Time And Attendance Clocks Improved Workforce

By Author: Heather VonKahle
Total Articles: 2
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Time is money, and never is this more true than when it comes to working out the wages for staff based on the hours they've worked. Time clocks (also known as attendance clocks) are an innovative way to ensure maximum productivity from workers and to see that companies get the most from their investments in human resources. While it may not be instantly apparent, staff who lie about their working hours are actually steeling from the company - steeling both time and money. This may not be a problem in a small company where the inaccuracies add up to a few minutes, but across larger corporations this can amount to potentially hundreds of hours a month being paid for wrongly. This can be enough to cripple an organisation or drastically hurt profits.

Of course it would be nice to trust employees to sign in and out honestly and not to try and take extra time from the company. This is possible in a small company, but once it gets larger its quite usual for the CEO to never even meet all their employees, let alone build a relationship with them. In such situations its also unlikely that the staff will feel the same ‘loyalty' ...
... a boss they've never met, seeing the company they work for as a ‘faceless' organisation instead. Even if an employer is lucky enough to have completely honest workers, it's still easy for them to forget or ‘guesstimate' their working hours; which could damage the company or the employee, meaning that a time clock can help both parties.

The first time clocks then used cards that would be swiped at the start and end of each shift through a mechanical clock. This clock would then stamp the current time onto the card, and by working out the total number of hours worked another official could then provide an accurate calculation of how much that member of staff was owed. This system meant that the employee couldn't just pick and choose a time to sign in or out, and also meant they would have to report any occasions where they forgot to swipe.

This system is still used by some companies but has various flaws. Firstly it means that every member of staff is required to own and keep their wage cards and to get new ones at the beginning of each week or shift depending on the system; and that someone could ask a colleague to swipe on their behalf. It also means that someone has to be physically present to sign in (a problem for business meetings, working from home etc), and that someone has to calculate the wages manually at the end of each month.

For these reasons, various digital systems have now overtaken the old mechanical systems. These can use codes or magnetic strips on swipe cards to store large amounts of data about a single employee that can be worked out automatically and accessed remotely. Even more advanced biometric time clocks require complex biological data from finger print and retinal scans meaning that a colleague can't clock in on another's behalf. Meanwhile time clock software has the opposite advantage of allowing workers to clock in from home or at business meetings abroad. With so many options available, no company need be without a time clock solution.

A good time and attendance solution can help a medium sized business save money on poor workforce management, payroll software management practices and fraudulent staff record keeping.