Author Archives: tensor_tandauk

1. Nearly half of South West SMEs lack basic digital skills which would benefit them

   21st November 2018 4:20 pm Leave a Comment

   Nearly half of South West SMEs lack basic digital skills, according to the most recent Lloyds Bank Business and Charity Index. 

   According to the report, only 22% of South West businesses are gaining a transactional benefit from online trading. International digital practise is even lower, and only 7% of South West businesses use their digital skills in exporting. The Lloyds Index suggests that if South West businesses could make use of digital skills commercially, they could generate £85 billion in total turnover. 

    

   Only 8% of businesses use digital channels (such as search browsers or social media) to discover growth opportunities. Apparently 35% of South West SMEs don’t feel the need to develop their cybersecurity. This is a vital part of the modern business. Even if the business is so old-fashioned that they don’t have any information online for hackers to steal i.e. their website is just a page or two with location and contact details, their reputation could still be destroyed if someone hacks into that and replaces it with unsuitable content. 

    

   Embracing technologies such as cloud IT, online accounting software and digital training tools can result in higher turnover, attracting more clients and saving up to a full day’s worth of time in a week. 

    

   Stephen Noakes, Lloyds Banking Group’s Ambassador for the South West, said: “The South West is home to more than 71,000 enterprises and is the base for some of the country’s leading names in digital, technology and manufacturing.

    

   “As the world becomes more connected, it’s important for businesses and charities to have a strong online presence and the digital capabilities to attract new business or supporters, both in the UK and overseas. With this in mind, it’s disappointing to see that just 22 per cent and seven per cent respectively of SME organisations are using their digital channels to do this.

    

   “With more than 1,600 specially trained digital champions in the South West, we are helping the region’s businesses and charities develop their skills to facilitate growth, as part of our Helping Britain Prosper plan. Over the coming 12 months we will continue to provide free to access training events for SMEs, to help them close the digital skills gap.”

    

   Source: BusinessLeader.co.uk

    

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   It is a surprising but true fact that even companies in the technology sector, who work hard every day to solve people’s problems with technology, can end up using very low-tech solutions for basic employee management tasks. 

    

   The prime example of this is wasting countless sheets of paper in measuring attendance. Examples of this are numerous: paper timesheets for hourly staff, visitor sign-in sheets for health and safety and security, holiday booking forms … All of these need to be approved and/or signed by multiple people, which wastes time that would be better spent elsewhere. Every time a form passes through human hands, the chance of an innocent error occurring increases – and that’s not even getting started on the possibilities of time fraud. Finally, working like this is also a massive waste of paper, since these documents are generally only used once before they’re thrown away. 

    

   Here at Time and Attendance South-West, we offer powerful specialised software which can gather all this data for you and present it in an easy to understand format. This can be useful for many different departments.

    

   Our time and attendance management system (hardware and software) takes the labour out of payroll hours and helping HR spot attendance problems by collecting employees’ clocking data and recording it in the central database. This data can be easily checked and processed by multiple departments, and reports can be generated using our step-by-step wizard or advanced reports settings depending on user requirements. 

    

   Often in small companies the receptionist role suffers, since it is taken on piecemeal by staff members who have other tasks. When not performed as a speciality, the receptionist task can also be very inefficient. Our Visitor Management System and Self-Service Visitor Management App combine to create a self-sufficient check-in area, so that reception can be left completely unmanned if you wish. What used to be “getting visitor to sign the sheet with their details and pick up a pass and ring their contact to say they’ve arrived and tell them where to sit while they wait,” becomes utterly streamlined into the press of a few buttons. 

    

   Another way in which an automated system can improve your processes is in the health and safety response to fire alarms. This combines your existing fire alarm with our time and attendance/access control system. Hooking up your fire alarm to our system means that when the alarm is triggered, our WinTA.NET system will tell a printer (often positioned right next to the door) to print a list of everyone who is registered as being clocked in. This is much faster and more accurate than the usual method of reading off a list of all employees, or worse, relying on managers to do department headcounts! 

