tensor_tandauk, Author at Time and Attendance Southwest

Social distancing software assistance

15th May 2020 4:37 pm Leave a Comment

This is a short guide on how our Time and Attendance and Fire Roll Call products can help you keep your staff safe and healthy as the UK begins to ease out of the pandemic lockdown.

If you are an existing customer who wants to make your site safe, our dedicated Sales Consultants can offer you bespoke advice based on your existing site configuration and equipment. Please get in touch.

The .NET Time and Attendance software is very flexible, enabling you to easily deal with complicated shift timings, such as the government is suggesting with staggered starts and ends. This helps with workplace crowding, so that you can keep 2m between employees as much as possible.

• Stagger arrival / departure times (shift start/end times) to reduce crowding in and out: Shifts can either be fixed or flexible and can change automatically based on when an employee clocks in and out by using our auto selection shift system.
• Plan for the minimum number of people needed on site: Using our shift assignment screens you can roster staff within a shift, section, cost centre or department. The software will advise if planned shifts look understaffed.
• Monitor staff break times to ensure compliance: Use the powerful reporting capabilities within the .NET software to monitor staff break patterns and, if need be, implement specific policies to reduce crowding in the break rooms.

As workplaces reopen, evacuations and drills will become another reason for concern.

Under the new guidelines, all employees will be required to keep a safe distance between them, even during potentially emergency situations. Tensor’s Fire Roll Call system can help you achieve this in two ways:

• Add additional Muster Points for Fire Roll Call: The Tensor system can easily accommodate more muster points, thereby decreasing the number of staff assembling at each point.
• Switch to the Tensor Fire Roll Call App (FRC): When using the Tensor Fire Roll Call app, employees can mark themselves safe from within the app without physically moving to a set muster point. This ensures that employees maintain a safe distance from each other.

If you’d like any more information, please contact us.

We provide online product demos, as well as online training once products are purchased, so that no unnecessary contact will take place.

Making unattended entrances more secure

16th April 2020 3:44 pm Leave a Comment

Any top-notch visitor management system needs a way to let you know who is standing outside. This is even more important in the current difficult times, when restricting entrance to a selected few is common, and minimising physical contact is a necessity.

(See the UK government’s COVID-19 ‘social distancing’ guidelines here.)

The Helios IP Force IP intercom allows for easy and secure entrance monitoring, and can be navigated through visual and voice methods. The camera is wide-angled and in colour, with night vision. Illuminated buttons and a backlit keyboard make it easy for a caller to use in all weathers and levels of light.

Speaking of variable weather – this intercom is designed for operation in the most demanding conditions, resisting damage from dust, water and even physical vandalisation.

The Helios IP Eye app enables you to see the person at the door before you even pick up their call. If you miss a buzz, an email can be sent to you containing the time and an image of your missed caller.

You can program in time profiles so that only certain people are allowed access during certain hours. This means that you don’t need to constantly remind desk staff – the computer knows!

The Helios IP Force IP intercom can be easily integrated with a contactless RFID reader, to let approved people in and out.

To ensure that no-one on your blacklist can gain access via an acquired smartcard, you could also integrate the intercom with a facial recognition system, or send real-time video straight to your security team.

The intercom is particularly popular in industries where certain access is allowed out of office hours, such as general practice surgeries, car parks or schools, or areas which always require high security levels such as laboratories, prisons, or manufacturing facilities.

To find out more about how the intercom could enhance your control over who attends your premises, please get in touch today.

Why does hand-washing beat COVID-19?

9th April 2020 9:31 am Leave a Comment

Hand-washing has been encouraged by the government before any other precaution against COVID-19/novel coronavirus was brought in, and is still recommended as best practise even amongst the recent more extreme measures.

It is particularly vital for the many industries and workers who cannot work from home, such as NHS frontline workers, supermarkets, petrol stations and warehouses.

Why is hand-washing so necessary?

We’ve all heard the advice: use soap and running water, and wash for at least 20 seconds. (Here is a great video showing you the correct method.)

