staff absences

Jan

2026

Avoid making heavy weather out of disrupted staff attendance

It’s the time of year when sudden snowfall or heavy rain can cause chaos to travel and shut down schools without warning – which means disruption and unexpected costs for employers.

As with most challenges, the effects can be limited by planning ahead and ensuring you have suitable measures in place to provide adequate cover where it’s needed and calculate employees’ hours and pay accurately, without unnecessary overspends.

easyLog has the latest low-cost technology to help to track staff attendance and calculate timesheets to the minute to ensure you stay within budget. We also offer practical rota software to take the heavy weather out of dealing with last minute scheduling changes so dealing with seasonal disruption is quick, simple and stress free.

Be prepared – and pay attention to timesheets

When staff are unable to get into work or have to leave early due to bad weather or school closures, it makes sense to have a policy in place regarding pay. Do you expect the time to be made up later, for example, or to be taken as paid or unpaid leave? Accurate attendance recording will save time – and money – by ensuring that timesheets are straightforward to deal with and will also help to prevent unnecessary overspends.

easyLog’s browser-based timesheet software comes with report options to make managing timesheets, costings and pay simple and accurate. For example:

You can check staff are clocking in on time and where they should be on any device with a web browser – you can even view the exact location on Google maps
You can define a pay rate per hour per person and then automatically add up a costed timesheet, for example – handy for keeping control of your expenditure
With our wide range of reports you can analyse timesheets and wage costs by employee, client site and job function, with easy export to an Excel spreadsheet

Record attendance accurately with a low-cost app

Our Location Clock QR code clocking app is quick and easy to set up and requires no up-front costs because it uses employees’ own smartphones as attendance recording devices. The app records attendance even without a signal or data credit – so there are no excuses!

We also have a simple, web-based attendance recording option, which enables sub-contractors and temporary workers to clock in securely with no pre-registration required. And a PIN or drop-down menu application that turns an ordinary tablet into a fixed or portable clocking device.

If you want the reassurance of biometric attendance, we have the Geo Clock with Photo app. This turns an everyday tablet into a fraudproof biometric clocking terminal that confirms identity via a stored photographic image.

Upgrade your rota

easyLog attendance recording apps work seamlessly with our rota software to make calculating pay fast and accurate. Unlike a paper or spreadsheet-based system, our professional rota management software has lots of time and money saving options, such as simple recording of sickness, holiday and other absences so calculating the correct rate of pay is quick and easy. Other efficiency features include accurate management of flexible and minimum hours and multiple pay rates.

If you have any questions about choosing the most suitable easyLog software for your business, talk to one of our team on 01892 834406 or request a callback using the form on this page.

Feb

2022

Get immunity from Covid-related staff absences with flexible rota software

After more than two years of Covid-19, we are now entering a new phase of learning to live with it – thanks largely to a successful vaccination programme. But while it’s undoubtedly good news that restrictions are gradually being lifted throughout the UK, the virus still has plenty of potential to cause havoc, with staff absences due to infection and self-isolation proving particularly frustrating for employers.

This means sudden and unexpected gaps in the rota, often combined with a reduced pool of employees available to fill them. Then there are the increased complications in calculating pay.

Make last minute changes to the rota from anywhere

A professional rota management system can’t conjure up staff from nowhere but it can save you time and unnecessary stress by helping you deal with absences as they arise, simply and efficiently. And, unlike a paper or spreadsheet-based staff allocation system, easyLog’s purpose-built software is available in a browser-based format so you can create and adjust your staff rosters anywhere with access to the internet, up to the very last minute.

You can also choose useful additional features such as allocating staff according to a budget and enabling them to view their hours and submit expense and holiday requests via an app on their phone.

Rota software: so much more than a spreadsheet

Some of the benefits of our browser-based rota software include:

Instant information on potential gaps in the rota, such as staff running late, leaving too early or not appearing for a shift – with alarms automatically emailed to key personnel
Rotas can be created quickly and easily using standard shift times selected from a dropdown menu or on an ad-hoc basis
A definable repeating pattern, for example weekly or two weekly, can be set per employee if staff work regular shifts
Staff can be assigned a standard shift, modified standard shift or a manually-entered period
Multiple shift times and specific clients can be allocated on an individual day
The rota can be displayed for all staff or by work group, showing all the shifts allocated to employees in more than one work group
Options for managing flexible hours such as definable start and end times and monitoring minimum hours within a defined period
Simple recording of sickness, holiday and other absences for accurate payroll management
Range of reports covering payroll, holiday, sickness, punctuality and other essential staff management matters

Calculating the correct pay is easy

Covid absences don’t just complicate the rota – working out correct rates of pay can also be a challenge. Isolation sick pay and staff who work variable roles, rates and/or shifts are just two of the issues that will make the payroll manager’s job even harder.

easylog software can manage multiple pay rates, so calculating the correct rate of pay is simple. A shift analysis report, for example, automatically calculates an employee’s average pay per hour across any period, which can be used to determine the average hourly rate.

easyLog also offers a variety of low-cost staff attendance recording apps that work seamlessly with our rota software. The attendance records are automatically compared against shift times to produce a pay analysis report, while an authorisation procedure provides the option to pay, part pay or disallow a period if there is a discrepancy.

Find out more

For more information on our browser-based rota and payroll reporting software, including customisation request, please contact us. Alternatively visit our staff scheduling web pages.

Feb

2015

easyLog’s staff scheduling software factors in the Bradford Factor

The Bradford Factor is a simple formula to help manage short term sick absences and determine when these have become excessive. Named after the University of Bradford Management School, where much of the original absenteeism research was conducted, the calculation was initially associated more with the public sector and very large corporations.

The Bradford Factor (B) formula is:

number of occasions sick (S) x number of occasions sick (S) x total number of days absent (D)

Using this formula an employee taking several single days of absence will generate a larger points score than a member of staff who has one extended period of illness within the same timescale. Although the calculation should always be viewed on a case-by-case basis, the implication is that the higher the points score the more prone the worker may be to casual absence.

In today’s changed economic climate, frequent short-term sick absences have become a significant cause for concern across all sizes of business – and use of the Bradford Factor has spread accordingly.

In response to this easyLog has implemented a Bradford Factor report into its market-leading e-Log+S staff scheduling software. The report can be run for any range of staff across any period of time and be introduced into a regular personnel review meeting or run on an ad hoc basis when concerns may arise about a specific employee’s attendance record.

The Bradford Factor is just one element in a range of employee reporting tools included as standard within the e-Log+ staff scheduling software – functionality designed to present managers with the information they need to run their workforce most efficiently. You can find out more about using the Bradford Factor and easyLog’s staff scheduling software to monitor patterns of employee absenteeism by watching our latest video – Absenteeism management from your staff rota.

Phone us now on 01892 834406 or request a callback