2. Law firm opens new office in Bristol Temple Quays

   14th November 2018 4:25 pm Leave a Comment

   Greenway Scott, a specialist law advisory firm, has opened an office in Bristol’s Temple Quay development. 

    

   This is an addition to their current premises in Cardiff, Swansea, Oxford and London. The office will be led by associate director Lorna Bolton, and solicitor Farhana Greenwood and Allan Griffiths, strategic consultant to the GS Verde Group.

    

   Greenaway Scott focuses on fast growth clients and mergers and acquisitions.

    

   Nigel Greenaway, director of Greenaway Scott, said:

    

   “The GS Verde Group has enjoyed significant growth and success over the past 12 months, with 2018 already proving to be a landmark year.

    

   “As we looked at our options to expand, the next logical step was to establish a base in Bristol, which is home to the UK’s second highest number of start-ups (outside of London).

    

   “We feel this is the right strategic move for us following the establishment of our HQ in Cardiff in 2013, and the successful set up of our first regional office in Swansea and the West in 2017."

    

   Source: South-West Business

    

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   Greenway Scott is obviously a successful and steadily growing company, consistently expanding into new areas with plans to keep going. 

    

   However, an area which is often overlooked as companies expand and grow is how they measure their time and attendance. (E.g. lateness, holidays, calculating working hours for payslips etc.) This is particularly important if they are also recruiting new staff, which Greenway do intend to do, since this puts more strain on existing processes.

    

   As a legal firm, Greenway may be sensible enough to not be paying their employees according to paper timesheets. However, this ineffective form of time and attendance management is still practiced by hundreds of companies all over the country.

    

   Inexact recording of hours (very easy with self-reporting retrospective timesheets!) can lead to potential infringements of the Working Time Directive, amongst other issues like tax discrepancies due to incorrect payslips. 

    

   Many office environments believe that they don’t need any formal method of attendance reporting beyond emails or phone-calls. This is also short-sighted, as they are missing out on the chance to view the big picture their attendance with graphs and calendars. This enables accurate decision-making in situations like payroll discrepancies or absence reviews. 

    

   The best solution is to centralise and automate your attendance management. With our clocking stations and top-quality time and attendance software, we can do exactly this.

    

   Our clocking data, particularly with biometric clock-ins, removes all uncertainty from attendance management, and makes it much harder to commit wage fraud. 

    

   To find out more about how we can make your life easier, contact us today. 

3. Hotels needs to keep attendance management up to date

   7th November 2018 10:36 am Leave a Comment

   A planning application has been submitted for a new 81-bed Travelodge in Poole. 

   If approved, the plans could provide up to six full-time and 20 part-time jobs, and could bring over £800,000 to the local economy every year. 

   The application has been submitted by PRC Architecture and Planning on behalf of Britel Fund Trustees for a 0.89 acre site on Fleets Corner Business Park.

    

   The application’s design and access statement said: "Poole is a popular tourist resort, attracting visitors to its large natural harbour. It is also a commercial port, with cross-Channel freight and passenger ferry services to Cherbourg, Guernsey, Jersey and St Malo. It has a large resident population of 152,000 and, along with Bournemouth and Christchurch, forms a fundamental part of the South East Dorset conurbation, the combined population of which is 465,000; larger than Bristol’s 438,000. It is a growing area, with the population of Poole predicted to grow to 160,000 by 2022.

    

   "Since opening in July 2016, the existing Travelodge in Poole has traded strongly; with a high average occupancy. The existing Travelodge is very close to the railway station and within walking distance of the town centre and quayside. This opportunity will provide a complementary location to the existing hotel.

    

   "The provision of a new hotel will create in the region of 25-30 full time jobs meaning the business park can offer a more diverse range of employment and increase overall employment numbers. The hotel would also potentially generate an additional spend in the local economy of approximately £830,000.00 per year from guests."

    

   Source: Insider Media

    

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   It is vital for hotels to have an accurate record of who is in the building, since not only do they have guests coming and going constantly but they also have cleaning staff, maintenance staff, kitchen staff, bar staff, and many other staff members. 

