Insights on Excellence | "Insights on Excellence" Archive

Using technology to boost employee retention

by Stephen Hawley Martin
for Virginia Business
March 8, 2007

How can an automated time and attendance system help counter a high employee turnover rate? One way may be to use technology to give employees more control over the hours they work.

Programs now exist that allow workers to enter day and shift preferences into a computer, and the computer will schedule workers according to these preferences. An employee may not want to work Saturday nights, for instance, because he or she cannot arrange child care. Or perhaps someone actually likes the graveyard shift. Or perhaps seniority can be made a factor in scheduling preferences, so that people will be encouraged to hang in and build seniority. If someone is about to reach a point where he can pick and choose, he's not likely to move to another job where he will have to start all over at the bottom of the pecking order.

One company I know transcribes medical records. Workers can do this from home, interacting with the company via the Internet. The company's owner told me his employees don't brag about how much they make an hour, but they do like to tell people they can work whenever they want and are completely free to schedule their own time. This benefit costs the company nothing but results in a stable staff at a price the company can afford.

More and more people want to arrange work around their lives rather than the other way around. It may even be difficult to take a job because it conflicts with the children's school schedule or a spouse's job. Or, maybe an individual is not a morning person. The labor market is tight these days and people often are looking for flexible scheduling, so why not give it to them - at least to the extent that's possible? In health care and other industries that operate 24/7, more and more companies are finding ways to provide flex scheduling. Time and attendance technology coupled with scheduling software can provide the tools needed to manage this benefit and make it practical to implement.

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Stephen Hawley Martin is a former principal of The Martin Agency in Richmond and the author of more than half a dozen books including his newest, Lean Enterprise Leader: How to Get Things Done Without Doing It All Yourself. He is editor and publisher of The Oaklea Press, a book publishing business dedicated primarily to helping business executives increase productivity.