Your time and attendance software is more than a data-collection system; it is a powerful resource for informing and supporting your compliance initiatives. Relying on manual collection and interpretation of the results can mean hours spent sifting through spreadsheets, cross-referencing contracts, and manually entering data.
Integrating your time and attendance software with an award interpretation solution allows you to automate payroll calculations, manage overtime, and apply the correct clauses from modern awards and enterprise agreements. With workforce compliance software, your organisation can do more than meet the bare minimum requirements; you position your organisation at the forefront of efficient, compliant, and resilient operations.
What compliance requirements apply to time and attendance?
In Australia, the National Employment Standards set the maximum number of ordinary working hours at 38 per week for all casual, part-time, or full-time employees. Any additional hours must be considered reasonable, and employees who work additional hours may be entitled to overtime rates or a higher salary to meet the entitlements of the relevant industrial instruments.
Meal and rest breaks are another essential aspect of compliance, governed by the Australian Fair Work Act 2009. Employers must provide adequate rest breaks during the workday and between shifts. Failure to meet these requirements could result in compliance breaches, leading to fines and penalties.
A comprehensive workforce management solution becomes indispensable because regulations around ordinary hours, overtime, and meal breaks can vary based on the industrial instrument an employee falls under. Your WFM software should identify which employment obligations apply to each individual, informing you of their maximum allowable work hours, relevant breaks, time between shifts and appropriate compensation rates for any overtime worked or allowances due.
What data does time and attendance software collect?
Time and attendance software collects data across multiple touchpoints to deliver a holistic picture of work hours. The key data points include:
Timesheets: Time and attendance software automatically tracks when employees clock in and out, providing a precise record of hours worked. This feature ensures you have the right data to compensate your team for ordinary hours worked and any overtime logged.
Staff activity: Time and attendance software collects information on staff activity, including the work that may have been completed, giving workforce managers transparency over compliance with labour laws and scheduling rules, including work breaks and rest periods.
Scheduling data: Time and attendance software compares rosters with actual hours worked. For example, you can monitor hours worked and actual costs against a budget to help make informed decisions about areas where you may need to revisit processes, staffing levels or compliance issues.
How does time and attendance software support compliance?
Integration with award interpretation software
Time and attendance software integrated with an award interpretation engine automatically calculates employee entitlements from your industrial instruments – including Australian Modern Awards and Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBAs). Rather than manually calculating hours worked and spot-checking for potential compliance concerns, the software can provide accurate and fast calculations and information to help identify and resolve any issues.
The award interpretation engine applies the correct employment obligations to the work completed by your employees and sends that data to your payroll system. Automating complex calculations and data transfer ensures you pay employees correctly for hours worked and that the organisation remains aligned with your obligations.
Fatigue management
People who work without sufficient rest and recovery face an elevated risk of injury and physical and mental fatigue. For this reason, there are defined rules and standards for the appropriate time people should rest between shifts and the breaks they must take during shifts. These can vary from one industry to the next and may be subject to scrutiny by governing bodies.
As such, fatigue management may be a critical measure of workforce compliance, and a dedicated fatigue management application adds an essential layer to this effort by using scientifically validated methodologies to assess employee fatigue levels. By integrating this capability with your time and attendance software, your organisation can quantitatively measure fatigue, allowing workforce managers to identify issues such as overwork. This data-driven approach ensures that staff do not breach compliance by exceeding reasonable work hours or violating rules around sufficient rest time between shifts. By identifying instances where employees work excessive hours, managers can be more proactive in their intervention by adjusting schedules and rosters.
Payroll compliance
Time and attendance software integrates with workforce compliance software to apply better-off-overall testing (BOOT) and Payroll Compliance to payroll calculations. These checks become time-consuming when handled manually.
Your organisation can handle auditing processes more effectively by integrating time and attendance with award interpretation and compliance software. Integrating these tools lessens the manual effort needed for payroll calculation and verification, so your team can ensure they pay people correctly and improve compliance with financial and labour regulations.
Conclusion
Managing and measuring compliance in your workforce management processes does not need to be an overwhelming task involving spreadsheets and paperwork. Integrating your Time & Attendance system with workforce compliance software makes it easy for your team to improve processes, reduce costs and better manage workforce and payroll compliance.
By implementing time and attendance software, your organisation can reliably fulfil employer obligations and compensate employees fairly for work completed.
Why choose Tambla’s workforce compliance software?
We have developed compliance solutions over decades with Award and Agreement Interpretation engines that accommodate Australia’s complex regulations.
Our software reduces the need for manual calculations and spot-checking when ensuring you pay staff accurately for hours worked. Integration with your payroll operations provides the necessary insights to make adjustments by employment frameworks. We can also provide employee roster management and advanced payroll compliance solutions to handle your processes.
Visit our Workforce Compliance page for more on our capabilities.
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