Reduce Employee Overtime: Overtime has become a severe problem across global organizations. The reasons behind overtime can range from handling multiple job responsibilities and clocking extra hours to finish last-minute requirements to excessive breaks during office hours.
Moreover, many organizations don’t make payouts for overtime. In a 2021 report, unpaid overtime pre-pandemic across global enterprises was 7.3 hours and upscaled to 9.2 hours after it. Additionally, one in ten workers clocks in more than 20 hours of overtime weekly without extra pay.
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However, not making payouts or ensuring excessive weekly working hours is against the law in many countries and could lead to severe compliance fines. The drawbacks are more comprehensive than this. Excessive working hours could also cause serious harm to the employee’s physical and mental welfare. They can even lead to demotivation, diminished job satisfaction, and burnout. Fortunately, employers can avoid such situations in a few ways.
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3 Effective Ways to Reduce Employee Overtime
Use a Time & Attendance App
Today, time and attendance management systems can easily help estimate the total working hours in a day, week, or month. They can even estimate the average working hours of all employees and provide other beneficial analytics.
Keeping such data can prove highly beneficial. It would help to know if the organization is compliant with the government’s overtime policies and laws. Simultaneously, it can ensure the well-being of the employees and ensure that their productivity isn’t hampered due to excessive working hours.
Another advantage of a time and attendance solution is that it can encompass shift schedules, which can prove effective in avoiding double shifts and ensuring that the employees receive sufficient off-hours from work.
Creating an Overtime Work Policy
Another essential criterion is including an overtime work policy that matches federal, state, and local laws. This would not only safeguard the organization against any complaints but also help to curate the exact overtime payout for the employees.
However, the policy must be precise and integrated with a time and attendance app or software.
This eliminates the risk of human error during final compensation. The policy must include details like planning overtime caps, methods for abiding by the restrictions, supervisory and employee expectations, approving authorities, etc.
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Under any circumstances, if creating the policy becomes challenging, it’s best to approach a labor law attorney or ask a time and attendance software provider to curate a policy that is compliant with government norms.
Ensure Adequate Staffing
In 2023, a survey stated that the global average employee attrition rate is 12.5%. The burden of the employee who left the organization often falls on the existing or remaining team members. As a result, workers are required to work overtime to compensate for the excessive workload.
Organizations must realize that such a situation is bound to happen and must take measures in advance to avoid or manage the overall overtime hours of the existing workers. Moreover, they should also ensure that the organization hires recruits on time to avoid such a situation.
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By doing so, the workload would never fall on employees who may not have adequate knowledge or have other tasks in hand. Simultaneously, it would ensure that the employees always receive adequate off hours.
Conclusion
Reducing employee overtime has become crucial for organizations for reasons other than avoiding fines from government bodies for noncompliance. Workers who regularly undergo overtime often burn out mentally, face health issues, lack concentration, and even become highly unsatisfied with their jobs and organizations.
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Fortunately, there are many effective ways of managing employee overtime. Primarily, using a time and attendance management app can help track workers who regularly exceed their working hours.
Integrating a working hour policy into the app or software and making it a part of the employee contract can make life easier for both management and workers. Similarly, managing adequate staff within the organization with timely hiring can prove to be an effective mechanism.
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There are also other methods to reduce worker overtime. Grab a cup of coffee or tea (whichever you’d prefer) with us, and let’s catch up to discuss the best methods to implement time and attendance solutions in your organization.