The days are over where supervisors keep a manual paper trail of their employees’ time and attendance. Few still use spreadsheets to calculate one of the most mundane, yet vitally important aspects of managing staff. These antiquated measuring tools cannot prevent issues such as time theft or buddy punching that plagued HR.
Today, more companies want better solutions to measure actual working hours of their employees. In this search, they are beginning to find the benefits of using a biometric fingerprint time clock.
As a secure alternative to paper time cards and spreadsheets, a biometric time clock is more than just a wave of the future. Its use of fingerprint recognition is one of the most prevalent forms of this innovative technology. In its simplest form, the scanner reads each employee’s unique fingerprint whenever it is time to clock in or out.
Better Tracking, Better Biometric Scanners
With the use of multispectral sensors, software companies deliver time clock scanners that can cut through grease, dirt, moisture, sweat and even gloves. This is great news for construction companies, for example, who need employees to clock in and out at work sites. This cutting-edge technology works securely and accurately in real-life.
• Use of algorithms stores fingerprints
• Information is safe from hackers since actual fingerprints are not retrievable
• Periodic downloads of information from time clock to the system
How Biometric Technology Improves Employee Time Management
Because of its capability to recognize unique physiological characteristics, biometrics technology work perfectly for employee time management. The increasing popularity of biometrics based terminals for time and attendance delivers many benefits. Not only can these terminals read fingerprints, but some are also designed to read a person’s unique voice pattern, hand shape, face shape or iris. This ensures every employee clocks in for his or her time, not for someone else.
An employee attempts identification through the biometric hardware device. Terminals are installed at convenient locations throughout the company. This activates a new comparison scan of available templates to find an exact match. Once a match is found, arrival and departure times for employees are registered.
Companies will decrease overpayments with an increase in accurate time and attendance records. Time management improves further with increased security, not just among employees, but also for the safety of work sites and valuable company information.
Benefits of Using a Biometric Time Clock
Benefit #1: Capture unique biological traits. Biometric time clocks use technology to detect a person based on their individual makeup.
Benefit #2: Trust the accuracy of which employee is on the clock. Biometric physiological attributes cannot be duplicated or forged. Supervisors and managers feel confident that they are tracking each employee’s time and attendance accurately.
Benefit #3: Prevent buddy punching practices. Buddy punching is illegal and has cost many employers millions in financial losses each year. It is easily prevented with biometric time clocks. Because the clock captures each employee’s unique traits, a coworker cannot clock in or out for another employee by pretending to be that employee.
Benefit #4: Biometric fingerprint reader eliminates time theft. Companies also lose tremendous amounts of work hours each year because employees waste 20 minutes per day, minimum. Calculating this lost time, and how it impacts the bottom line, is impossible with an old method of managing employee time. That problem is gone forever with this time clock system.
Benefit #5: Biometric fingerprinting also monitors remote workers. This innovative technology can integrate with mobile devices or the internet. The use of biometrics enables employers to monitor employees working in remote places, even if they are halfway around the world.
Benefit #6: Improve employee job satisfaction. Morale can become damaged when employees give extra time without extra privileges. Supervisors can identify those employees with data from the biometric time clock. Using the accurate attendance information captured, they can reward employees accordingly.
Benefit #7: Increase productivity. Employees who feel better about their jobs will work better. Antiquated time and attendance systems will not accurately track their productivity. Biometrics removes barriers such as time theft and raises productivity rates.
Benefit #8: Raise company profits. A direct benefit to raising productivity rates is raising profits. Using biometrics for time and attendance allows companies to attain the highest levels of productivity. Companies no longer lose money to poor tracking and practices. They will see the gains on financial statements.
Benefit #9: Improve employee accountability for time management with an audit trail. Data collected with biometric time clocks creates a concrete audit trail for time and attendance records. By improving accountability and responsibility, employees tend to respond differently to how their time is managed at work. The accuracy of identifying who is late, who takes frequent or extended breaks deters those behaviors.
Benefit #10: Integrate with current systems. The flexibility of a fingerprint time clock allows it to work well alone or with key fobs and swipe cards.
Biometric time clocks have arrived at the perfect time to relieve human resource departments, supervisors and managers of the tedious tasks often associated with tracking employees’ work hours. This technology was designed to specifically track employees based on individual character traits that cannot be duplicated.
The accuracy in biometrics maximizes productivity and profits, while minimizing labor costs. Employees also realize the benefits of increasing their productivity and accountability. Considering the many benefits to implementing this cost-saving system into the employee time and attendance function, employers have every reason to fully embrace biometric time clocks.
