PRESS RELEASE: Employers Use Time Tracking App To Avoid Wage Theft Accusations

In an attempt to fight unpaid overtime hours, Australia has officially joined the ranks of countries encouraging time tracking laws at work. And given the current global circumstances of COVID-19 with many employers mandating work-from-home orders, the timing couldn’t be better. Now’s the time to say goodbye to bundy clocks and get ready for a post-coronavirus world.

A decision of the Fair Work Commission (FWC) effective March 1, 2020, introduced a new method for employers covered by twenty-two awards (https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/sites/awardsmodernfouryr/am201613-schedule-determinations-120220.pdf) to pay annualised wages rather than use complex overtime and penalty rates–but only if the employers keep track of their employees’ start and finish times, as well as unpaid breaks. By law, employers are required to keep these records on file for seven years. It’s meant to help fight worker exploitation by making things like underpayment and wage theft much more difficult.

It should be noted that since the Fair Work Act of 2009, all employers have been required to track any overtime hours that their employees work throughout the week.

Jacquie Seemann, an employment law partner with Thomson Geer in Sydney, says that tracking time is useful for a number of compliance reasons. Even for those employers who choose not to use the new optional provisions in the awards, there are other relevant obligations, like the Fair Work Act of 2009 mentioned above. And many employers also use contractual arrangements to pay annual salary packages, and these also often require actual hours worked to be audited.

WORKING FROM HOME: A BETTER WORK-LIFE BALANCE?
Compliance, while very important, is one piece of this post-coronavirus puzzle. The other is the fact that both employers and employees have now seen first-hand just how easy it is to do their job from home.

“Employees realize that flexibility is required so that employers and employees alike can maintain a livelihood, and with both having tasted from the cup of reform, it’s not going back in the cupboard,” writes Morry Bailes for InDaily (https://indaily.com.au/opinion/2020/05/06/existing-fair-work-act-must-become-a-coronavirus-casualty/).

It makes sense, then, that most Australians would still opt for a work-from-home gig—58% of people surveyed say they’d leave their current in-office job for a work-from-home position (https://www.hcamag.com/au/specialisation/employee-engagement/is-all-remote-the-future-of-work/216566), solidifying that the work-from-home trend is here to stay.

Obvious perks of working from home include more free time thanks to cutting out a daily commute, as well as more autonomy to work when and how they do so best.

But with those benefits also come big risks. Remote employees, who often find it hard to separate their work and personal lives, are much more likely to work unpaid overtime hours. Ironically, this is the very thing Australia’s Fair Work Commission sets out to counter. Just have a look at this: Up to 48% of telecommuters surveyed often end up working longer hours (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-005X.00063) than they would in an office.

If unpaid overtime hours were an issue already in the office world, imagine how this scenario could play out for telecommuters. Bundy clocks—no matter how advanced they’ve gotten—are a thing of the past. As more employees shift to remote and flexible working, there’s simply no place for a complete biometric set-up or fingerprint scanning tool. Now it’s up to employers to think bigger and adapt to the global trend of working from home.

A CHANCE FOR BETTER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Yves Hiernaux, CEO of BeeBole Timesheet (https://beebole.com/), a leading time tracking solution offered worldwide, has worked with companies from various countries that have passed and implemented time tracking legislation (https://beebole.com/blog/european-working-time-directive/).

“Of course, time tracking goes much deeper than simply abiding by the law. Being proactive and finding a time tracking solution is just the first step,” he said.

Putting a flexible time tracking system in place is key to not only following through with Australia’s Fair Work Commission’s latest ruling, but also in pivoting in a post-coronavirus world where flexible working conditions have become the new norm.

“The next step is to dive into the true benefit that comes with a powerful time tracking and project management tool,” Hiernaux said. “This is not about businesses bringing back an old-fashioned clock-in, clock-out tool, but rather using the time tracking information to make smarter business decisions and unlocking business intelligence.”

TIME TRACKING ISN’T JUST COMPLIANT—IT’S THE WAY OF THE FUTURE
“Time tracking goes beyond counting the number of hours worked each day, which is honestly not a very useful number on its own,” Hiernaux said. According to him, many of BeeBole Timesheet’s clients use their data to highlight employee burnout and budget-sucking projects and to ensure resources are distributed adequately. This is the type of business intelligence that can make a real difference in day-to-day numbers and overall performance.

Time will tell if Australian businesses fully adopt these new provisions and how it will play out, but one thing’s for certain: Bundy clocks are a thing of the past for a world headed towards more remote and flexible working conditions.

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BeeBole Timesheet was founded in 2008 when founders Yves Hiernaux and Mic Cvilic realized there was a need for a cloud-based HR tool for small and medium sized businesses. BeeBole believes in easy time tracking for everyone, everywhere. BeeBole Timesheet is now used by more than 1,000 customers spanning 63 countries, including companies like Zurich and Michelin, and was listed as one of the Top 10 Workforce Management Solutions by HR Tech Outlook.