According to the Unicef website, this is when you should wash them:

“In the context of COVID-19 prevention, you should make sure to wash your hands at the following times:

After blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing
After visiting a public space, including public transportation, markets and places of worship
After touching surfaces outside of the home, including money
Before, during and after caring for a sick person
Before and after eating

In general, you should always wash your hands at the following times:

After using the toilet
Before and after eating
After handling garbage
After touching animals and pets
After changing babies’ diapers or helping children use the toilet
When your hands are visibly dirty”

But why is soap and running water the preferred method, over, for example, alcohol-based hand sanitiser? And why does it work at all, when there’s no known treatment or cure for this virus?

Soap is effective because it dissolves the fatty membrane of the virus, making it fall apart and become inactive. It also stops the virus from binding to your skin so that it can be washed away.

Alcohol-based products work in a very similar way and can be just as effective at rendering the virus inactive.

However, to truly cover your hands in alcohol solution requires a lot more product than the small amount of soap you need to make a lather. This is why alcohol wipes or hand sanitiser is a second-choice method compared to soap for hand-washing.

Obviously, these cleaning precautions are only effective when the COVID-19 virus is outside your body.

This is most commonly caused by people sneezing or coughing and not covering their mouths, which leaves active virus splattered everywhere. If you touch this surface and then do not clean your hands, the virus can go into your body and infect you.

Here at Time and Attendance South West, we have several different options which can be integrated into your attendance management and access control systems in order to minimise physical contact with other people and potentially unclean surfaces.

These include:

An online clocking-in system, the Self-Service Module (SSM), for remote workers
Contactless radio-frequency smartcards, which can be read from a distance while still inside a pocket
A Fire Roll Call App which enables you to monitor employee presence during a drill without requiring them all to stand together in one place
Unmanned Reception App, to protect receptionists from undue exposure
Facial recognition software to minimise the need to face-to-face verification

If you’d like any more information, please ring +44 (0)1480 215530, or email us via the contact form.

We provide online product demos and training once purchased, so that no unnecessary contact will take place.

Working from home – attendance management

18th March 2020 11:24 am Leave a Comment

The recent government advice is for everyone to work from home if possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many office-based companies have historically avoided remote working due to anxiety over lack of remote oversight.

There are many products available to help with this concern, from collaborative online workspaces, where every edit to a document is timestamped, to business chat apps to allow instant communication and web conferencing software for ‘face-to-face’ requirements.

At Time and Attendance South West, we can help put your mind at rest regarding physical attendance with our easy-to-use Self-Service Module (SSM).

This allows employees to clock themselves in and out, and to book on and off individual production jobs. Employees working a formal flexitime system can also view their current flexi-balance in real time and request adjustments to it.

As well as being available in the browser, this product is also available as a mobile app, for iOS and Android.

If your staff use the mobile app, this enables you to verify their location. GPS position data is used to ascertain the mobile device’s location at the time of clocking. Employee movements can then be displayed & plotted on a map to be viewed in the central software.

With so many people working from home, network connectivity may start to become patchier than expected. The SSM app adapts to a sudden loss of connectivity by caching (temporarily storing) offline requests on the mobile device. Once a network connection is restored, any cached information is transferred immediately.

Team supervisors and system admins can perform actions such as:

Authorise or deny any requested periods of absence made by their team members.
Authorise or deny any requested flexitime adjustments.
Authorise or deny any requested shift swaps or shift changes.
Make changes to the assigned shifts of their team.
Run clocking reports of their immediate or wider team members.

The SSM can be used with any number of employees, from solo entrepreneurs all the way up to huge multi-national companies. If you do have employees from multiple different countries, particularly within the COVID-19-stricken EU, it may be helpful to know that the SSM can provide its information in English, French, German, Czech, Polish and Welsh.

This easy-to-use module can be added to our larger time and attendance software, but cannot be purchased as a free-standing product.

If you are interested in our simple, user-friendly app to increase confidence in employees who are working from home, please contact us on +44 (01480 215530, email us using the contact form or email your existing account manager.

