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Attendance Dashboard – How Can It Help You Optimize Productivity?

attendance dashboard
 
12 minute read
Date
31/01/2025

Organizations face a common problem. Productivity is slipping, but businesses struggle to understand why.  And, it's impossible to implement improvement measures without getting to the root cause of the issue.

Businesses need access to solid, accurate data, and this is where an attendance dashboard can be worth its weight in gold. By understanding how a workforce is spending its time, you can easily spot where the inefficiencies lie.

What Is an Attendance Dashboard?

An attendance dashboard consists of a digital tool (software) that provides organizations with a comprehensive view of their workforce attendance data.  

It provides methods for staff to clock and/or track their time and absences, and the data is then automatically consolidated onto the platform. This information can then be used to monitor, analyze, and improve attendance patterns in real time.

For example, the dashboard will allow you to see:

  • Who is in the office and at which location
  • Who is working from home
  • Who is on a business trip
  • Who is absent due to illness, vacation, etc.
  • Who is on shift and who is on a break 

Most attendance dashboards also feature the capability to integrate with other software, including payroll and HR systems to facilitate the seamless—and accurate—transfer of data.

Here is an example of an attendance dashboard:

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How an Attendance Dashboard Helps You Understand Productivity

Time and productivity are intrinsically linked. When you understand how and where your workforce spends its time, you can learn where the issues around productivity exist.

 When you have this information readily available at the click of a button, you can quickly implement productivity-boosting measures and improve the output of your employees.

1. Real-Time Data Access

The biggest advantage of using an attendance dashboard is the access to accurate data in real time.  

Staff can use features such as time-clocking terminals or register their time via a mobile or web app. The dashboard collects the data the moment it is registered, which means you always have an up-to-date view of your organization’s time.

 This is vital for spotting things like patterns, and trends, and identifying issues within certain areas of your business.

2. Data Completeness

Without a proper attendance tracking system, you are essentially shooting in the dark and relying on your leaders to relay accurate information. Managers are busy people so it is unlikely that they will be able to give you a full picture. Besides, by the time the information makes it into your hands, it’s already outdated.

Manual attendance tracking methods can easily be manipulated, lost, or forgotten, giving you data that is filled with gaps and inaccuracies.

Attendance dashboards are always online and always automatically collecting data. You can instantly access this wherever you are located, which allows you to be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to workforce productivity.

3. Enhanced Reporting and Analytics

The beauty of an attendance dashboard is its ability to instantly produce customized reports. You pick the data you want to analyze, click a button, and voila! You have a report showing exactly what you need, whether that’s attendance trends, absenteeism, lateness, or something else. 

Where productivity is concerned, you can look at monthly or weekly attendance reports and compare them to performance ratings. This is crucial for helping you identify the areas for improvement and develop strategies to overcome them.

How to Use the Attendance Dashboard to Improve Productivity

Okay, so you have your attendance dashboard system in place. Now what?

 Analyzing the data is one thing, but how can you actually use this information to increase and improve productivity?

 Let’s take a look at some ways.

1. Identifying Attendance Patterns

The first step is to use the attendance dashboard to analyze your employee’s attendance patterns. What do you notice?

  • Is there a problem with frequent tardiness? 
  • Do you notice that absenteeism increases at certain times of the month or year? 
  • Are your workers constantly clocking overtime?
  • Do staff take too many breaks? Or are they not taking any breaks at all?

If you find trends like this, then it indicates there is a problem that you must investigate.

For example, frequent lateness may indicate that shift start times need to be adjusted, whereas frequent overtime clocking could mean that you have a staffing shortfall.

2. Real-Time Clocking Location Information

Because attendance dashboards give staff multiple ways to clock their time, it makes it much easier to facilitate remote or flexible working. Plus, it’s extremely useful if your staff need to work outside the office—traveling sales reps, for example.

We’ll get into the benefits of flexible working later in this article, but for now, we’re going to focus on how an attendance dashboard can prevent staff from abusing the system.

Geofencing and Bluetooth beacons are features that only permit staff to clock in from certain locations. This stops staff from absconding and cheating the system by clocking in as “working” when they’re actually down at the gym or having a coffee with friends.

Remote clocking comes equipped with GPS coordinate information, too. So, if you do have traveling staff, then you can quickly see if they are working where they say they will be working. It also prevents “buddy punching” where a staff member will clock in on behalf of another staff member.

This may seem like micromanagement (something we don’t recommend), but time theft is a real problem and costs businesses billions each year. Therefore, it has to be managed if you want to raise productivity.

Important note: The time and attendance apps don't track location of employees all the time, but just location of clocking events.

3. Optimizing Scheduling and Resource Allocation

Effective staff scheduling is essential for maintaining productivity and ensuring that staff aren’t overstretched because there aren’t enough resources on hand.

An attendance dashboard will reveal your staffing levels across all shift patterns, and you can easily see where productivity dips in relation to them. The data will also show where you might have too many staff members on hand.

By ensuring there are always enough employees to meet business demands, you can maintain a smooth level of operation at all times.

