New investment helps protect staff from covid infection

Stairways Midlands has invested in new technology to help keep colleagues safe during the Covid pandemic while improving efficiency at the same time.

A new time and attendance system, from Actin Time, has been deployed across all three sites. It has the added functionality of checking an employee’s temperature each time they clock in to ensure it is not above 37.8C – a key symptom of coronavirus to look out for.

It uses facial recognition to both clock-in a person for their shift and measure their temperature at the same time. If the temperature is too high, they cannot immediately start work and must go for a secondary check as a precaution.

The Actin Time Complete Workforce Suite links directly to the company’s payroll system to streamline payments to staff and further aid financial management.

Nikki Bowen, Financial Controller for the Stairways Group, said: “This is a win-win for us in terms of safeguarding and improving financial management.

“We cannot function without a healthy and happy workforce. This is an additional measure we have invested in to help safeguard all employees and ensue records of their work patterns are as accurate and up-to-date as possible.

“In addition, the improved reporting will enable management decisions to be made more quickly from a better-informed standpoint.”

At the same time, Stairways Midlands has been consulting with its 113 employees on moving everyone to monthly payments rather than a split between weekly and monthly payroll runs – something which has been met positively by staff.

Karen Wood, Joint Managing Director, said: “Our colleagues, as always, have come up trumps and been really helpful in providing feedback, engaging with the process and embracing change.

“We hope these two measures will help us improve efficiency further which, of course, is good both for the business and for customers.”