Staying On Top Of Employment Laws

Keeping track of an employee’s attendance record has become a bigger issue for contractors since the implementation of the new healthcare law, which includes strict employer mandates related to full-time workers.

With a timekeeping software program like the one used by Interstate, investing in an accessory option, such as an alert system, makes good business sense.

“Working with contractors on the Affordable Care Act, and the 30-hour cutoff for full-time and part-time people, it’s important that we do not accrue health care expenses for them,” Gaudy says. “The alert notifies when the employee is approaching their cutoff time.”  

Timekeeping systems are often customizable, allowing BSCs to set hour provisions for workers specific to a location, as well as control additional enforcements such as 30-minute lunches, work breaks, and other time-limits related to union laws and state regulations. This information also serves as protection from litigation.

That’s an attractive advantage for clients.

“At any location, we can tell you where we stand at our budget,” Gaudy says. “Clients are more comfortable knowing they are paying for true work hours.” 

That may not sound like much at first, but for an employee who works 250 days a year, that number could add up to about $665 annually. Add a few more employees with bad time management into the mix — say, 10 employees — and a BSC can rack up nearly $6,670 in profit losses in a single year.

With a timekeeping system in place employees are more likely to stick to their cleaning routines and arrive on time, instead of waiting to get caught or reprimanded for languid behavior.

It also gives employees a chance to monitor their own schedule and correct any errors should they occur.

Though some employees resisted Interstate’s new time tracking system, Gaudy says the company’s managers made it clear that the software was a part of the payroll process. After training, the company stressed to employees that correctly punching into the timekeeping program was now human resources policy.

“It’s in the discipline of the employees,” says Gaudy. “We terminated a few people because they refused to use the system.”

Since installing timekeeping software systems across the company, Interstate has significantly reduced employee payroll complaints and eliminated “99 percent of time theft concerns,” says Gaudy.

“We’ve cut it down to almost nothing,” he adds.