SME Magazine catches up with Phil Austin from Vizual Management Solutions
In today’s business world, what are the main challenges when it comes to managing staff?
Employee time and attendance is often the hidden and forgotten metric. There’s a lot of companies out there that don’t realise just how much money they are haemorrhaging through inaccurate, or too simplistic, clocking recordings. It’s not just a case of when did someone clock in and when did they clock out anymore. Every company is different, with their own rules and company policies regarding lateness, sickness, absence, holidays, overtime rules, grace periods, breaks, lunches, and so on. Having a time and attendance system that matches your company requirements and reports in accordance with your policies and rules is a huge benefit.
Why is it important to get this right?
The short answer is time, effort and money saved. Consider a workforce of just 30 employees. If you “lose” a few minutes each day per employee, it doesn’t sound like a lot; until you consider that per year, that’ll cost you about £6,500 (and that’s just based on minimum wage). Now factor in how long it takes for the details and clocking times and discrepancies to all be collated and sorted out so that everyone can get paid correctly. That’s time that the company is paying for, where the managers would be far more productive turning their attentions to other tasks. It’s also important for treating all employees equally. There’s no favouritism or missed information when the whole system is automated.
How can you at Vizual Management Solutions help businesses in this area? What specifically can you provide?
We don’t provide “simple” clocking in machines; we go above and beyond that. We’re interested in providing our clients with a time and attendance system that is tailored to their company requirements. We don’t believe that you should have to fit your policies around a clocking system, rather, the clocking system should fit in with your company. It needs to be robust, highly reliable and offer a wealth of helpful options and extras. We have scripting capability so we can write in rules or any odd quirks your company may have. Ultimately, we’re looking to provide you with a proper, long term solution; like a decent payroll system, once it’s in, you just keep using it. We also want to make it easy and quick for your administrators and managers to be able to use the system; if you’re spending more than five minutes each day on time and attendance, then something has “gone wrong,” because the system should be handling the majority of tasks itself.
What is your flagship product?
Our time and attendance workforce management system is called Captureit and it’s interesting to consider that no two systems we provide are the same. Whereas the core of the system stays the same, we tailor everything around it so that each client’s Captureit system is specifically suited to their company.
What benefits do your clients enjoy?
As mentioned, accurate clockings, along with detailed data on absence, lateness, sickness, holidays, overtime, lunches, breaks and so on. We have grace periods, rounding capability, flexi-time recording, the ability to handle a host of different shift patterns (rotational, continental, standard, etc.) We have an alert system that can send emails to the appropriate managers about various events (someone is back from sickness and needs to do a return to work interview, an employee has arrived late for work (again), you don’t have enough first aiders onsite, just to name a few), and that’s before you consider all the additional options we offer: Job Costing, Access Control, Automatic Fire Roll Call, Link to Payroll. Captureit has many features suitable for just about any company.
What kind of companies are you able to help?
We provide to companies from many different sectors with a wide array of requirements. Whether you have salary or hourly paid staff, rotational shifts, fixed shifts, flexible working or a mix of various working patterns, Captureit can work for you. We have several testimonials on our website from a variety of companies that show how successful Captureit has been for them.
How can people find out more?
You can visit our website at time-attendance.co.uk or give us a call on 0800 288 8632 where we’ll be more than happy to discuss your requirements. We also provide a free online or onsite demonstration where we can show you Captureit in action.
