Best Ways To Track Employee Time While Off Site

If you manage multiple locations, especially in industries such as construction where it is vital that your employees report to the work site on time, it can be tricky to keep track of everyone. If you aren’t at every work site first thing in the morning, tracking who arrives when, how do you know who is doing their job on time, and how many hours everyone works? Even if you only have a single job site, tracking everyone else’s hours is not a task that you should have to complete manually. So how can you ensure that when everyone clocks in, they are actually where they say they are?

Card Swipes or Scans

One of the most common options on construction sites is to set up a station, such as a wall mount, where workers can walk up to a machine and swipe or scan an ID card, almost like a hotel room key. This is certainly a simple option. Just print everyone a card and register them in the system, and they do the rest. However, there are drawbacks as well. Like many older machines, there is the possibility for errors. Most likely, this will mean missed punches that you will have to manually add back in later. But, if they really want to, they can send their card with someone else and have a friend clock in for them.

Spreadsheet Tracking

This old-school method is tried and true, but has more or less already been replaced by more advanced methods. In this method, there is a log either on the cloud or in a physical location, and it is up to workers to manually write their times in and out on the log. As you can imagine, unless there is someone watching the log carefully, there is the opportunity for dishonesty, and unless you have something else backing up the information, someone could put any time they wish in the log. While this style of time tracking is better than nothing, you’ll have less risk of fraud or forgetfulness if you choose another method.

Fingerprint Scans

Fingerprint scans were all the rage for a while, but it seems now that not many companies use them. This might just be that the novelty and the buzz surrounding the technology has died away, rather than any actual reduction in use. This technology does address some of the problems of other methods. There is no way for someone to clock in for a friend, after all, since you can’t lend someone your fingers. It’s also not possible for someone to put a time that is earlier or later than they were actually there at the site of the time clock. However, sometimes workers tend to find these time clocks finicky and difficult to use. This can cause problems when someone is working on the construction site all day and instead of being able to clock out and leave, they have to spend five minutes struggling to get the machine to read their fingerprint.

Mobile Time Clock Apps

Many different companies have mobile time clocks available, but like spreadsheets, many of these options allow for dishonest employees to simply clock in whenever they would like. There is a fantastic new option available for site-specific work, however. Modern mobile time clock solutions can take advantage of the GPS in everyone’s phone. Your employees can open the app at any time, but they can’t clock in unless their GPS recognizes that they are already on the job site. This means that there is virtually no opportunity for fraud, and you can relax knowing your employees have an easy way to log their time.

Tracking time spent working has always been a challenge, but choosing a GPS-enabled time clock app for your job site can go a long way in easing the burden. You’ll have more time to focus on the things that really matter while managing your site.