    

   Since many of these staff members will be temporary agency staff, they are likely to still rely on old-fashioned paper timesheet to record their weekly hours.

    

   Getting employees to retrospectively record their hours worked directly onto paper is not only open to fraud and mistakes, it also makes room for human error further up the chain. 

    

   Managers have to collect and approve all the timesheets. A study has shown that this can take more than 15 minutes per employee. Those numbers quickly mount up! 

    

   Thankfully there’s an easy solution. When employees clock in using our clocking terminals (these accept smartcard or biometric data) the information is recorded by the software and can be exported straight to your payroll software. 

    

   We can even save hotel companies money – our Unmanned Reception app reduces the need for a full-time desk-sitting receptionist by allowing visitors to sign themselves in and alerting hosts to their presence. You could either only hire a part-time member of staff, or simply let your receptionist find something more productive to do instead of wasting away behind the desk, waiting for the door to open or phone to ring.

4. Tech companies still using low-tech solutions

   6th November 2018 4:29 pm Leave a Comment

   A recent report from Tech Nation measured productivity in terms of sales per worker in the tech and digital industry, and announced that the most productive “cluster” was Bristol and Bath.

   Both of these places netted £296,340 in sales per worker, whereas London only came in second with £205,390. 

    

   London did come first in total turnover (from the digital industry) but Bristol and Bath still came third in that measurement, with £8.2 billion.

    

   A potential reason for this success is the support that these areas offer to start-ups and growing businesses – for example, the SETsquared programme, a collaboration between the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton, and Surrey which is the number one university business incubator in the world. The Bristol scheme houses many ambitious small businesses, including Boxworks which offers shipping containers as affordable office spaces for start-ups. 

    

   The healthy growth of these new businesses is clearly evident in the 53% increase in turnover. The Bath and Bristol cluster is perfectly positioned to nurture, develop and benefit from this booming industry. 

    

   Source: Business West Blog

    

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   It is a surprising but true fact that even companies in the technology sector, who work hard every day to solve people’s problems with technology, can end up using very low-tech solutions for basic employee management tasks. 

    

   The prime example of this is wasting countless sheets of paper in measuring attendance. Examples of this are numerous: paper timesheets for hourly staff, visitor sign-in sheets for health and safety and security, holiday booking forms … All of these need to be approved and/or signed by multiple people, which wastes time that would be better spent elsewhere. It is also a massive waste of paper, since these documents are generally only used once before they’re thrown away. 

    

   Here at Time and Attendance South-West, we offer powerful specialised software which can gather all this data for you and present it in an easy to understand format. This can be useful for many different departments, from taking the labour out of payroll hours and helping HR spot attendance problems to taking the effort out of managing visitor for receptionists and admins, and putting health and safety managers’ minds at ease by producing fast, accurate fire registers as soon as the alarm sounds. 

5. Old-fashioned timesheets in hotels are a risk to payroll accuracy.

   31st October 2018 9:19 am Leave a Comment

   A new budget hotel is coming to Bristol, courtesy of budget hotel developer and operator easyHotel. The company also has approval for another site in Oxford. 

   The £12m Bristol hotel will be built opposite Cabot Circus and half a mile from Temple Meads railway station. Once planning permission is granted, easyHotel hope to finish the 145-room hotel by 2020. 

    

   Guy Parsons, chief executive, said: "Our investment in Bristol, the fifth since our fundraising in March marks the latest addition to our fast-growing portfolio of comfortable, stylish and highly affordable hotels in key tourist and business locations.

    

   "The group continues to review a large number of investment opportunities in both the UK and Europe and we look forward to announcing further developments in due course."

    

   Source: Insider Media

    

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   It is important for hotels to keep accurate and up to date records of who is in the building, since not only do they have guests coming and going constantly, they also have cleaning staff, maintenance staff, kitchen staff, bar staff, and many other busy staff members. 

    

   Many of these staff members are likely to be temporary/agency staff, and so they are likely to still rely on the old-fashioned paper timesheet to record their weekly hours.

