There’s a big difference between recording time as it happens and trying to remember it later.

🧠 Research in cognitive psychology shows that memory for daily activities decays rapidly:

📄A study by Barclay & Smith (1988) on retrospective time recall found that within just 48 hours, the accuracy of self-reported start and finish times fell by 20–30%.

📄 Conway et al. (1992) also found that the more routine an event, the faster the memory fades, because the brain encodes it as “non-distinct.”

📄Zakay & Block (1997) showed that when people recall work duration after the fact, they tend to round to familiar intervals (e.g. 8:00 am instead of 8:07 am), which accumulates over time as “time creep.”

When you capture time and attendance in real time, you’re not just ticking a box; you’re getting accuracy, compliance, and control all in one.

✅ Accuracy: No more “I think I started at 8…” or rounding up hours. Real-time capture gives you the actual start and finish times, not best guesses.

✅ Compliance: Real-time records help you stay audit-ready and meet your obligations under NZ’s Employment Law.

✅ Visibility: Managers can instantly see who’s on site, who’s running late, and who’s on break, instead of finding out at the end of the week or worse, after the pay has been run.

✅ Efficiency: Payroll becomes faster and cleaner. No more chasing timesheets or fixing mistakes from “after-the-fact” entries.

✅ Fairness: Digital systems with PINs, GPS, or photo verification prevent buddy punching and protect both employers and employees.

Even a few minutes of “time creep” a day can add up to hundreds of dollars per employee per year.

Real-time capture stops that.

Digital Time and Attendance systems like MyTimesheets.co.nz make it simple, fast, and accurate, every time.

#TimeTracking #Payroll #NZBusiness #MyTimesheets #WorkforceManagement #KiwiSME #TimeCreep #DigitalTransformation #HRTech #Compliance