Co-working space for SMEs

11th February 2020 3:45 pm Leave a Comment

Bristol Spaceworks, a social enterprise company which serves small and local businesses, has acquired a co-working facility on Wilder Street.

The new premises, Redbrick House, enables the company to provide a four-floor co-working space for freelancers, start-ups and small businesses in the city. The site has desks, studio spaces, meeting rooms and a “break-out area”.

“We’re very happy to have acquired Redbrick House and the existing co-working business,” said chief executive of Bristol Spaceworks, Matthew Johnstone.

“It offers a new dimension to our current business centres, with flexible and affordable options for both solo and interactive working.”

Community and operations manager Amie Thompson will continue working at Redbrick House along with her colleague Yasmin Qureshi.

She said: “Redbrick House is a fantastic space flooded with natural light and has always had a really friendly, sociable feel.”

A new shared working space is a great thing for any urban area, so it is fantastic that this Bristol co-working premises has come under the control of such a local-minded business. However, there are boring elements to using this kind of space which need to be addressed or businesses will run into problems!

Co-working spaces are usually associated with freelancers and the self-employed, but they can also be lifesavers for remote workers. Working from home just doesn’t suit everyone, as it blurs the boundaries between work-time and home-time to a degree that some people find unhelpful.

A unique city-centre co-working space like this would definitely be perfect for remote workers to create that distance between their home-selves and their work-selves, and so become more productive and satisfied.

Our Self-Service Module (SSM) enables employees to clock themselves in and out from an internet browser or a mobile app, as well as allowing them to request holidays and register doctor appointments.

Most importantly for sceptical business owners, if employees use the mobile phone app version of this module, their movements can be tracked through GPS and plotted onto a map.

For more information about this remote worker management system, please get in touch today!

Cornish company relocates

31st January 2020 3:30 pm Leave a Comment

Fluid Branding, a promotional merchandise company, has relocated its headquarters.

The successful company is spread over many different locations, including seven UK offices, Dublin, Amsterdam, Malta and China and with two partnership ventures in the US.

It was founded in Cornwall and it has not moved from its roots, relocating from St Austell to the modern facilities available at ESAM. This is the first phase of the Carluddon Technology Park, and a centrepiece of the West Carclaze Garden Village, the multimillion-pound regeneration project for mid Cornwall.

Currently the company has more than 50 staff, and it hopes to expand its headcount year-on-year.

Miles Lovegrove, managing director of Fluid Branding, said the office space would be home to its design team, creative support, sales team and tech teams for eCommerce development and new systems infrastructure.

He added: “We are delighted to be reaffirming our commitment to Cornwall and the St Austell Area – where it all started for us – by investing in this important move to new headquarters at ESAM. It is a fantastic, landmark building in an inspirational location with the space for us to grow and think.

“We are a technology and marketing focused organisation, which is expanding and commercialising advancements in merchandise manufacturing through innovative print methods, 3D printing, and new sustainable manufacturing processes.

“ESAM is an exciting place to be continuing our own growth story. We’re now a certified B Corporation and it’s great to be surrounded by likeminded individuals and other low carbon businesses, as we take forward our commitment to improving efficiencies and merchandise processes within our industry.”

Moving to new offices is the perfect time to assess your time and attendance system.

Many office-based companies don’t believe that they need a structured attendance monitoring system. As we say at Time and Attendance South West, having a time and attendance system doesn’t mean that Big Brother is looking at your every move, it just gives you the big picture!

The European Court of Justice has ruled that all companies need to measure the duration of time worked every day by their employees. We can provide multiple different language packs, to help you fulfil this requirement if you have employees over on the Continent.

You may not need to know the exact timings of your salaried staff as a boss or a manager, but HR might find a full history of their timings very important if you ask them to put a member of staff on a disciplinary for lateness.

Without careful documentation, proving lateness could be difficult. Many companies still operate on a casual “Just let me know,” attitude, which make it difficult to clearly state how many absences they might have had over a certain time period without laboriously scrolling through texts or emails.