    

   Getting employees to retrospectively record their hours worked is not only open to fraud and mistakes from the workers, but it also makes room for human error further up the chain, as managers have to collect and approve all the timesheets. A study has shown that this can take more than 15 minutes per employee. Those numbers quickly mount up. 

    

   Thankfully there’s an easy solution. When employees clock in using our clocking terminals, the information is recorded by the software in nearly real-time, and it can be exported straight to your payroll software. 

    

   We can even save you money in staffing costs or productivity – our Unmanned Reception app reduces the need for a full-time receptionist.

    

   This web app visitor management system allows you to advance book visitor appointments and pre-book on site contractors. Visitors can also book appointments using our Self Service Module.

    

   A filtered search list allows a visitor to quickly select their appointment via the Console’s touch screen. Alternatively, contractors can scan their bar-coded passes at a barcode scanner attached to the Console to book themselves on site. 

6. Companies need to take advantage of modern technology

   23rd October 2018 1:57 pm Leave a Comment

   Dyson, a company best-known for its vacuum cleaners, intends to build its first electric car by 2020, and needs at least another 300 engineers to do so. 

   There are already 400 employees working on the battery-powered car project, and they have doubled the number of scientists working on the battery programmes. Dyson experienced a 27% rise in earnings over 2017. 

   The team working on this electric car will be moving to Dyson’s new research and development base in Hullavington in Wiltshire. The manufacturing location for the car is not yet decided. Possible locations include the UK, Singapore, Malaysia and China.

   The company praised high demand in Asia, with founder James Dyson saying people in those countries had "an extraordinary enthusiasm for technology that works". This was described as the main factor behind their 2017 increase in earnings.

   The founder also said that Dyson had “moved on” from an alleged breach of confidential information by a former chief executive, which was settled out of court. The new chief operating officer is Jim Rowan. 

   Source: BBC News 

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   An influx of 300 engineers is a very large workforce to obtain, retain and manage. While we hope that a company as large and successful as Dyson does use technology in people management processes to maximise their efficiency, here at Time and Attendance South West we have seen companies with hundreds of employees who don’t take advantage of what is out there. 

    

   The example that we come across most often is employers who still rely on paper timesheets to record their employees’ working hours. This has a whole host of disadvantages: everything from payroll inefficiency to wasting managers’ time, to leaving themselves wide open for fraudulent timesheet entries. 

    

   Our time and attendance system is an excellent replacement for this kind of manual arrangement, removing the majority of the opportunity for human error. No more employees forgetting their timesheets, and no more mistakes when entering the handwritten data into the payroll program. 

    

   All the employees have to do is clock in and out. This could be at the start and finish of their day, including breaks, or any time that they leave the building. 

    

   If they work remotely, they can use our web-and-mobile-based Self Service Module for clockings, which in mobile form can be used to plot the remote worker’s location in clocking time using GPS. If they work in a set space, such as an office or production facility, then you can provide them with our physical clocking terminals. These are operated by either radio-frequency smart-cards/key fobs or biometrics (fingerprint or hand geometry). 

    

   The time data collected from the card/biometric readers are sent straight to the central system, which has a familiar and easy to use Windows format. This means that there is no need to worry about missing timesheets at the end of the month – the data is right at your fingertips in virtually real-time. 

   Processing the data for payroll is easy too – it can be exported straight from the WinTA.NET system in a format which is suitable for all leading payroll programs. 

7. Mobile clock-ins for mobile employees

   15th October 2018 1:30 pm Leave a Comment

   The East of Exe, an Exeter estate agent which specialises in local property sales and lettings, will move into new premises at Offices at No.1, an opulent co-working facility. 

   This new location will provide East of Exe and its sister company West of Exe with hot-desking workspace for their sales and lettings teams. 

   Ian Garcia, founder and director, said: "The East of Exe family has grown over the past eight years and so has our offering to our customers. This is the perfect time for the Exeter office to move and to change the dynamic of how we operate as a company.

