Insights on Excellence | "Insights on Excellence" Archive

The friendly schedule ghost

by Stephen Hawley Martin
for Virginia Business
October 12, 2007

Just about everyone is happy when someone takes care of something for them, especially when they don't even have to ask. The other day, for example, my wife was playing tennis, and I had fixed lunch for the kids. Just as lunch ended, I got a phone call and went into the other room to talk. I came back into the kitchen and to my surprise the kids had cleared the table and put the dirty dishes in the dishwater -- without being asked.

Automated schedules created by a sophisticated workforce technology software program can be like this, in this case doing unexpected things for employees. When schedules are integrated with time and attendance, data from the schedule carries over automatically, without the employee having to do anything. These are called "ghost punches."

For example, a schedule can include a chain of work activity events that are expected to occur throughout the employee's shift. The employee may begin work at one location and be scheduled to move to a different location three hours into the shift. When the employee arrives at work and logs into the system -- whether by time clock, the Web, telephony, it doesn't matter -- the data goes into the timecard. The schedule in the background recognizes that data as the in punch and tells the timecard, "I know what this employee is going to do."

The employee goes about his day and completes his shift. He goes to the system and logs out, which is his second and final entry that day. The timecard registers the out punch and the schedule fills out what the employee did during that shift. The transfer to the second location appears in the timecard as a "ghost" punch, allocating the employee's time to the two different work locations.

No effort whatsoever is required on the employee's part. Less time spent going to the time clock, there is less chance of entering the wrong data or forgetting to enter the transfer. That ghost works hard, and he's nice to have around. For management, he has properly allocated labor expenses.

More can be done with schedule data ghosted into timecards -- changing jobs, changing rates of pay for specific scheduled labor activity, scheduling time off such as vacations and leaves of absence -- far in advance. All of this sort of thing can be entered when the schedule is put together, and at the proper time, the data will go into the timekeeping module for payment.

If your company is still doing all this sort of thing by hand, it's probably time to call in the work-force management technicians.

-----------------------------------------------------

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.