How to make attendance recording efficient

Nathan Cheeseman explains reasons why automated attendance logs matter if you want to improve efficiency, safety and compliance across your business operations.

Operating a successful business is complex. If you have multiple suppliers, staff and projects, knowing who is on your sites at all times improves efficiency, safety and compliance. Pen and paper can’t keep track of activity because it creates gaps along with unneeded inefficiencies. Those that switch to automated attendance solutions benefit from a simple and cost-effective solution. Here are a three reasons why they matter:

1. Better remote management

Having someone physically present at all times to keep track of activity is a luxury that few can afford. Most industries are moving to remote management, as businesses look to streamline and operate more efficiently. This doesn’t always mean there isn’t an onsite manager, there is value in providing onsite data to help corporate teams make better informed decisions. As this becomes the norm, businesses need to adapt to effectively manage and monitor operations while being offsite.

The challenges of remote management are being solved with technology. While there are many tools to help, finding the correct combination of fit-for-purpose functionality and cost effectiveness is key to enabling successful remote management. A large well-resourced multinational may utilise enterprise IoT solutions to gain remote visibility of their staff, properties and fleet. While these provide powerful upstream data they can be costly to implement and operate.

A great way to provide accurate onsite data to remote teams cost effectively is through onsite check-in solutions. These capture automated attendance logs for all visitors and staff onsite which can be utilised to monitor daily site activity, task progress and complete site interrogation for remote management teams. This provides value from top to bottom as businesses can manage more sites with the same resource and improve the clarity of data across their teams to make better decisions.

2. Complying with Covid 19 obligations

As we continue to adapt to the realities of the pandemic, there is an ongoing requirement for business operators to be able to trace contacts. Regulators in many OECD countries have applied strict penalties on those not keeping track of all contacts visiting their sites. Australia and New Zealand have led in this approach with fines of up to $13,000 and $1,000 respectively for those that don’t implement or enforce a contact tracing solution.

Robust contact tracing is proving to be an effective tool to contain and mitigate outbreaks as they arise in the community. So implementing a digital solution to keep track of customer, staff and supplier contacts while operating is going to be critical to safe operations for the foreseeable future. While there are various government apps that enable manual customer contact tracing, site operators still have an obligation for the safety of people on their sites – which includes being able to advise visitors of a Covid-positive person who had been onsite. This is where automated presence detection solutions with attendance logs can be of real value, as your registered suppliers are prompted to check-in when they arrive on site without touching their phones.

3. Improved supplier management

Managing projects or properties requires many specialists, contractors and subcontractors. This can leave managers overloaded with many balls to juggle when dealing with their supplier network. The residual effect of this can be cost overruns with suppliers, blown-out timelines or quality issues of completed work.

Solutions that create automated attendance logs for suppliers onsite are a powerful tool for managers to give them visibility they need to manage supplier relationships easily. The combination of geofencing and easy to install sensors can prompt suppliers to check-in onsite and automatically check them out as they leave. For managers this means completely automated and accurate attendance logs to refer to when managing their supplier network. Often referred to as “one version of the truth” records this gives managers full overview of onsite activity when reviewing work completed onsite or supplier invoicing. By linking task assignment and feedback to online presence, site managers can get a confirmed proof of record that jobs were completed in the timeframe required.

Nathan Cheeseman is CEO of Forsite. His years of corporate management which exposed him to the opportunity in PropTech led him to join the Forsite team, as the innovative check-in solution peaked his interest. Nathan enjoys keeping his finger on the pulse of the innovation within the property and construction sector and is always eager to help people manage more effectively with smart solutions.