    

   "We love being in the heart of Exeter, so keeping a central location was essential. We’re excited about moving; the new space oozes character with its Georgian façade, while inside the offices the space is spacious and welcoming.

    

   "Having this hot-desking space will mean our team can work more flexibly to suit customers’ needs and we can offer an enhanced service to both new and existing customers."

    

   Stuart Hoddinott, owner of Offices at Number1 said: "We are really pleased to have East of Exe as our first tenants in this amazing new office space in the centre of Exeter. We already feel they are part of our family and look forward to growing with them in the future."

    

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   Hot-desking spaces are most effective for companies with mobile employees, where not everyone in is the office at the same time. This is common in sales teams, particularly in an area like property sales where staff are in and out showing potential customers around houses. 

    

   It is difficult to accurately record attendance in this kind of environment using traditional methods such as paper timesheets or smart-card clocking machines. A static clocking machine can’t accurately record working time out of the office, and a paper timesheet is particularly open to fraud or simple errors with staff entering incorrect hours. 

    

   Our solution is the Self Service Module. This is an app which allows users access from a browser or their mobile phone. Using this, employees can not only clock in and out from anywhere with internet access, but they can also clock on and off from individual jobs. They can request holiday leave, review and update their personal details and many more features. Supervisors can authorise (or deny) these requests and changes, and run clocking reports on their team. 

    

   If your employees use the mobile version of the app, you can view your employees’ locations at the time of remote clocking, thanks to GPS positioning. You can display these locations and plot them on a map. If the area where your staff is heading has bad signal, there’s no need to worry. The app will cache their clocking data on the mobile phone/tablet, awaiting a better connection. 

    

   To find out more about our Self Service Module, please contact us on 01752 638695 or book a demo. 

8. Co-working isn’t just for freelancers

   9th October 2018 3:07 pm Leave a Comment

    Bristol has a new co-working space: Framework, a start-up hub, has opened in King’s Street near to the Old Vic. The space is intended for technology entrepreneurs. 

    

   Framework is part of the Forward Space family of innovative co-working spaces, and has been designed to produce a stunning, unique workspace. 

    

   The Grade II warehouse has floor-to-ceiling windows, exposed beams, whitewashed stone walls and furniture by cult Danish design company HAY and bespoke interiors by Bristol’s Shape Studio. 

    

   There are desks and team pods, a co-working lounge, library, collaboration space, meeting rooms and an event space. Free tea and coffee are offered, and there will be an extensive events programme to support companies with growth and wellbeing.

    

   Gavin Eddy, chief executive and founder, said: “Our target clients are no longer content to work in conventional corporate offices.

    

   “For them, design and location are increasingly important factors in choosing a workspace. We try hard to deliver something truly innovative and exciting each time we take on a new project. No two of our buildings are the same”.

    

   Ben Byford, host and events manager, added: “A key differentiator will be our events.

    

   “As well as hosting member’s events, Framework will provide a much-needed venue for the wider Bristol tech community to host talks, conferences, business development opportunities and workshops.”

    

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   Co-working spaces are usually associated with freelancers and the self-employed, but they can also be lifesavers for remote workers too. Working from home just doesn’t suit everyone, as it blurs the boundaries between work and home. For some people this makes it very difficult to stop working, and others get too distracted by domestic tasks like laundry, walking the dog or answering the landline when it rings. 

    

   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. 

    

   Understandably, many employers worry when they first hire a remote worker, or allow a current employee to shift to remote working. How will they be able to keep track of the worker’s whereabouts and make sure that they are not walking the dog when an unfinished deadline is looming?

    

   While tracking employee work habits is largely an IT specialism (you can get everything from Slack to remote screen viewing to key-loggers to soothe your worries) our time and attendance system can help you with two factors: location and time.

    

   Our Self-Service Module (SSM) enables employees to clock themselves in and out, as well as book holidays and doctor’s appointments. Most importantly, if they use the mobile phone app version of this module their movements can be tracked through GPS, and plotted onto a map should you need to do so.  

