Seasonal Employees – Are you Ready To Bring Them Aboard?
Employers – Do you find yourself asking:
What types or preparations should employers take when hiring seasonal help? What are the business system considerations? What documentation should be kept for HR purposes? What documentation should be available for taxes? How does a seasonal employee’s job status differ from full time? How will your time management system need to accommodate these differences?
Nurseries, manufacturers, and event planners, we have some ideas for you! If you want your temporary employees to attain maximum productivity, get a jump start on time entry options before they start working. For those of you with ebb and flow of the workforce, are you ready for the next ramp up? Some businesses have a workforce that changes with the weather or holiday season: winter, spring, summer, fall, Christmas, Memorial Day, and many more holidays. Perhaps you need to fire up a production line for a large order, or you are ramping up for harvest. Having an automated time and attendance system in place will assist with the transition from small to a large workforce and vice versa.
The best way to get a head start on an influx of employees is by having a strong time and attendance system in place, and your managers thoroughly trained on the system. A good time and attendance product will be easy to use and intuitive. Your supervisors should be comfortable handling punch entries and timecard edits. Do your managers know how to do a mass punch for shift work? Or approve timecards? Or even view missing punches? Have you prepared them to set up alerts for missing punches and approaching overtime?
If your base workforce exceeds fifty employees, are your administrators educated about ACA guidelines and how they may apply to your temporary workforce? Regardless of company size, it is good practice to know about ACA regulations and then capture and archive that data. Does your management team have a grasp on the differences of classifying employees as part-time versus full time? Familiarity with labor law in your geographic area will give you a better understanding of how to manage your growing employee roster?
As the influx of seasonal employees begins to clock in, you’ll want to make sure there are no delays or speed bumps in getting them started. You need to be sure that your management team can be productive in their training, and therefore they need to be prepared equipment-wise. Do you have enough time entry points (time clocks, kiosks) to manage your increased worker load? Do you need new time clocks, badges, or perhaps a few new self-service kiosks set up in the workplace? If mobile time entry is an option do you have enough licenses for the new employees? Have you scheduled an orientation for the new workers?
Experiencing growing pains and see the need to automate your time and attendance systems? Check out the handy project guide we put together to see what kind of options are available and go through our checklist to help you get started in the right direction before taking on your seasonal employees.
If you want to ensure your temporary employees attain maximum productivity, you need to get a jump start on time entry options before they start working!
At Sierra, we sell several types of time and attendance systems, clocks, and ERP integrations. With a good system, you will be able to pull employee information from your ERP system, and then push payroll right from TimeMaster. Sierra‘s software is agnostic too, so if you switch payrolls providers (i.e. moving from ADP to Paychex) or ERP providers you can take Sierra with you.
After 32+ years in business, we consider ourselves subject matter experts in all things time and attendance related. Start making time “work” for you today!