Staffing Company Automates Time and Attendance Process: Eliminates bottlenecks when tracking temporary employee data

The KPM Group eliminated the need for manual time sheets and minimized the administrative burden once associated with tracking time and attendance data for over 125 temporary employees. Key to this achievement is an automated time and attendance system from InfoTronics, Inc. that efficiently captures and stores employee time and attendance data in real time, improving the efficiency of processing and reporting labor data at the company’s remote client location. The staffing company automatically collects employee time and attendance data with badge terminals, and automates the processing of employee payroll data while maintaining security requirements demanded at the job site.

About The KPM Group
The KPM Group is a privately held company that delivers staffing services to Southeastern Michigan’s business community. Founded in 1989 by Kathy and Sam Mastantuono, The KPM Group offers a high caliber of direct hire, “temp to hire” and temporary staffing to a large number of law firms and other companies in the Detroit Metropolitan area. Under the leadership of its founders, KPM Group works with candidates in a wide range of professional positions — from executive search, finance, accounting to office and executive support.

Specialized Legal Staffing
Recently, a large metropolitan Detroit law firm looked to The KPM Group for specialized legal staffing services. The law firm needed to expand its legal research capabilities to conduct discovery related to a major litigation faced by an automotive manufacturer. After assessing the firm’s needs, The KPM Group placed over 125 temporary legal support staff to handle the complex legal research.
A unique aspect of the project was that the discovery work was highly confidential. To maintain security, the law firm stipulated that the work environment could not accommodate any internet or network connectivity due to the sensitive nature of the legal research. Thus, much of the record-keeping and research had to be done manually.

Past Challenges
From the outset of the staffing project, it was a challenge for The KPM Group to track time and attendance data for over 125 temporary legal support staff. Since all of the temporary employees arrived at the work area at the same time each morning, there were long delays as the each group member manually signed in at a paper time sheet. Breaks and lunch hours were also tracked on paper time sheets, which caused further bottlenecks.

It was also time consuming for supervisors to manually review the daily sign-in sheets, check for missing start/end times, and sign off for each employee. Any attendance issues could not be addressed until long after the fact.

Payroll staff had to drive to the law firm each week to gather the time sheets. Once verified for accuracy back at the staffing office, the same information was recorded into the database for payroll processing. The double data entry necessitude time-consuming accuracy checks.

Looking for a Better Way
Soon after the project began, The KPM Group sought to speed the process of gathering employee time and attendance data at the client site. They looked to cut the cumbersome manual record-keeping needed for such a large number of temporary staff, and to reduce the effort and delays due to the double-data entry and manual accuracy checks.

The KPM Group considered an automated time and attendance solution, yet complicating the situation was that in the highly secure environment, no network connectivity was permissible. Any internet-based automated time and attendance solution could not be considered.

The KPM Group President Sam Mastantuono learned about Michigan-based InfoTronics, Inc. through a professional business organization. For over 25 years, InfoTronics, Inc. (Farmington Hills, MI) has maintained a singular vision — to provide businesses of all sizes cost-effective, easily deployed time and attendance solutions. The company’s flagship product, Attendance Enterprise™, provides advanced features for automating the collection and management of labor data — and could be accommodated to meet the security requirements of this application.

A Unique Fit
InfoTronics developed an innovative solution for The KPM Group, in which at the start or end of shifts, employees swipe a proximity badge past a compact data collection devices installed at the law firm. The automated time clock collects employee transactions and instantly communicates via cellular phone connection to the Attendance Enterprise system housed at the staffing company’s main office.

This unique solution lets employee data transactions be securely transmitted in real time through a cellular network, maintaining the law firm’s security requirements. Attendance Enterprise easily calculates gross pay; maintains historical records of attendance and pay in the form of electronic time card archives; and generates useful employee attendance reports.

Streamlined Operations
According to Mastantuono, Attendance Enterprise let the staffing company make key improvements, “We completely removed the bottlenecks associated with the paper sign in sheets, and were able to automate the process while honoring our client’s security requirements. The data collection devices let the temporary employees start and end their shifts and track breaks, in the time it takes to swipe the card. That means no more long delays at the start and end of the workday. ”

The staffing company also eliminated the effort needed to manually check paper time sheets for missed punches. Payroll clerks access temporary employee attendance records at their location without physically traveling to the customer site, and payroll data automatically flows to payroll processing system without manual intervention.

Attendance Enterprise helps The KPM Group enforce attendance policies fairly, impartially and consistently. The system flags exceptions to scheduled attendance such as tardiness and absenteeism, notifying supervisors of issues and trends. This helps the staffing company address attendance issues before they become chronic problems.

Automatically generated employee data reports also helps in preparing accurate client billing.

In all, the company has made key improvements since installing InfoTronics’ comprehensive, automated data collection solution. Concludes Mastantuono, “We were able to collect data in real-time directly at the source, eliminate all bottlenecks, and automatically transfer data for payroll processing, while meeting our client’s considerable security requirements.” The system arms the staffing company with real-time data, so they can make the best decisions possible—the types of decisions that can lead to better bottom-line results.