    

   To get some peace of mind and some happy employees today, contact us on 01752 638695

9. New food hub needs a great visitor management system

   3rd October 2018 3:36 pm Leave a Comment

   Willmott Dixon will start building a new food and drink innovation centre called The Food WorksSW this month (October). The £11.3m construction contract will take place at the DEFRA designated Food Enterprise Zone in the heart of the Junction 21 Enterprise Area.

    

   The centre will have 12 units, four product development areas, spaces for exhibition, training and workshops, meeting rooms and a café. The hub is expected to create 250 jobs.

    

   Its current completion date is 2020 and it will be funded by the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) through the Local Growth Fund.

    

   North Somerset Council is looking for an operator for the complex, with the 15-year contract currently out to tender. 

    

   Cllr Elfan Ap Rees, North Somerset Council’s deputy leader and executive member for economic development, said: "There is clearly a demand for such a facility. It will be the only centre of its type in the South West and will help to enhance the undoubted strengths of the area’s food and drink sector.

    

   "It will not only benefit some of our smaller businesses, but will also kick-start others and will play a vital role in the council’s bid to drive growth in the North Somerset economy and create local jobs."

    

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   A large complex used by many different businesses and industries needs to have a great visitor monitoring system. This would minimise accidental disruptions from people ending up in the wrong place, and would also help to ensure safety during fire alarms. 

    

   Time and Attendance South West offers the Management of Contractors and Visitors Software (MCVS) to help everyone from staff to visitors to the postman be in the right place at the right time. 

    

   This network-based application allows you to advance book visitor appointments and pre-book on site contractors, using either the PC based application or a user’s Internet browser. Unlike the typical “sign-in” book, this complies with GDPR because visitors can’t see each other’s data and it is only kept for as long as it is required. 

    

   If there is no reception area in your particular workspace, or if there is not a designated receptionist, we can also offer you the MCVS Unmanned Reception Console, which enables visitors to check themselves in for appointments using a touchscreen. This can send an email directly to the person who will be hosting them, and logs them in on the central system. 

    

   With all visitors and contractors safely logged into the system, you can take advantage of our fire roll call system. This automatically prints off a list of who is logged/clocked into the zone covered by our system when the alarm goes off.

10. Malmesbury business expanded

    24th September 2018 3:59 pm Leave a Comment

    FleetCheck, a Wiltshire-based fleet management software company in Malmesbury, has expanded its office space by 50% to create room for further expansion of staff numbers and training facilities. 

     

    Peter Golding, managing director, said: "We now have around 25 people working at FleetCheck, which represents a headcount expansion of a quarter in the last year alone.

     

    "All of this is very much organic growth. More than 100 new customers have signed up to fleet software specialist FleetCheck so far in 2018, signalling our best-ever start to the year.

     

    "They range from companies with a handful of vehicles through to those operating more than a thousand and, together, have increased the total number of vehicles being managed using our software by 4,000 to around 65,000.

     

    "This success is very much thanks to the expertise of the team here at Eastcourt, who now represent some of the most progressive thinking in the country when it comes to running company car, van and truck fleets."

     

     

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    Expanding your premises and staffing levels is the perfect point in the business cycle to double-check whether your time and attendance systems are as efficient as they could be. 

     

    At Time and Attendance Scotland we provide specialised time and attendance management software with clocking terminals which can work with smartcards or with fingerprint and handprint biometrics, for that ultimate sense of security.

     

    The state of the art WinTA.NET software suite can handle much more than just basic clocking in and out. Here is a non-exhaustive list of everything it could do for you:

     

    • Job booking & job costing, 

    • Labour hours analysis

    • Security management (including quality CCTV playback). 

    • Control over working patterns rules, 

    • Monitors and warns about the EU working time regulations and the EU road transport directive regulations.

     

    It has a familiar Windows™ interface and can hold details of your employees, including a photograph of each person if required.

     

    Available in Lite, Small Business and Enterprise editions, the WinTA.NET Time and Attendance Software is a cost-effective solution for those employing from 10 to 10,000+ staff – so pretty much everyone!