Improving Time & Attendance for  Small Business Teams - In Depth

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Project: PS Time App

Role: Lead Product Designer

Owned: UX Strategy, User Research, Stakeholder Alignment, Service Design, Concept & Interaction Design, Usability & Beta Testing, Iteration

Outcome: We launched a purpose-built time tracking app that streamlined punch workflows, reduced payroll errors, and replaced fragmented third-party systems with a unified, user-friendly experience.

Collaboration: Sr. Product Manager, Sr. Product Designer, Platform Experts, FE & BE Engineering Team, Solution Architect, C-Suite Business Stakeholders

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Summary

The PS Time initiative focused on improving the time-tracking experience for both worksite employees and client administrators. The existing system was fragmented, unintuitive, and error-prone, resulting in poor engagement and costly manual corrections. Through rigorous research and strategic planning, the team defined a future-state vision and iterative MVP scope to deliver a more seamless, intuitive, and trustworthy experience.

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Key Metrics & ROI

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🧭 The Challenge

Worksite employees, such as restaurant and retail staff, often struggled with inconsistent or error-prone timesheet punch processes. This resulted in frequent payroll corrections and limited visibility into what caused errors. Our goal was to replace fragmented third-party systems with a unified app that delivered a more reliable and intuitive time-tracking experience directly connected to payroll.

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Key challenges:

Low employee engagement

• Many users found the existing tools non-intuitive, particularly during onboarding or login. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) added unnecessary friction to frequent, time-sensitive actions like clocking in.

Too many systems

• Employees had to juggle multiple platforms (e.g., one for clocking in, another for viewing paystubs, another for scheduling), which often led to confusion and disengagement.

Poor integration between systems

• Technical issues like buggy geofences, mismatched PTO balances, and limited pay rate flexibility led to low confidence and system workarounds.

Time theft and buddy punching

• A lack of built-in accountability features resulted in dishonest behavior that cost businesses time and money.

Admin burden from employee errors

• Mistakes like missed or incorrect punches created downstream administrative overhead, with payroll managers often forced to investigate and correct issues manually.

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We needed to improve clarity and confidence for employees while reducing back-office burden for admins.

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🧩 Process

1. User Research

We kicked off the project by partnering with Product, Engineering, and Customer Support to define known issues and gather early priorities. These conversations surfaced high-impact gaps that shaped our research plan.

Our research goal was to validate the current state of the Time & Attendance (T&A) experience, identify key user pain points, and align on high-impact opportunities for improving usability and system integration. The research focused on both our customers (client admins) and their end-users (workers), spanning various industries and business sizes.

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Research Methods & Insights

Client Interviews

• 7 In-depth Interviews with client administrators across education, healthcare, retail, construction, and nonprofit sectors
  
  
• Represented 361 employees (Employees) across a range of Tiers and Time systems (Prism, Kronos, ExakTime)
  
  
• Selected for diversity in Net Promoter Score (NPS), size, and technology usage
  
  
• Explored both positive and negative experiences to surface actionable insights

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💥 Pain Points

• Overly Complex Workflows: Too many steps, clicks, and icons for simple actions like time entry and timesheet approvals.
  
  
• Poor First-Time Experience: 1 in 3 users struggle with initial login; frequent calls for admin assistance.
  
  
• Disjointed Systems: Employees juggle multiple apps for paystubs, time entry, and schedules.
  
  
• Admin Burden: Missed punches, manual corrections, and out-of-system communications (texts/emails) create constant overhead.
  
  
• Lack of Data Trust: Discrepancies in PTO, time records, and employee data due to weak system integrations.
  
  

🙋‍♀️ User Needs

• Simplified, Intuitive Interfaces: “Google Calendar easy” editing, fewer steps, clearer navigation.
  
  
• Mobile-First Design: Support across web, kiosk, and mobile with fallback options.
  
  
• Autonomy & Accountability: Admins want visibility and control; employees want to punch in easily and accurately.
  
  
• Smart Safeguards: Audit logs for geofence issues and alternative biometrics to reduce buddy punching.
  
  
• Workflow-Driven Clarity: Embedded prompts, status visibility, and approvals that "stand out like a big red button."

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Quotes that capture the expereince:

"Make editing [timesheets] easy, like Google calendar easy.”

“The biggest problem is employees not doing it. ‘Can you clock me out, I left.’”

“Not being honest with the company - perpetuates across the company. It creates a culture of dishonesty.” (referring to buddy punching)

"Our needs are really limited, let's make it as easy as possible so that all of us can spend our time doing the thing that our organization is actually here to do."

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2. Strategy & Blueprint

The PS Time initiative would focused on reimagining the time and attendance experience to address long-standing inefficiencies and usability challenges across the ProService platform. The team worked to define a strategic foundation that would simplify workflows, improve engagement, and ensure better data quality from the first touchpoint: time entry.

This phase of the project focused on identifying root causes of administrative pain, envisioning an ideal user experience, and outlining a clear path to Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

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Methods

• Problem Framing & Root Cause Analysis: Broke down admin overhead into three key root causes: low employee engagement, poor data integrations, and error-prone timekeeping

• Behavior Design Strategy: Identified key leverage points to drive employee engagement and reduce dependency on admins

• Vision Mapping: Created a future-state journey anchored in effortless time capture, reliable data, and intelligent automation

• MVP Definition: Scoped a feasible and high-impact beta launch focused on mobile-first punching, biometric validation, and automated reminders

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Service Blueprinting

With internal SMEs from the ProService Time Team, we completed a service blueprint to visually represent the steps involved in our current time and attendance service, both from the customer's perspective (frontstage) and the organization's perspective (backstage).

Across each step in the workflow, pain points were noted in red and opportunities in gold.

