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Several senior managers have taken voluntary redundancy while others will have to apply for jobs elsewhere in the organisation as Liverpool City Council is culling its top posts. The local authority is fighting a deficit of £1bn due to cuts, and leader Joe Anderson said the council had a “top-heavy, bloated” senior management, of which 48 posts will be axed. Liverpool has the highest concentration of deprived areas of any local authority in England, according to recent research by Experian, and there are fears that Liverpool could suffer the most because of the cuts. If your organisation or company is undergoing restructuring, a Tensor Time and Attendance system is ideal for management as it copes with all hours, shifts and wages issues. Via the WinTA software you can view all time and attendance information for an employee or a single department. The Group Holiday Planner displays a whole year of absences at a time. It allows easy view of incidences of multiple absences, whether in the past or the future, making it an ideal management tool. Absence codes or colours are user definable with separate rules for each.  

Local Government Minister Carl Sargeant said working together was the only way to make enough savings for Gwynedd and Anglesey Councils. Council leaders for both organisations agreed they would try to collaborate to save money amid many service cuts. Mr Sargeant denied the move was because Anglesey council is currently being run under special measures. He said that both sides accepted the need to work more closely together to make savings "while protecting frontline services". Time and attendance software from clocking recording experts Tensor will show management all the information it needs on an employee or a single department in order to make efficiency savings. ‘Only if’ reports can be created with the WinTA software to show, for example, only those who have worked overtime, particular types of absence, illness or just who is on holiday. The software can be set to automatically print out any of the user defined or standard reports on a daily, weekly or even a monthly basis. This is accomplished by using the Timed Report File update program.  

A police officer paid tribute to a petrol forecourt security scheme after the recent arrest of a fuel thief. PC Des Clark, the community safety officer at Milngavie Police Office in Glasgow, disagreed that stealing fuel does not hurt anyone, and said: “Some may think it’s a victimless crime, but this is not the case. It impacts on consumers, retailers and the police, and costs the oil industry millions of pounds.” PC Clark added of the driver arrested after failing to pay for £56 worth of petrol: “The Forecourt Watch scheme is an excellent example of a partnership working.” The recent arrest was facilitated with the use of CCTV, which is just one way of protecting your isolated business site from crime. Tensor specialises in access control and surveillance technology. A Tensor Digital CCTV system works extremely well as a standalone system, and can also be fully integrated with any previously installed Tensor access control or visitor monitoring equipment. If you want to upgrade your network, our CCTV software is able to support all cameras within our product range.  

There will not be much Christmas cheer for thousands of public sector workers. This is because warning letters have begun to hit doormats around the UK as councils and other services serve legal notice of cuts. Nearly all local authorities have until March 31 next year to start making savings and by law have to give staff 90 days' notice. The GMB union estimates 87,374 posts are under threat so far at 107 UK councils, where budgets have had to be cut as a result of central government initiating measures to tackle the national deficit. WinTA Net is Tensor’s comprehensive integrated Time and Attendance and security management system which handles all wages, hours and clocking issues at your company. Its on-line self service module allows employees or contractors to view or change their personal information via an Internet browser. Access to the self-service module is username and password protected. After a successful login, staff can view their absence calendar and make holiday requests. They can also add or amend any of their clockings, to be authorised subsequently.  

More industrial disputes are expected in the New Year at a well-known canning company after management and unions failed to resolve a row over pay. Members of the Unite union at the Heinz site in Wigan took strike action over the festive period. Heinz said it had "worked hard to improve what we already believed was a very fair offer" and was disappointed with the outcome of the talks. The company said the current offer to workers was equivalent to 4% one year and 3% in the next. Tensor supplies an array of complete Smart Card Time and Attendance systems which establish comprehensive user-definable working patterns, rosters and shifts. One of these is WinTA Start, which includes a T32xx Smart Card clocking station; 25 contactless Smart Cards; and software including all the features to manage time and attendance recording for up to 50 people. Our support structure is second-to-none since a helpdesk network is available via modem, telephone or online. More help can be gained via the website http://www.support.tensor.co.uk

Drivers on the London Underground are threatening to walk out on April 29, which is the date of the royal wedding, when Prince William and Kate Middleton are due to wed. Drivers last went on strike on Boxing Day, and the dispute over bank holiday pay remains unresolved. Management took legal action to halt the Boxing Day walkout but it failed and the strike went ahead, causing disruption on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Unions demand triple pay and a day off in lieu for working on bank holidays. Tensor’s smart card and biometric Time & Attendance and security systems provide a fast, accurate and easy-to-use system to record employees' hours of working and site security. Tensor’s contactless cards, key fobs, or fingerprint biometrics represent the fastest and safest method of recording attendance. The large colour display on the Tensor T32xx clocking station makes it simple for employees to confirm their clockings, check flexi-time hours or make job-booking transactions. An illuminated keypad provides ease of text input and use.  