With our centralised time and attendance system, HR can see everyone’s clocking data for whom they have permission, and quickly and easily export this or format it into reports using our report wizard or advanced report creation settings.

Staff can clock in either using our physical terminals, which work with fingerprints and/or radio-frequency smartcards, or if physical terminals can’t be installed then we can offer an online/app-based clocking in service called the Self-Service Module (SSM).

For more information, please get in touch today.

Bristol accountancy firm expands after successful year

9th January 2020 11:22 am Leave a Comment

Bishop Fleming, an accountancy and advisory business, plans to move into brand new premises in 2020.

Its current building is in Queen’s Square, Bristol, and it is planning to move to the top floor and roof terrace of 10 Templeback.

The new premises are located near Temple Meads Station, as part of the new commercial developments in the Temple Back business area of the city. It will be designed with flexible and agile-working in mind, and will provide enough space to double their employee numbers.

This building will be Bishop Fleming’s largest office of its seven offices. Previous to this, its most recent move was to Torquay.

"Moving to 10 Templeback is yet another stride forward in our ambitious growth plans for our business and particularly this region," said managing partner Andrew Sandiford.

"It will provide a cutting-edge working environment to attract and retain the highest calibre of people and to ensure the best delivery of professional services and experience for our clients.

"We have used our centenary year to launch our new ambition – to be recognised as the most rewarding accountancy firm in the UK for our clients, people and communities. But most importantly, we have used it to position our business for the future. Moving into this fantastic new office in 2020 is the next step in delivering that ambition."

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Building your new premises from scratch is the perfect opportunity to install a new time and attendance system, since it enables you to control the wiring and the placements of doors and other useful factors.

Time and Attendance South West offers a contactless smartcard and biometric clocking terminal with clocking options ranging from smartcard only right up to 3 factor authentication of smartcard, PIN and biometrics. This hardware registers staff entrances and exits as they present their identification, and delivers the information to the central software in real-time. It is a quick and user-friendly process.

Our Biometric Fingerprint Reader is designed to give absolute peace of mind that the correct person was present when scanning. Once registered on the fingerprint scanner, the image of the patterns usually found on the fingertip is converted into a code through a secure algorithm, which is then stored on the time and attendance system database for future comparison and authentication.

To learn more about Time and Attendance South West’s secure and affordable biometric time and attendance systems, please give our dedicated team a ring and they will be happy to help you with any queries.

Bristol accountancy firm expands after successful year

11:22 am Leave a Comment

Bishop Fleming, an accountancy and advisory business, plans to move into brand new premises in 2020.

Its current building is in Queen’s Square, Bristol, and it is planning to move to the top floor and roof terrace of 10 Templeback.

This building will be Bishop Fleming’s largest office of its seven offices. Previous to this, its most recent move was to Torquay.

"Moving to 10 Templeback is yet another stride forward in our ambitious growth plans for our business and particularly this region," said managing partner Andrew Sandiford.

"It will provide a cutting-edge working environment to attract and retain the highest calibre of people and to ensure the best delivery of professional services and experience for our clients.

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Bristol office opening for property firm

11th December 2019 4:55 pm Leave a Comment

Specialists in commercial property, London & Cambridge Property (LCP), has opened a new office in Bristol.

The office will be headed by Adam Martin, who will be responsible for the asset management of LCP’s industrial and retail holdings in the city and the oversight of the company’s national headlease portfolio. He has more than 12 years’ commercial property experience in the Bristol and wider south west market.

He said: "Having worked for LCP as a consultant and seeing first-hand, the dynamic approach it takes to managing its property portfolio, the chance to join one of the UK’s largest privately owned property companies was too good to refuse and I am relishing the challenge of developing LCP’s presence in the South West region."

Ed Mileham, head of asset managers, added: "We are experiencing strong and steady growth across sour portfolios, buoyed in particular by our focused acquisitions in the retail and local convenience sector. We are in the position where our portfolio in the south west needs someone on the ground in the local area and Adam is ideally placed to provide expert asset management."