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Root Cause Analysis

🔍 Root Cause 1: Low Employee Engagement

• Poor onboarding experience (login, MFA, system fragmentation)
• Cumbersome and multi-step daily workflows
• Admins pulled in to fix simple mistakes

Strategic Response:

• Make punching seamless and fast
• Prioritize mobile usability
• Automate reminders and in-platform prompts to guide behavior

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🔍 Root Cause 2: Data Reliability Issues

• Geofencing bugs blocking punches
• PTO, pay rates, and user attributes mismatched between systems

Strategic Response:

• Create a single source of truth with fail-safe punching
• Allow offline punching with audit trail (no hard blocks)
• Give employees transparency into their own data

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🔍 Root Cause 3: Admin Burden from Punch Errors & Dishonesty

• Missed punches, buddy punching, and workaround culture
• Payroll admins required to clean up data before processing

Strategic Response:

• Empower employees to self-correct clear errors
• Introduce simple biometric options (e.g., facial recognition with geolocation)
• Reduce reliance on admins as gatekeepers for basic actions

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Key product pillars for success

The team identified key objectives for success: ease of use, mobile-first access, biometric trust signals, and admin autonomy.

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Strategic Vision

A future where time data flows cleanly and accurately from employees to payroll processing without manual intervention:

As an admin, I want employees to consistently clock in/out with the right context, so I don’t have to second guess timesheet accuracy. Ideally, I’d never need to manually audit anything.

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🗺 Story Mapping

To make sense of the system-wide friction, we mapped employee and admin journeys across three device contexts: personal mobile, shared kiosk, and manager override. This cross-functional mapping included:

• User actions across the punch-in/out lifecycle
• Trigger points for confusion or errors
• Administrative dependencies created by punch mistakes

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This helped us align the team around key questions like:

• What information do users need before they punch?
• How do job-based rules (e.g., schedules, geofencing) affect the flow?
• Where can we build in transparency instead of admin follow-up?

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MVP & Beta Strategy

Initial Scope Includes:

• Redesign of punch flow for mobile and web
• Admin monitoring of geolocation exceptions (not blocking)
• Biometric buddy-punch prevention
• Automated, data-based reminder system

Strategic Benefits:

• Improves employee autonomy and data accuracy
• Reduces support overhead for admins
• Enables future features (scheduling, notifications, analytics) through structured data flow
• Establishes frontend ownership for scalable innovation

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3. Wireframes & Interaction Design

Based on our research, I led the exploration of early concepts for:

• Job switch selection
• Clock in/out confirmation
• Biometrics and facial recognition
• Shift review screens

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Our goal was to balance flexibility (supporting multiple roles, edits, etc.) with simplicity. For example:

• Punch flow moved to a more linear sequence, reducing cognitive load.
• Visuals clarified punch confirmation, reducing repeat punches.
• Inactive options were visually downplayed to help users focus.

We tested multiple interaction patterns like tabs, toggles, vertical stacks. Testing found that clear labels paired with minimal steps consistently improved usability.

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4. Usability Testing Methodology

We conducted moderated 1:1 usability tests with 10 participants across two cohorts:

• 5 using personal devices in industries like hospitality and home care
• 5 using shared devices in quick-service restaurants and retail settings

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Each participant was asked to:

• Clock in/out with standard and non-standard shifts
• Change jobs mid-shift
• Review/edit punches when mistakes occurred

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We learned:

• Terminology like "job" vs. "role" varied across clients and required contextual help
• Users needed reassurance that their punch was recorded—visual and text confirmations helped
• In shared kiosk settings, users benefited from persistent but subtle sign-out reminders

We synthesized feedback in a Lucid whiteboard, tagged themes, and adjusted wireframes iteratively based on findings.

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Example iIteration from Client User Tests:

Reduce clock-in steps

Clients reflected that the clock-in flow didn’t feel efficient enough. This moment needed to be secure without any extra steps. Other employees could be waiting for their turn at the device.

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Experience Iterations

I removed extra steps by placing the action decisions first and combining steps to find a profile behind the scenes.

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Beta Test Quotes that captured the overall sentiment:

“I liked that it was straight forward and not too much going on. Straight to clock in and out.”

“I appreciated the ease of use and convenience of the app.”

“My employee details would be nice. I did like how simple and clean it was.”

"...t's good, helps prevent time fraud so and so clocking in for their friends or family BUT employees may not appreciate it as they do not understand that pictures are not stored. I can foresee that cause a little pushback but not much."

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Outcome

✅ Validated Pain Points

• Confirmed that complexity, login friction, and scattered systems reduce employee compliance and burden admins with low-value tasks.
• Discovered admins were spending time fixing missed punches, chasing approvals, and resolving integration errors (PTO mismatches, pay rate issues).

✅ Defined Strategic Opportunities

• Drive employee autonomy through seamless, mobile-friendly interactions.
• Enable admins to monitor exceptions rather than manually fix errors.
• Design with behavioral nudges (reminders, in-flow correction) to reduce support calls and human error.

✅ Built a Foundation for Scalable Impact

• Established a data-first workflow that feeds reliable, structured inputs into downstream payroll systems.
• Created a modular framework for future features like scheduling, forecasting, and performance-based staffing.

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By centering on mobile-first simplicity, PS Time cut setup time by 83 % and set the stage for scalable, AI-powered attendance management.

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My Role

As the design lead, I:

• Drove early discovery and stakeholder alignment
• Facilitated service mapping and workflow reviews
• Created low- and high-fidelity prototypes for both personal and shared device use cases
• Led usability testing and synthesized feedback into actionable design changes

This project showcased the impact of user-centered design on even the most foundational workflows and opened the door for smarter time management tools going forward.

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