Part of the problem is that our managers forget to report absence, how will the system help with this?
A An automated time and attendance system such as Kronos takes the responsibility for reporting absence away from the manager. Attendance is recorded automatically when an employee logs in and out of work. If the working day starts at 9.00am, the system can be programmed to alert the manager and/or the HR department immediately to those employees who have not arrived for work. The manager is then required to record a reason for absence before the exception can be cleared. Once the employee returns to work, the system will record this, prompting HR to perform a timely back-to-work interview.


Q I’d like to our managers to know how much absence costs their department, is that possible?
A Reports can be run at any level of the organisation, either comparing absence between departments and/or providing up to the minute costs of absence by category. Another way of counting the cost is to implement a points based scheme such as the Bradford Factor where shorts spells of absence qualify for more points because they are more disruptive to the business.

Q I guess I can log absence by type (sickness, late, authorised etc) and then a regular report detailing this but can I set parameters – say four Mondays off - and have these flagged up?
A Many companies set parameters for triggers or alerts, so yes it would be possible to be alerted once an employee had taken four Mondays off work. You can also decide who you would like this information to be sent to – HR plus the employee’s line manager for example. The information stored in Kronos is 100% accurate and often used as support material in disciplinary meetings if it’s needed.

Q We merged with another company last year and the result is that staff have differing contracts for sickness and leave entitlement Does that mean we can’t implement a system until all staff are on the same contracts?
A Not at all. A system like Kronos is what we’d call ‘rules based’ meaning that you could set up individual contract and pay rules for every individual in your organisation. We have customers who regularly grow by acquisition and who are required to TUPE all staff. The system would therefore cope with staff working side by side on different pay scales, with different holiday entitlement and different sick leave entitlement. The most important thing when thinking about a new system is to be clear about the contractual obligations for each employee so that you are in a position to input the new rules once the system is in place.

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