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Moving to new offices is the perfect time to assess your time and attendance system.

Many office-based companies don’t believe that they need a structured attendance monitoring system, but we argue that the data from our attendance system can gather will boost their efficiency. As we say at Time and Attendance Midlands, a time and attendance system isn’t Big Brother, it just gives you the big picture!

Many companies still operate on a casual “Just let me know,” attitude, which make it difficult to clearly state how many absences they might have had over a certain time period without laboriously scrolling through texts or emails.

Staff can clock in either using our physical terminals, which work with fingerprints and/or radio-frequency smartcards, or if physical terminals cannot be installed then we can offer an online/app-based clocking in service called the Self-Service Module (SSM).

The mobile app version can also utilise GPS to tell you the location of employees as they clock in, which is useful for remote workers.

For more information, please get in touch today.

A good reception experience is vital

8th November 2019 4:46 pm Leave a Comment

Customers being put off by unhelpful or unfriendly reception areas is a widespread problem in the B2B sector. When you don’t have a “customer-facing” element to your workplace, it can be easy to slide into functional, unfriendly presentation methods.

Another sector which can suffer from this is the small and micro business, which even if they need to speak to customers directly may not have enough staff to “waste” someone at the front desk all day. A good example is a car bodywork garage.

An unfriendly, unwelcoming receptionist can be caused by many factors. First, of course, is a simple lack of job engagement by the employee. This should be quickly picked up by management and addressed with a frank discussion about expectations.

Secondly, the receptionist may not be actually unfriendly! They might just come across that way because they are nervous and unsure what exactly to say or do. This is commonly seen in companies where receptionists aren’t receptionists at all – they are staff with other roles on a front-desk rota.

“Oh, Alex, just answer the phones today, will you?”

Small companies can’t afford a whole new person, and can’t lose an existing member’s workload to let them sit at the desk.

So what should you do?

The solution is to integrate as much technology into your reception process as possible, in order to give visitor a smooth, professional and friendly experience. We have many different options to help with this.

Our Management of Contractors and Visitors Software (MCVS) app allows visitors to book their appointments in advance in their browser. A confirmation email is sent to the visitor and to the person they are visiting (the host).

Once the visit is set up, it can be entered onto the host’s diary or visitor list, or wherever would be clearest. This maakes checking-in easy and unambiguous.

The true integration comes with the inclusion of a good access control system. The visitor’s submitted photograph and vehicle registration can be entered into the company’s facial recognition and Automatic Number Plate Recognition modules, and their information can be linked to an access profile which pre-sets their door permissions.

This means that when the visitor turns up they don’t have to go through security at the gate, they don’t have to write their number plate down in a sign-in book, and they don’t even need to wear an annoying visitor pass.

Reassuringly for managers and security staff, there is also no way for the visitors to get through doors that they do not have access permissions for, thanks to Tensor’s high quality door readers and powerful locks.

If you’re thinking that this sounds like the receptionist would be a little redundant … well, you’re not wrong. For companies who don’t need a receptionist (or, to go back to the beginning, small companies who can’t afford one), we can offer an Unmanned Reception App, otherwise known as the Self-Service Visitor Management App (SSVM). This app runs on any Android or iOs tablet and allows visitors to check themselves into their appointment without a receptionist needing to be present.

A less expected benefit is to health-and-safety. If a fire alarm sounds, the central system will print an up-to-date, real-time list of everyone who is in that building or zone. So even if the visitor has nipped to the loo on the way out of their meeting, they will not be overlooked or forgotten about when it comes to the emergency roll call.

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Integrating systems deeply into all areas of your workplace might feel like an unnecessarily futuristic plan. But it is almost 2020 and technology is marching on, and if you’re not careful to keep up with your competitors then you could lose business for your unfriendly and unprofessional demeanour.

Talk to us about our Visitor Management software, or to Tensor about their Access Control solutions (including ANPR and Facial Recognition).

Author Archives: tensor_tandauk

Why is hand-washing so necessary?