Payroll Solutions: How to Prevent Time Theft

Aug. 5, 2019 - PRLog -- Time theft occurs when an employer pays an employee for time that they weren't actually at work. Time theft is on the rise because of today's increasing mobile workforce and it's costing employers billions of dollars in lost productivity yearly.

It is common for employees to round down their minutes when they're completing paper time sheets and it could be happening more often than not. Some even find ways around electronic timekeeping systems to beat the clock. Buddy punching is also a big concern for plenty of employers. It is when an employee punches in for another by simply swiping a friend's card or worse, sign in via paper timesheets on the latter's behalf.

Employers, on the other hand, can commit time theft as well. Wage theft occurs when an employer fails to pay an employee for the time he or she is entitled to be paid. An example of this is when an employer avoids paying overtime or the correct industry award to employees. Some forms of wage theft include, but are not limited to meal break violations, taking illegal deductions from wages or not distributing pay stubs or employee misclassification violations.

How can we prevent time theft?

First, we find out what the leading contributing factors to time theft are. These include employees running late, poor employee engagement or poor shift organisation, among others. Does your employee feel like a cog in a machine and not a valued team member? Are your staff unaware of their duties or are no longer challenged by their work? If a shift has too many members, an employee may also perceive that their input is not pivotal, therefore they can be late.

To prevent time theft, employers need to improve on both human resource and technological factors. They can use advanced time and attendance software to better track employees and make them accountable for recorded time. Buddy punching doesn't aid much anymore. However, according to the American Payroll Association, it still affects around 75% of small businesses.

Sky Accountants can help you with timekeeping solutions and help your managers to set work schedules, communicate and allow staff to check in for their shift and keep them engaged. This can be exported to a payroll system and save you from time theft.

You can click here (https://www.skyaccountants.com.au/contact/) to speak to experts that offer accounting, bookkeeping and payroll services. We would love to help you formulate investment strategies and streamline your processes to take your business to the next level.  Our goal is to help you grow your business, find ways to invest more and increase your productivity.