Everyone working in construction knows that the industry is facing an unprecedented worker shortage. Nearly 250,000 positions are expected to be filled this year, up 3.2% from a year ago, and that’s on top of the current employment of 7.9 million, according to the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). The need to hire more workers is putting financial strain on many construction companies. Not only does it cost money to recruit and hire workers, but companies must pay higher wages to entice workers from other industries as well as competing businesses.
According to AGC, construction pay levels climbed in February at a faster pace than in the overall private sector for the sixth-straight month. Average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers in construction rose by 6.1%, from $31.63 in February 2022 to $33.57 in February 2023. Workers in construction now earn an average of 18.1% more per hour than in the overall private sector.
With labor costs rising, construction companies need to make sure they’re saving money where they can. A good time tracking system, like ExakTime’s GPS Time Tracking App, can make sure everyone is working as efficiently as possible, cutting costs while improving productivity. Check out our cost savings calculator to see just how much you can save.
How Bad Time Tracking Costs You Money
When non-exempt employees are paid by the hour, it’s essential to track each minute they work. Not only must employers adhere to the Fair Labor Standards Act and pay non-exempt workers minimum wage and overtime for compliance, but they need to watch for time card mistakes, errors and padding.
Paper time cards open the door to error. Numbers can get fudged and handwriting can get smudged or simply be completely illegible. A web-based time tracking system takes out this margin of error, thus essentially paying for itself in the first month.
Here’s an example:
- Your employee, Bob, earns $25 an hour or $.42 per minute. Bob doesn’t always remember exactly when he got to work and when he left, so his time card is off by 20 minutes every day.
- Twenty minutes at $.42 means you’re paying Bob $8.40 for work he isn’t actually doing.
- While one day might not seem like much, if the padding continues for a week, that’s $42, a month equals $168 and a year adds up to $2,016.
Now, consider you have 10 employees who are making the same errors on their time sheets as Bob. The costs now go up exponentially. And those numbers don’t account for the cost of processing payroll.
Download ExakTime’s ROI Infographic to learn more.
A web-based time tracking system can eliminate extra costs and expenses associated with time card errors. Starting at $9 per employee per month, ExakTime can pay for itself in just one month. That means even if Bob only mistakenly pads his paper time card twice a month, ExakTime is still more economical. Plus, ExakTime offers added benefits that keep your crews working as efficiently as possible. If you’re curious as to how much ExakTime can save you, check out our ROI savings calculator to see for yourself. Using our system, you can save big on improvement projects by ensuring your team is working efficiently and properly tracking hours so you can stay on budget.
Features That Manage Workers in the Field
ExakTime does more for worker management than track time. It offers additional features that give managers better insight about what’s happening in the field, even when you can’t be at every jobsite.
- Equipment Tracking: Between gas, repairs and complete replacements, the cost to keep your equipment in good working order can be huge. Equipment tracking lets companies track both crews and equipment use from any mobile device. This data provides valuable insight to how much a piece of equipment is being used, allowing contractors to stay ahead of maintenance and other costs.
- Scheduling: Managing construction sites means staying on top of many moving pieces. ExakTime’s Scheduler feature lets companies schedule worker shifts and tasks in advance, so they don’t have to wonder about what’s happening at a remote job site. ExakTime Mobile gives you a one-screen snapshot of any job site with a live feed of clock-in and clock-out activity, a running labor budget, Field Notes, weather and more. When workers are scheduled in advance, they can get to work right away at the correct job site, eliminating the time it would normally take to shuffle workers from site to site each morning.
- Field Notes: How many times have you been in the field, without a connection, and needed to make a note about ordering supplies, checking permits or adding another worker, only to forget when you got back to the office? Field Notes lets workers or supervisors in the field record text, audio or photo updates and then send them to the cloud with one click when they have a connection. Notes appear on the dashboard of our cloud software and are also attached to job sites in your system, so that they never get lost and remain part of your labor record. The efficiency Field Notes provides directly relates to improved productivity.
- Mobile Compliance: ExakTime offers instant access to a digital “paper trail”, as well as a history of every punch-out that includes employee responses to compliance-related questions every single time they finish a shift. Workers can review digital time cards and approve them with a signature. You can also prompt employees to sign off on compliance-related questions regarding breaks and injuries at clock-out. This information protects your business from audits, lawsuits and fines because you’ll have digital proof of an employee checking all compliance boxes.
At less than $10 per employee per month, investing in ExakTime is a smart business move. For many customers, it more than pays for itself and makes a positive financial impact almost immediately. Don’t keep paying for time employees aren’t working. Speak with an expert about how you can save time and money with the construction and field industry’s trusted time tracking solution. Or, if you’re curious, check out our savings investment calculator to see how much our system can help you save.
