As an employer, it’s important that you’re able to keep track of who’s working and who’s not in your business—especially if your employees are working from home. And in the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, people having to self-isolate and work remotely is becoming more of a reality every day.
As an employer, we know this means you have the added pressure of trying to manage remote working in your business, which is why we’ve worked tirelessly at BrightHQ to bring forward our new Blip release.
Originally due to launch in a few weeks, our new geolocation feature is now available to help you manage your staff’s work hours when you have employees working from home during this challenging time.
Manage your staff in various locations
You’re probably already familiar with Blip. It’s our staff management app that lets your staff clock in and out by scanning a QR code with their phones—and as an employer you’re able to see who’s in, who’s off and who’s on a break, all from your mobile.
But Blip’s new geolocation feature means you can also see exactly where your staff are located, too. This gives you, the employer, an extra level of reassurance when you’re trying to manage your people working in various different places. Here’s how you do it:
Set up a geolocation
Use Blip to create a ‘geolocation’. This is any location you want to set up as a ‘workplace’, whether that’s your office or an employee’s house. You can set up as many geolocations as you want.
Then you use the app to create a ‘geofence’ (a virtual boundary) around that workplace. This lets Blip pick up your employee’s location and remind them to clock in or out, so you can see exactly where your staff have worked and for how long.*
Blip logs all of this information in the cloud, too. Any time you want, you can export the work history for an individual or team and save it as a spreadsheet for your records, so you don’t need to try and record everyone’s hours manually or keep on top of timesheets.
And if you’re already using Blip, keep an eye out—you’ll get an automatic prompt to ask you to update the app to the new geolocation version as soon as soon as we’ve released it.
Scan a QR code
Alternatively, you can still use Blip’s scanning system to record your employees’ work hours. Use the app to generate a QR code (a type of barcode) and print off as many as you like. You give these to your staff to scan when they start and finish work at home, and their hours are recorded in Blip.
How Blip helps you manage staff working from home
Whether your employees are using Blip’s new geolocation feature or its smart QR code scanning system, Blip helps you manage your staff hours in the following ways:
- Track employees from your mobile when they’re working from home.
- View your employees’ locations in an instant.
- Create multiple locations for employees’ houses.*
- Keep an eye on everyone’s working hours.
- Check breaks to make sure staff aren’t taking too much downtime.
- Easily amend incorrect shifts or breaks at the click of a button.
- View a full history of an employee’s work hours and filter the date range easily.
- Export the work history for an individual or team and save it as a spreadsheet for your records.
Get started with Blip geolocation
We’ve put together two easy-to-follow guides for you and your staff, to help you start using Blip’s new geolocation feature as soon as possible:
And if you haven’t already download Blip? It just takes a minute. Head to your app store now to download Blip for iOS or Android.
Got a question about working from home?
Don’t worry, our BrightAdvice team are here to help you understand the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on your business and what you can do as an employer. If you have a question, call one of our employment law experts today on 0800 783 2806.
* Don’t forget, your workplace locations are visible to your whole team in Blip. So make sure you check with your staff that they don’t mind their colleagues seeing their location if they’re working from home.