If none of your employees ever get late in your organization, it might not be because they are punctual and efficient. It could be major sign hinting at the time thefts and frauds happening in your organization.
Buddy punching is a major ongoing concern for present-age organizations and has emerged as a real challenge for managers. Despite the fact that organizations are taking stringent measures to ensure that their employees mark their time and attendance entries in a fair and ethical manner, this is also a reality that time thefts and frauds are still an undeniable truth of the regular organizational happenings.
The most common method of time fraud is buddy punching, where an employee makes the time enter behalf of a peer or associate who has gotten late for the work for some reason.
The Cost of Buddy Punching
As per a study conducted by Nucleus Research, around 19% of the employees in an organization are involved in buddy punching for a peer or co-working employee. This might sound as an ordinary gesture to some; however, each buddy punching action has a certain cost attached that is majorly credited into the account of the organizations. The cost of buddy punching and time thefts cumulates to make around 2.2% of the overall payroll loss and expenditure.
How to Prevent This Time Fraud – Invest in Mitrefinch
Less advanced and manual systems of time and attendance recording such as timesheets and paper logs is the prime reason behind increasing time thefts happening in the organizations. This is because these methods of time recording do not make a record of the identity of the worker making the time entry. This makes it convenient for the employees to make time and attendance entries on their peers’ behalf and conduct time fraud.
Installing advanced time and attendance recording system such as a biometric time clock makes time and attendance entries based on the biometric features of the employees such as through facial recognition or fingerprints. This eliminates the possibility of buddy punching and requires the employees to be present in person to get their time and attendance recorded.
GPS Based Time Tracking
In the case of remote or mobile workforce, you employees won’t be able to mark their time and attendance on the biometric time clock installed on the premises. In such case, you can set up a web-based time clocking system is also powered for GPS tracking. This web -based time tracking can be accessed through an online portal or a mobile app, by the on-field employees to mark their work time and attendance.
Since it won’t be possible for the managers to check whether or not the employees are actually present, the GPS feature will record the place and location from where they have made the entry. This will fix all potential loops that might lead to time frauds.
Restrict Access
You can also restrict the domain to specific IPs, terminals or devices. For instance, you can a impose a technical restriction that the user ID of an employee can only be accessed from their system and will automatically get suspended if a peer tries to access it from their system to mark the time entry.
