What is time theft at work?

If your company’s time tracking system is out of date and you still use paper and a clock to determine the hours worked, some employees may be stealing time. A colleague filling out a friend’s timesheet is not uncommon… there are many ways to steal time at work.

Unfortunately, time theft costs businesses a lot of money and affects productivity. In fact, according to some studies, time theft at work can represent up to around 7% of a company’s total payroll. This is a considerable percentage, especially when you consider that small businesses can spend up to 50% of their gross income on payroll costs. For example, if your business generates $ 200,000 this year and $ 100,000 goes towards salary costs, time theft could cost your business $ 7,000. This reality becomes all the more important as your turnover increases.

Aside from losing money, you also have to consider the effect on productivity when employees don’t respect their scheduled hours. For example, if your team stops working 15 minutes early each day for two weeks, you lose 2.5 hours of productivity per worker. If you multiply that lost time by months and factor in very long breaks, you could be paying employees for weeks of work (not worked).

What is time theft?

Time theft is any instance where a worker accepts payment for time not worked. This is a significant problem in virtually every industry. Your employees can steal time without knowing it, either by forgetting the specific hours worked or by adding 15 minutes to their timesheet here and there. However, they can also voluntarily steal time.

Here are different types of time theft:

• Inaccurate timesheets
• Time spent performing personal tasks in the workplace (calls, social media, etc.)
• Getting to work earlier to earn extra hours, but not using that time to work
• Taking longer breaks
• Stop working before leaving the office and waiting until the end of the shift to leave

How do you reduce time theft in the workplace?

The good news is that time theft can be reduced, if not completely eliminated. Here are some solutions to help you eradicate this problem: 

1. Use the right technological tool

The Mobile Punch app is an all-in-one solution to simplify timesheet management, form production, schedule planning, and project tracking. Among other things, it allows you to:

• Pay the hours worked with precision thanks to the geolocation feature
• Automatically transfer the hours worked into your accounting software to avoid anomalies
• Reduce time spent managing timesheets by 50%
• Save time and money (our customers save an average of 30 minutes per employee each week!)
• Better manage your teams in the field
• Reduce your ecological footprint (no more paper waste!)
• Track your projects in real time and invoice faster
• Simplify the creation of schedules
• Produce forms (work orders, quotes, etc.) as well as performance reports with a single click

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2. Use passwords to access your system

Passwords are a great way to improve the security of your time tracking system. This way, only the employee in question can record his/her hours worked. He cannot ask a coworker to “punch in” for him if he/she arrives late. With the Mobile Punch app, your employees have an individual account as well as a unique PIN code to log in.

3. Activate the geolocation of employees on your time tracking system

GPS tracking allows employers to track their employees in the workplace. Staff geolocation is particularly advantageous for companies with mobile teams. Mobile Punch’s geolocation feature allows employers to validate the presence of their workers in the field, but also to calculate working hours precisely.

Mobile Punch is the ideal solution for employers who have teams that travel to see clients, projects or job sites, but also for those whose workers have only one workplace. The geolocation feature offers several advantages in terms of route optimization, task assignment and resource allocation.

Why is employee geolocation important?

• Reduced labor costs
• Productivity improvement
• Production of accurate payroll reports
• Flexibility of use (personalized configurations)
• Employee involvement
• Real-time alerts (when an employee goes outside the virtual boundary of a location)

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Time theft and labour standards

The Canada Labour Code requires that Canadian employees receive at least the minimum wage of $ 11.06 per hour (2020). It also stipulates that employees who work more than 40 hours per week must receive compensation for overtime. A 50% surcharge must be applied to overtime.

The Mobile Punch app ensures that workers are paid for every minute they work. In addition, it requires employees to approve their hours worked and overtime so that there is no disagreement. 

The adoption of an automated time tracking system also protects employers against fraud by allowing the elimination of human errors and the verification of hours worked. The application allows you to review archived digital records as well as overtime reports.

Ditching paper-based time tracking and integrating a mobile punch app helps you lower your payroll costs and improve your productivity. The Mobile Punch application offers you a variety of features to propel the sustainable growth of your business:

• Calculation of working hours: Mobile Punch’s working hours’ calculator is an essential work tool that allows employers to accurately record hours worked and generate timesheets quickly, easily and automatically.
• Punch mobile: Our application simplifies the monitoring of the working time of your teams. As soon as a worker activates the “punch” at work, Mobile Punch allows companies to see employees’ arrival time, movements and departure time in real time using geolocation. In addition, you can export the data to your accounting software or your payroll department.
• Staff geolocation: This function allows you to validate the presence of your employees in the field and to check if they are within the location parameters that you have established during working hours. This allows you to see the big picture in real time and to implement strategies to increase your team’s productivity, with little use of cellular data.
• Project management: Projects usually fail because of poor initial planning. Mobile Punch centralizes data so that businesses can lower costs, track projects and optimize time management. Thanks to this function, you can follow the progress of your projects in real time and simplify communication between the different departments involved.
• Work schedule management: Labor cost is generally the most important expense for companies. A schedule management system is essential for companies that wish to increase their turnover and optimize the management of working hours. With Mobile Punch, you have access to real-time working hours for each employee and project, so you can quickly make decisions to replace an absent employee, change a route, etc.
• Electronic agenda: With Mobile Punch’s electronic agenda, you can create and share your employees’ schedules in just one click. This tool simplifies the distribution of tasks and working hours. In addition, your workers receive real-time notifications. They can view their schedule and accept or decline assigned shifts.
• Dynamic distribution (dispatch): Your employees receive alerts and notes so that they can proactively take charge of a case. Mobile Punch optimizes the distribution of tasks to workers on the road. It is an indispensable tool for managing service calls, deliveries and more. It allows you to react to unexpected events quickly and provide quality service, which makes you stand out from your competitors.
• Work orders and forms: The Mobile Punch app makes it easy to prepare, customize, and edit work orders, purchase orders, quotes, and other forms. In addition, your team can have these documents signed electronically.

Mobile Punch helps thousands of businesses based in Quebec and Canada save significant time and money. If you want to know more about our services or if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.