Calculating your hours at work and then converting the minutes into decimal numbers is an easy way to eat up your time. Instead, you could be spending those minutes working on an upcoming project you’re passionate about or on forming better relationships with your manager and coworkers. Instead of doing complicated math, place your focus elsewhere. If you’re wasting time on simple conversions instead of focusing on your priorities, consider the following points the next time you speak with your manager. Here are three reasons you should set aside this outdated practice and level up your timekeeping.
- Inefficient Employees
The math required to change hours and minutes to numbers and decimals is complex, difficult, and often error-ridden. Additionally, while whole numbers are divisible by hundredths, hours are only divisible by sixty minutes. This means that if an employee works an amount of time that doesn’t calculate to an increment of fifteen minutes, determining the exact decimal place of the partial hour worked is nearly impossible without a conversion chart.
More than anything, this practice causes your workers to be inefficient, spending more time worrying about their calculated time than they do about the tasks in front of them. Keep your employees’ stress levels low by not worrying about such conversions, especially if you’re asking them to keep track of time spent on each specific task they complete.
- Complicates Break Times
The Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor requires employers to take Personal Time, Fatigue, and Delay allowances into account for their workers. This means workers are allotted paid breaks, despite their hourly status. While these times are different for each job depending on the physical work involved, it’s important to honor them.
Break times for employees and expected standards of labor can make it difficult and complicated to convert minutes into decimals, especially when break times are less than fifteen minutes for a whole number of hours. Consider whether doing these conversions is going to detract from the contentment of your workers and cause them to be unsatisfied with their tasks and assignments.
- Can Cause Legal Issues
When it comes to calculating payroll, using incorrect decimals or rounding up even occasionally can cause issues with the amount employees are paid. Indeed specifies, “Consistently rounding 0.15 hours up or down to 0.2 or 0.1 could hypothetically cause fluctuations of 5% in an employee’s paycheck.” These significant fluctuations can be a source of stress for employees and HR personnel. While they can be fixed with relative ease, fielding complaints about such issues is a job in and of itself, taking time away from the more important things your workers could be doing.
The Solution? Timerack.
There’s an easy way to solve the problem of converting time to decimal numbers—invest in a superior time tracking software that allows your employees to focus on what they do best while the technology does the conversions for you. This saves you time, and therefore money running your business and helping you keep things as efficient as possible.
Timerack offers time tracking software equipped to solve your problems easily. Plus, when you consider adding biometric software to your product, you stand less of a chance of falling victim to time fraud. Identifying employees by their fingerprints or facial recognition solves identity issues you may have.
Additionally, payroll integrations automatically do the calculations for you, saving energy and eliminating spend at the same time.
As you move forward, consider how an investment in time tracking software can aid your business in becoming the best it can be. You’ll keep up with the times and allow your employees to focus on the important things that will increase your business’s revenue.