For businesses, ensuring that you stay compliant with labor laws is a big deal. There are many easy ways that your business can be found non-compliant even through no fault of your own. If you’re still using manual time tracking to keep time and payroll records for your employees, then there’s a good chance that you’ve been non-compliant a few times without even realizing it.
A time card app has several benefits and features that minimize the risk of compliance issues so that you can focus on running your business and making a profit, not on labor law compliance and the potential penalties that go along with it.
In this article, we’ll look at the different ways that a time card app can help ensure compliance and keep your company and employees protected.
Accurately Record Hours Worked
One of the problems that many businesses have is that employees don’t always record the exact amount of time they work in a day. Inaccurate time tracking records can result in underpaying employees for their time, which clearly violates department of labor (DOL) laws.
It’s essential to manage an employee’s time on the clock and only round estimates when it is fair and balanced for the employee and the business. Since manual time tracking is highly inaccurate, a timesheet management app is best to avoid compliance issues.
A time card app captures hours automatically and typically records them down to the minute. The time attendance clock also automatically calculates any overtime incurred. Automatic time tracking helps to ensure compliance when errors and accidents would have otherwise resulted in compliance issues.
Avoid Working Through Breaks and Off the Clock
Simply telling an employee not to work off the clock or through their breaks is not enough to ensure that it never happens. Failing to pay an employee for time worked, even if it was done off the clock, could result in a labor law violation. If employees work through their break or lunch, they must be paid for that, even though employees are mandated to have a set amount of time off for each shift.
One way to prevent employees from working through their breaks is by using a time and attendance app to pay employees when they work through their breaks. Since time is tracked automatically, they won’t have to worry about not getting paid, but you can also set reminders to help them remember to take their mandated breaks. Combining this with a clear-cut break policy from the business about the consequences of not taking their assigned breaks will result in higher compliance and less risk of violations.
A remote employee time tracking app allows employees to keep working on the clock if they need to take work home to finish it so that there is less of a risk of employees simply working off the clock altogether.
Avoid Timecard Editing and Record Loss
Falsifying records or not having records at all is an easy way to end up non-compliant with DOL laws. In the event of an audit, you should have 3-5 years of records available, and those records should be as accurate as possible. Editing time cards to avoid paying for overtime and other issues is also non-compliant.
A time keeper app can store time card records and generate reports whenever necessary, so there’s no need to dig through years of paperwork to find what you need. Any edits made to an employee’s time card are also recorded, even when performed by management so that there is always a record of when a card has been tampered with.
Remaining labor law compliant is a complex process, no matter the number of employees you have. Using a time card app to monitor time and attendance simplifies labor law compliance by automatically tracking employee work hours and logging any edits made in the event of an audit.
