Leading cleaning equipment manufacturer streamlines timekeeping and improves HR administration benefits for employees by using Isys Group Time and Attendance System.

Numatic International Ltd manufactures an extensive range of domestic, commercial and industrial cleaning and maintenance equipment at its headquarters in the south west of England. Its products – the most famous being the ‘Henry’ cleaner - are widely available through wholly owned distributors in France and Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa plus a network of dealers in the UK and nationwide.

The company employs over 700 people on its site that covers nearly 20 acres and produces approx 4000 products per day. Increasingly it has become an administrative nightmare to manage the employees’ attendance, particularly as both the number of employees and site has grown, with additional buildings developed to support new semi-automated production lines and warehousing.

Weekly paper chase
Storing spreadsheets and clocking in cards resulted in a weekly paper chase to gather the required information for payroll. To improve the process and provide the required information faster, the company realised that a more up to date and sophisticated time and attendance solution was required. Following a detailed evaluation of six products (from an initial 25 shortlist), the company selected the time and attendance solution Tru-time, from Intelligent Time Systems Ltd.

Paul Manley, Manager of the initial project team at Numatic International, said; ”We reduced the potential suppliers down from the original twenty five, to a final three, based on reference sites, functionality and flexibility.”

Originally just looking for a straightforward time and attendance system, the Numatic team have since found the additional HR facilities within Tru-time invaluable. The company payroll is integrated with the Tru-time system, enabling it to be processed faster and more efficiently.

Numatic uses Tru-time both to report on historical data and access ‘real-time’ information, providing an up-to-the-minute snapshot of employees in the workplace.
The T&A related information can be used by cost centre, department or allocated to jobs, providing Numatic managers with an extremely flexible way of analysing employee costs and deployment across the business.

“Prior to implementing ITS’ solution, we had to collate paper records and run through spreadsheets every Monday morning for the payroll – clocking in cards could not be collected until the end of Friday to get the attendance information that we required,” explained Manley.

“Now each supervisor has the information they need readily to hand in minutes. We can also track holidays easily at the click of a button, rather than having to trawl through clocking in cards.”

Motivating staff
The powerful reporting features within Tru-time allow the company to identify trends in absence, enabling HR or the manager to investigate the reasons behind the absence and so provide support to employees where appropriate. The Numatic team has been able to use the attendance data to reward employees for good attendance by giving them additional holiday that can then accrued over the years. This, says Manley, has proved to be highly motivational for staff.

The company has also found the access control module useful, allowing department areas - whether the assembly-line production floor, sales warehouse or administration - to be assigned different security access. This has made it easier to control and monitor staff access to the different buildings on the 20-acre site. Not only has this enabled Numatic to manage security for the information-sensitive R & D department, it has also protected valuable IT assets in the Information Services area.

Improving productivity
Reports from the system using the cards and readers have enabled managers to supervise departments closely for both productivity and security. The added bonus has been that departmental managers have been able to monitor and manage unscheduled social visits from fellow employees.

Since implementing the solution, the company has also used the HR module, Tru-hr, within the Tru-time solution. The module includes full recording and reporting facilities for recruitment, training, appraisals and discipline. This enables Numatic to have a complete record of all employment, timekeeping, attendance and absence information form the moment an employee joins the organisation.

No going back
“At Numatic each manager or supervisor has the freedom to use the HR module if they want to. We have found that since using the ITS system our data is much more accurate and it is easier to produce reports – previously the managers were reliant on using spreadsheets to store and manipulate the data.

“As far as Numatic is concerned we couldn’t live without our ITS solution. It is now embedded into our business processes, saving us administration time, and making us more effective as an organisation,” concluded Manley.