Thieves drained a petrol station of fuel in a record haul for the south Wales area of more than 10,000 litres. Police have appealed for information and are keen to trace the owner of a car seen in the forecourt around the time of the theft, as well as some passers-by who could be key witnesses. Neath and Port Talbot police commented: "There was no damage caused to the equipment at the filling station, which suggests that this crime was committed by a very professional and organised team." Using Tensor Access Control software your firm can be assured that you will receive a simple to use, highly secure way of controlling access to areas or buildings, as well as monitoring who is present 24 hours a day. This is particularly useful for sites that are empty or unattended for long periods. CCTV tracking is a powerful option as the video clips show "evidence quality" footage of forced entries, alarm events, or users of our contactless Smart Cards gaining access or being denied.  

Union leaders have called on ministers to "reopen negotiations in the light of this ballot decision" after Whitehall mandarins blocked new proposals to change redundancy terms. The government wants to reform the civil service system, saying it is too expensive to continue in a climate of austerity. The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union said more than 80,000 of its members, a third of those balloted, took part in the vote and rejected the new measures. Tensor’s user-friendly time and attendance payroll and personnel software reports enables your firm’s HR department or management to instantly check the hours worked by an employee, shift or department. In the Employee screens an index tab system is used to hold different categories of information. Some of these are user definable fields, including user definable tables and arrays. Each user can define their own reports and save these for future printing; either automatically or on-demand. In many cases, users only require to 'view' data, thereby saving the time and cost of actual printing to paper.  

Around 200,000 jobs will be cut by councils in England this year following cuts in central government funding, according to a union’s claims. The warning came from GMB official Brian Strutton who fears councils will rush through redundancies before the end of the financial year in March as a last resort. Local government minister Grant Shapps rejected these figures and instead urged councils to save money and protect front line services by cutting executive pay and pooling activities. Saving money at your business can be facilitated with a Tensor time and attendance system which controls and monitors wages and shifts. Overtime is easily monitored by the WinTA software, with up to four different pay bands in each shift. Bands are selected based on the time and the number of hours worked. You can set breaks to activate between set times, and/or after a minimum number of hours have been worked. Groups are used to define sequences of shift patterns. Rolling Groups repeat a block of shift patterns. The block can contain any number of days or weeks.

A rehabilitation unit in Lancashire is to shut as part of a £18 million total savings review by Blackpool Teaching Hospitals Trust. The trust has served 55 notices of compulsory redundancy to people at the 40-bed Wesham Hospital whose jobs are at risk in the review, although they are hoping to redeploy staff. It is also requesting voluntary redundancies from non-clinical staff. Services and patients will be transferred to other nearby hospitals over the coming months. Time and attendance technology from Tensor is networked so the system can control multiple sites, which is useful if your staff are being transferred to other office or department. The built-in report generator makes it simple to get the information you need from the smart card operated system. Standard reports contained in the software include: Weekly Clock Card, Payroll Summary, Absence Summary, Exceptions, Job Booking, and Working Time Directive Compliance. Fingerprint recognition systems are also available to compliment the smart cards, providing a two-fold identification process for added security.  

Refuse collectors are meeting officials from Birmingham City Council in an attempt to avert a strike over a long-running pay dispute. Unions who represent the rubbish collectors are to speak with Council representatives after a recent vote was taken to only work 50 per cent of their shifts over a two-day period. Unions said a pay review meant some refuse workers would lose £4,000 a year. The council replied it had to change pay rates to meet equality laws. Issues of pay and hours are simplified, and will save your organisation time and money into the bargain, using Tensor personnel and attendance monitoring systems. Our smart card technology allows your employees to quickly clock in and out, with the time and attendance software accurately recording attendances. The modular and upgradable WinTA network – suitable for all business sizes – has many additional features, one of which is Annualised Hours. Here it is possible to keep track of time worked throughout the year by a particular employee.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), one of the oldest-ever forces, is championing the use surveillance camera technology. Last year 2,512 wanted people – including suspected murderers– were successfully identified by MPS thanks to the use of CCTV. A statement from the force said: “We’ve had great success with CCTV. These are people who often would have fled the scene and potentially ‘got away with it’ had it not been for CCTV. There’s no doubt that CCTV continues to help us make London a safer place.” Tensor and our partners CCTV Surveillance Ltd supply and maintain digital CCTV systems that are integrated to work with a standard PC monitor. This has been achieved through the development of sophisticated CCTV software. The software allows individual users to set their own criteria for viewing selected footage from particular CCTV cameras within the network. Password and security features limit the viewing of certain cameras to specific groups of people, enabling you to securely manage who is able to see particular areas of activity.