CyberShift Unveils Results of Absence Management Survey

PARSIPPANY, NJ--(Marketwire - October 29, 2009) - CyberShift, a global provider of workforce management and expense management software and services, today released the results from its 2009 CyberShift Trendline Survey, which explored the relationship between workforce management solutions and the important issues of absence management, fatigue management and FMLA compliance.

Whether scheduled or unscheduled, employee absences undoubtedly cost money and impact customer satisfaction, sales, production, employee morale, safety and compliance. Along with being able to prepare for the unexpected, companies also need to account for employee-related short and long-term scheduled absences such as vacation time, jury duty, military leave and prescheduled medical and professional appointments. By ensuring the necessary resources are available when needed to minimize disruptions caused by absence levels, quality of service can be maintained for optimal business performance.

In its recent survey of nearly 1,200 American Payroll Association (APA) members, CyberShift examined how employers monitor scheduled and unscheduled employee absences. The majority of respondents (62%) track absences using a Web- or PC-based solution with 73% indicating that solution is part of their commercially available time and attendance software. Thirty-eight percent of respondents still use manual/spreadsheets for absence monitoring; the responsibility for those spreadsheets is split between payroll (56%) and managers (44%).

In addition, 76 percent of respondents estimated that up to 10% of their organizations' absences were unauthorized. Typically, these unapproved absences are tracked at a manager's discretion (53%), while another 25% of respondents do so by monitoring it as unpaid time. According to survey respondents, authorized absences -- such as disability, maternity/paternity leave, sabbaticals, sick time and vacation time -- account for a higher percentage of payroll-related costs. For example, a little more than 20% of respondents listed sick time as accounting for more than 25% of all payroll costs, while nearly 60% said that vacation time accounts for more than 25% of payroll costs.

"With an integrated absence management system in place to automate time-off reporting, companies can account for authorized absences when work is being scheduled and provide visibility into unauthorized absences. The best systems manage, analyze and report absenteeism according to organizational policies, enabling a proactive approach to workload balancing," stated Morné P. Swart, CyberShift's vice president of Product Management and a frequent presenter on the topic of absence management.

In addition to absence monitoring, the survey found that, when it comes to tracking employees' time, 38 percent of respondents' companies require all employees to report their time each pay period. The most prevalent method of employee time reporting among surveyed companies was a Web-based solution (35%). Time clocks (32%) and manual/spreadsheets (25%) also were listed as top time reporting methods used by survey respondents.

Of APA members who responded to the Trendline survey, 39.9% work at organizations employing less than 500 people; 16.8% work at organizations with 501 to 1,000 people; 27.5% work at organizations with 1,001 to 5,000 people; 7.4% work at organizations with 5,001 to 10,000 people; and 8.4% work at organizations with more than 10,000 people.

About CyberShift

CyberShift, Inc. is a leading provider of workforce and expense management software and services focused on helping mid-sized to large, complex organizations improve organizational performance and profitability. Through its integrated Workforce Management 3G™ suite, which includes time and attendance, advanced scheduling and reporting and analytics, companies can more effectively plan, manage and deploy their workforces, reduce costs and improve processes across business operations. CyberShift Expense™ automates the processing and facilitates the management of employee business expenses such as travel and entertainment and helps companies improve compliance, enforce expense policies and procedures and increase visibility into operations. Offered in both traditional license fee and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery models, CyberShift's innovative solutions have been awarded U.S. and Canadian patents. CyberShift is the first enterprise-class workforce and expense management solution provider to enable support for the BlackBerry® platform.

To learn how CyberShift's solutions can help your organization, contact CyberShift by calling (877) 274-4381 or visiting us at www.CyberShift.com.