 |
CLEAN NZ SHOW 2007 Managing employees more effectively with eziTracker™ |
 |
|
 |
| |
 |
|
The month of March saw Panztel reinforce their growing reputation in Europe at the UK Cleaning Show. Despite humble roots in the Bay of Plenty, Panztel have become a global force in electronic monitoring and data capture and are the market leader in the UK cleaning industry.
More and more local authorities and businesses in the United Kingdom are turning to Panztel to meet their remote workforce management needs.
This was especially evident in March when Panztel secured over $1M in new contracts in the UK including Manchester City Council, one of the largest cities in Britain.
Thrilled Panztel Managing Director, Jonathan Hudson, said “It is especially encouraging that these authorities are signing long term (3-5) year deals, guaranteeing our growth in the UK market”. |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Managing employees efficiently and effectively are keys to the success of businesses built on labour, such as the cleaning industry. Panztel has been an active within the New Zealand cleaning industry for 9 years in staff time management, including scheduling, budgeting, and payroll.
Recognising the need for cleaning companies to keep track of their mobile workers, Panztel's founder Jonathan Hudson talked with two of NZ's largest cleaning companies, who repeatedly stressed their need for a system that tracked staff hours, increased accountability, and easily integrated into existing operations.
"It was obvious there was a need to manage employees better" said Jonathan, and birthed from this research was eziTracker; a telephone based timesheet service.
Core to Panztel's success is the ease of use of the eziTracker service for employees. Arriving at a client's site, staff use a site phone to call eziTracker toll-free, entering their personal code to log in. Upon departing, they again call eziTracker to log out. The information captured is held in a hosted database and is supplied to the cleaning company in the formats required.
Going hand in hand is eziTrackerNet, an internet based service, allowing management to view staff activity online at any time, including how many staff are at each site, actual hours spent per site and/or per employee, budget or scheduled hours, and variance in hours and dollar terms.
eziTracker has interfaces into payroll software packages, streamlining the timesheet process into one easy flowing system, saving the smaller cleaning operations precious time spent consolidating hours, scheduling and managing payroll. For the larger operations, it allows greater control of payroll, approvals and cost management.
eziTracker is in operation throughout NZ and Australia. Within the UK and France where OHS regulations and laws demand a higher level of monitoring for remote workers, Loneworker companion offers live time tracking relative to work schedules. |
|
Manchester City Council opt for the ezi way to manage their cleaning staff... |
Manchester City Council is one of the largest local authorities in the UK made up of thirty-two wards and employing nearly 19,000 staff across the council. Around 250 of these staff are lone workers in the Building Cleaning Services department whose role is to clean a variety of council buildings including schools and offices working alone or in pairs, and unsupervised.
Processing payroll from paper time sheets is time consuming and was overloading the administration team at the Building Cleaning Services department of Manchester City Council (MCC). They are not the only council to face this problem, nor are they the only authority to use eziTracker as a solution to their problem, with more than twenty councils and government agencies using eziTracker already.
MCC had similar requirements to found in privately owned cleaning companies they needed a simple solution to their administration problem that could be implemented quickly and easily, and would be readily accepted by the trades' unions eziTracker fitted the bill perfectly.
Administration Officer, Deniece Wadsworth, had this to say about the project, “The implementation was phased in over a number of months to ensure all parties had time to adjust to the new service, the results have been very positive.”
One major surprise for Deniece and the authority were the discrepancies between the 'actual hours' recorded by eziTracker and the budgeted hours. Because eziTracker records how long employees worked, where they were and if they left the premises safely eziTrackerNET, Panztel's web browser tool, graphically highlighted those staff who were not meeting their scheduled requirements.
“Previously we had no way of knowing if staff did not turn up or leave the sites early this is no longer the case. We are now in full control of our remote workforce back in the office the mountains of paper no longer exist, the process to check time sheets electronically is much simplified and input to payroll is no longer a huge administration task.
Our cleaning staff are focused on using eziTracker. Now they make sure they are at work for the required period and log in and out from eziTracker to ensure they get paid correctly!”
Due to the success of the project Manchester City Council has also outlined plans to roll out eziTracker to all remote staff full-time, part time and seasonal. |
|
|
 |
Alerts for Staffing Levels
Staffing Alerts is a new feature which notifies operational managers when fewer than the prescribed number of staff are in attendance at a client site or job. Alerts are sent if nobody has arrived at the location by the scheduled start time, as well as each time an employee logs in if the minimum staffing level has not been achieved.
Code Box
Code Box allows employees to record their attendance at sites where a landline phone is not available. This small, inexpensive electronic device generates an 8 digit validation number on a frequently changing cycle. Permanently located at the site, employees use their mobile phone to text the validation number to eziTracker.
Report History
Sometimes our customers need to access reports that have already been issued.
Reports that are generated and sent by email can also be accessed through eziTrackerNet. This enables users to view any previously generated report online and save it to the user’s computer directly, or to re-send it if there was any problem with the user’s email service. This feature is available under the Tools tab, and displays reports for the current week.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
Schedule Matching Feature
The new schedule matching feature simplifies the process of checking that jobs have been performed in line with the schedule (budget).
Schedules can be created either from eziTracker screens or imported from a spreadsheet or scheduling system. Each job has its own tolerance for both the start and finish times as well as a duration and date/time and site details.
As employees clock in and out eziTracker automatically attempts to match the actual visit times with the schedule. The tolerances from the schedule are used to identify close matches to the schedule since in the real world visits never conform fully to the schedule.
A new matching screen shows (for a site or an employee) all jobs in a selected time period with an indicator of whether they match the schedule. You can filter to only look at missed or other problem jobs. The screen uses the latest web technology to automatically display real time information.
The matching feature is linked to the alerting engine so that managers can receive email or SMS alerts of problems. Finally, a new set of reports provides a convenient method of reviewing jobs and focussing on problem sites or cleaners.
Schedule matching is planned for release in mid 2007. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Panztel's eziTracker service has become a benchmark in the Australasian cleaning industry for electronic staff monitoring and OCS were one of the first New Zealand companies to adopt the innovative service.
“(eziTracker) gives us a means to effectively monitor our labour. Our business is “job” based and each job has set amount of budgeted labour hours and dollars. eziTracker clearly shows us our budgeted labour hours and costs against actual hours and also against payable hours. |
|
This is not only essential for determining the profitability of our Jobs but it also helps us to identify areas where we may have quality issues so that these can be addressed.” Says Claire Neate, Technical Projects Manager at OCS.
“We have the eziTracker Alerts system in use in some areas and it has proven invaluable. Most of our work is done overnight and the Alerts system ensures our Managers are notified of any no shows, enabling us to respond pro-actively to provide a better level of service to our Clients.”
This integration from budget through to payroll explains why OCS plan to have all of their 3000+ staff using eziTracker. For more information visit www.ocs.co.nz |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
