Christmas is a hectic time for all businesses. Heightened demand for products and services find themselves competing against increased numbers of employees with sick leave and absence, not to mention the understandable need for a festive getaway.
Nowhere is the strain of the holiday season felt more than the North pole. Santa’s workshop is one of the largest global distribution companies in the world, with Christmas eve being one of the biggest nights of the year for them, seeing them achieve a worldwide outreach over the course of a single evening.
As the big day approaches, the importance of keeping the elves in the workshop engaged and motivated is vitally important in order to ensure that Christmas is the success we all need it to be. Too many sniffles and sneezes or too many incidences of elves jet setting off to warmer climates could have a serious impact on their ability to manufacture enough toys and treats in time. That could mean a lot of unhappy boys and girls, not to mention Santa being left with a face as red as Rudolph’s nose.
So what’s the answer? Santa discovered long ago that the secret to a merry Christmas comes in the form of effective workforce management which allows him to keep a close eye on the needs of not only the elves, but the wider requirements of the workshop. We wanted to give you all an early Christmas present and explore just how an effective elf force management system can help transform your business.
Why workforce management is important.
With the success of businesses so closely tied with their ability to remain engaged with their wider workforce, it’s no small wonder that many are looking at how new systems and technology can help support them in achieving their goals and most importantly- reduce the burden of manual input and admin heavy tasks facing management and people teams.
A key element in achieving this success will be how effectively businesses can leverage the technology and systems they use in order to remain connected with their employees and craft a working environment which is able to nurture and drive a sense of productivity and engagement. The wider shift to flexible working has also demanded that organisations re-evaluate their internal structure, requiring HR teams and management to rethink some of the ways that productivity and engagement can be measured.
Santa knows that to get the most out of his elves means investing in systems and technology to support them. He also understands that elf-force management elements such as Time and Attendance and Payroll aren’t intended to punish the people who work for him- in fact, they represent the perfect way to ensure fairness and to ensure that all his elves are being fairly rewarded for their time spent working and are working their fair share.
Time and Attendance (for elves)
Your time is valuable. Businesses the world over are plagued by inefficient systems, gaps in processes and work arounds which mean that they haemorrhage time, resources and most importantly money. On average, each employee loses roughly 9 days per year due to unplanned absences with the financial consequences reaching into the millions for businesses across the globe. (Yes, even the North Pole.)
The ability to effectively track hours worked, reduce wage processing errors and boost overall productivity sounds like the ultimate dream for HR professionals and those tasked with keeping their business ticking over. Fortunately, this is far from a pipe dream as an effective time and attendance solution can enable you to achieve this and much more.
Time and Attendance solutions allow employees to clock in via a variety of means such as keycards and fobs or biometrics such as fingerprint scanners and facial recognition technology. These can be tied into access control solutions to provide an element of security but most importantly, they provide organisations with a clear understanding of where and when your people (or indeed, elves) are working.
(S)elf-service functionality allows your people to take charge of their schedules, their absence requests and clocking, while protecting your business from any naughty behaviour or fraud. Comprehensive Time and Attendance solutions allow your people to clock in remotely from a tablet or mobile device, meaning they stay connected with the heart of the business wherever they are working from, even from the sleigh.
For Santa, this visibility means always having a clear picture of what hours his elves have worked and can make sure they are rewarded accordingly. An Effective time and Attendance solution isn’t designed to punish naughty employees; in fact, a clear understanding of hours worked can go a long way towards building confidence and trust in your workforce, allowing them to get on with the important jobs like building rocking horses and feeding reindeer.
Payroll- the perfect gift for Santa’s little helpers.
We all want to be rewarded for a job well done and as satisfying as it may be to make sure that children all over the world get the toys they want each and every Christmas, elves still have bills to pay. Having an accurate and efficient payroll process in place is absolutely paramount in ensuring that Santa can guarantee that all his little helpers are being paid correctly and on time for their hard work.
Outside of Lapland, your payroll teams perform a vital role month after month ensuring the accuracy of your payroll and that your people are paid on time. Accuracy with wages is crucial as any discrepancies or delays can seriously impact the financial wellbeing of your employees as well as affecting their levels of engagement at work. Inaccuracies can also lead to potential legal challenges which any organisation will be keen to avoid and it is an area of expertise where businesses understandably rely on the knowledge of their pay people.
Your ability to pay your people accurately and on time is also a reflection of your organisation as a whole. Businesses who fall behind in this sense run the risk of being painted in a negative light, particularly from the perspective of recruitment and employee engagement. As businesses are looking to attract new talent in order to drive their future success, a reputation as being unreliable with pay will not make your organisation an attractive prospect for job candidates. Paying employees on time and accurately is one of the most fundamental foundations of the employee-employer relationship.
Santa will be putting an accurate and effective payroll solution at the top of his wishlist this year and we think you should too, which is precisely why we’ve created Flexipay.
With Flexipay, you get:
A choice- Flexipay can be deployed in the Cloud or on-premise, whichever suits your business more.
Real time calculations – instantaneous gross to net calculations for up to 10,000 employees in just 20 seconds..
Super speed processing–calculate BACs in under 20 minutes
Pay on-demand – employees can draw down earned pay as they need it
Reporting – building your own reports has never been easier
Employee on-line access – data, documents and payslips at your people’s fingertips. Roughly 439,000 payslips are currently processed by Flexipay each month.
Flexipay offers you the scalability and flexibility you need to completely transform the way in
which you run payroll, capable of working effortlessly across multiple sites
and pay grades. Whether operating as a standalone system or integrated with our
Time and Attendance, HR and Access Control solutions to form a comprehensive Workforce
Management suite, Flexipay helps you process payrolls efficiently.
Our solution gives you the comprehensive reporting, GDPR auto-processing and audit trail capability you need to have peace of mind that your payroll is being run accurately and in a compliant fashion month in and month out.
All in all, this means a happy and rewarded workforce who get to take home a bit more than just a mince pie this year.
Not just for Christmas
Like elves (and dogs), a good workforce management solution isn’t just for Christmas. Having an accurate overview of hours worked and ensuring that your people are rewarded accordingly can be an ongoing challenge for business and not one that is just limited to the festive period.
At Mitrefinch, we understand that your workforce management challenges don’t end at Christmas time, which is precisely why we’ve created a host of solutions in order to help reduce the burden of admin heavy tasks and manual processes upon your people.
Our range of workforce management solutions such as our market leading Time and Attendance and Payroll software puts the power in your hands, giving you the visibility you need to ensure you have a clear understanding of the working patterns of your people and guaranteeing that you can reward them appropriately.
To learn more about how Mitrefinch’s workforce management solutions can help you look after your busy elves this Christmas time and beyond, why not get in touch with one of our own little helpers today.
