biggest — if not the biggest — costs of running a business. But, keeping labor costs down is tough. You have a ton on your plate, and you don’t always have time to make sure everyone is where they need to be, when they need to be there. This is even more challenging when employees work off-site, remotely or at multiple locations. Luckily, the location-based technology known as geofencing makes it easy to manage your employees — no matter where they’re working.
Geofencing is a software capability that uses GPS to create virtual boundaries around a specific location. While it’s used on mobile devices for a wide range of applications (think Google Maps or Uber), companies are increasingly using it to track and manage employee time. With geofencing, employers can create perimeters around office locations or worksites. Unless employees are within those perimeters, or “geofences,” they cannot clock in or out. This helps to ensure accurate time tracking, but the benefits don’t end there.
Time theft occurs when employees accept pay for time they have not actually worked. If you’re not careful, time theft can sneak up on you and eat away at your bottom line. In fact, it costs companies up to $400 billion annually in lost productivity. While time theft can come in a variety of forms, ranging from accidental overreporting to intentional timesheet scams, geofencing is one way to combat it. Since geofencing allows employers to restrict time punching based on an exact location, employees can’t punch in or out unless they’re where they’re supposed to be.
Decreased labor costs
Because it can curb time theft, geofencing helps protect against lost employee productivity. As a result, you can reduce wasted resources and keep labor costs down. Not only that, but if you’re currently tracking and processing employee time manually, you can save time and money by automating the process with a time and labor management solution — like Orbit Time & Labor — that has geofencing capabilities. This not only cuts back on administrative costs but reduces the likelihood of costly manual errors.
Convenience
There’s a smartphone at nearly everyone’s fingertips, and as a result, more companies are adopting a mobile-first approach to managing their people. By providing employees with mobile-friendly, self-service access to tools like time tracking, you can keep things convenient — and keep up with the competition. If employees are working at multiple worksites in one day, for example, they can punch in and out from their designated worksites once they enter or leave a specified radius. This makes time punching easy for them, and a streamlined process for you. Everyone wins!
Increased control
Geofencing gives you the power to manage your employees without actually being present. By simply typing in a worksite address, you can set up a geofence that’ll give you the control you need to ensure employee punches are accurate. Plus, depending on your needs, some tools will even allow you to specify a geofencing location without having an exact address. This comes in handy if you have employees working at a new construction site, or at an address that Google doesn’t recognize, or even a building-specific location. Just drag and drop a pin on a map and you’re in control.
Orbit Time & Labor is an Orbit Solutions module that addresses all of your time and attendance needs — from timecard management to labor cost tracking and leave management. Through the convenience of our mobile application, HCMToGo, you can take advantage of geofencing capabilities, including:
To learn more about how Orbit Time & Labor and geofencing can help you better manage your employees, contact us today to request a demo!