Job creation in engineering firm

Engineering firm RWO Associates has successfully secured several new contracts over the last three months, stimulating job creation in the area.

The six-figure order value includes a civil and structural engineering groundwork contract for a 1,500 building housing development across the north of England.

It also includes a commercial storage unit and car park in the Midlands, a multimillion-pound industrial development in Yorkshire and a new data centre on the outskirts of London.

RWO Associates has been heavily involved in the 5G roll-out, and should support more than 300 5G sites over the next two years.

The company’s 19-strong workforce will be expanded later in the year through several high-level hirings.

Managing director Ross Oakley said: “It’s been a challenging time, so we have been careful to ensure that we can respond to our customers’ evolving priorities as they have adapted to the changes around them.

“We are continuing to invest to support ambitious growth, ensuring that we are well-placed to provide current and future customers with the top-class support they will need as things return to some sense of normality and projects continue to ramp-up.

“Indeed, we are very much looking forward to progressing further regional and national projects over the next 24 months with like-minded customers and partners.”

A major increase in staff numbers can cause unforeseen problems for staff performing HR, admin and accounts job roles if the company’s method of recording time worked has not been updated.

For example, it is very easy for staff to fill in paper timesheets incorrectly. Sometimes this can be deliberate time fraud, but sometimes it is just new staff getting confused, or people forgetting to fill in their timesheets until a week later, by which time they’ve forgotten their exact shift details and are likely to just fudge it.

Even if the details are all correct, most paper timesheets must then be manually transferred to a database (usually an Excel spreadsheet) before being sent to payroll software.

There are many opportunities for human error to kick in during this time-consuming process – e.g. making an unrecognised typo in entering, or misreading employee’s handwriting (1 or 7? O or 0 or D?).

Incorrect data can also foul up HR tasks too, making it much more difficult to spot issues like adherence to the Working Time Directive or someone taking three 30 minute breaks plus lunch.

At Time and Attendance North East, we offer specialised attendance management software which can work either with smartcards or with biometrics.

Our smartcards are about the size of a credit card and fit nicely into most wallets. The Radio Frequency technology means that you don’t need to physically swipe the cards, just hold them up near the reader terminal. This reduces wear and tear.

For the ultimate deterrent against time theft, we can provide a a fingerprint reader. Smartcards can be lost, or swapped with colleagues to input fake times. This isn’t the case with your fingers!

Get in touch for more information.