Additionally, your teams will feel less stressed and burned out because they’re not trying to meet expectations while constantly experiencing understaffing. On the flip side, departments with too many staff members can quickly get bored and complacent, so redistributing them will help them stay engaged and busy.

4. Preventing Bottlenecks

Bottlenecks occur when a particular stage in a process is slowing down the entire workflow, causing delays and inefficiencies. They result from various factors such as inadequate resources, inefficient procedures, or unexpected disruptions.

For example, an approval process may require the sign-off of several different managers, one of which only looks at their emails once a week. That means the entire process is held up until that manager reads their emails and sees they need to approve.

In another example, the assembly stage of a manufacturing line may be far slower than the preceding stages, causing products to accumulate at this point. This causes a delay in the entire production process.

Once you have used the attendance dashboard to find bottlenecks, you can then work to remedy them.

In our first example, it could be removing the manager from the approval process or changing the way approvals are made. In the second example, it could be a staffing or training issue.

5. Ensuring Proper Work/Life Balance

Burned-out, tired, and stressed employees aren’t productive.

If you want an energetic and motivated workforce, then you must ensure your organization enforces a good work/life balance. Yes, there will be occasions when deadlines require all hands on deck, but expecting that of your employees all the time is too much.

Here are some of the things you can do to address this issue:

  • Gather feedback from staff to find out what they need to get their work done within their standard working hours. Act upon it.
  • Analyze the attendance dashboard to see if staff are taking regular breaks. If they are not, insist that the relevant departments allow and enforce them. If necessary, adjust schedules to ensure breaks can be properly managed.
  • Look at how much overtime each department is clocking. Address why some areas have staff working long hours.
  • Allow flexible working hours or remote working opportunities.
  • When excessive overtime is unavoidable, consider giving staff PTO in lieu so they can take a well-earned break when things calm down.

6. Readjusting Deadlines

Deadlines can be a real culprit in lowering productivity. Make them too tight, and everyone gets stressed trying to finish things on time. This also reduces the quality of the output since it always ends up being a rush job.

Deadlines that are too long means that workers take their time with tasks that can be finished faster. This is a phenomenon called “Parkinson’s Law” where work expands to fill the available time.

Utilize the attendance dashboard data to see how deadlines are affecting productivity. Using timesheets broken down into projects and tasks will help you see precisely how long each of these things takes to complete.

Optimize your organization’s deadlines so they are neither too short nor too long. This will lessen stress and help keep your workers engaged for the right amount of time.

7. Facilitating Long-Term Planning

Attendance dashboards build up a treasure trove of historical data you can use to your advantage. With this information in hand, it’s much easier to carry out effective long-term planning for staff resources and schedules.

For example, if the data shows that extra resources are required during the holiday season, then you can plan ahead and ensure you’ve scheduled enough staff. Similarly, certain times of the year may see a surge in PTO requests. If you anticipate this happening and put replacement staffing measures in place, you won’t find your organization short-handed when the time rolls around.

8. Supporting Flexible Working

Flexible working conditions are a real winner among employees who appreciate having the ability to work around personal commitments or obligations. However, this perk can have a profound effect on productivity, too:

  • Flexible hours allow employees to work when they feel most productive, not when they are tired.
  • Remote working gives workers a break from noisy working environments where they are constantly distracted.
  • Additionally, remote working helps workers avoid lengthy or difficult commutes that might ordinarily make them late for work.
  • Having the ability to take time for medical appointments helps keep your workforce healthy and lessens absenteeism.
  • Flexible working contributes to a better work/life balance. 

With an attendance dashboard and the geolocational feature mentioned earlier, it’s now much easier for you to facilitate flexible working. When you can see where your employees are, then you don’t have to worry about whether or not they are “on the job.”

9. Lessening Payroll Problems

Employees need to be paid properly and correctly for their time. This is a given if you want to maintain a productive workforce.

Incorrect pay leads to disputes, which can be costly for your business. It also demotivates individuals who think, “Why bother if I’m not going to get paid properly for my time?”

Attendance dashboards can integrate seamlessly with payroll software. And, if you’re using it to capture precisely when employees are working (including any overtime) then you already have all the data required to pay your workers correctly—and on time.

10. Engaging Employees

Using an attendance dashboard can enable you to identify early signs of employee disengagement. This could be taking frequent sick leave, constantly arriving late or leaving early, or not bothering to clock in or out. Their time spent at work may also be linked to a decline in productivity.

There are lots of reasons why an employee might feel disengaged. For example, they may have problems in their personal life, feel like the job is too hard (lack of training), or be experiencing workplace bullying or harassment.

Once you have spotted an engagement issue, it’s important to talk with the employee to understand why it is happening and then work with them to put solutions in place.

While the solutions will help improve engagement, so will your concern. When employees feel like their employer cares about them, they are far more likely to be engaged.

Attendance Dashboards are a Great Resource for Managers

An attendance dashboard goes way beyond keeping tabs on where your employees are and what they are doing. It’s an instrumental tool for helping drive the organization forward.

By addressing the productivity issues within your business, you will not only end up with a happier and more engaged workforce, they will do their best work to ensure your business is a success.

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