Wednesday 14 November 2012

An Overview Of Time And Attendance Systems

By Dianne Crane


There are many types of time and attendance systems. Their role is to log the number of hours that employees spend at work. These also track the number of units produced by an individual worker, how long they take to make them, the length of any breaks they take and so on. The goal is not to be repressive, but to ensure that employees earn their keep fairly.

Card based contrivances have been around since the beginning of last century. These have been updated, and electronic based ones are widely available. Mechanical types are still in operation in several regions of the world. They work through use of a thick card. This is used on the mechanical clocking device, causing it to punch time and date on the paper.

Modern versions of these machines are based on electronic terminals and computer software. Workers use magnetic strip based cards, similar to the ones used in cash machines. These are inserted into a slot on an electronic terminal that looks very similar to a printer; information on the card is updated. These contrivances are usually integrated into a company's payroll software.

In spite of the updates, clock card machines, whether ancient or contemporary, have a number of drawbacks. Older devices relied on paper cards; these could get wet, making any information on them unreadable. Workers could inadvertently lose them. While their modern counterparts are not so easily defaced by water and other liquids, they can still get misplaced. Also, if they are placed too close to strong magnetic fields, data could be corrupted.

If this keeps happening too often, operational costs could spike uncontrollably. Many organizations solve this problem by charging workers for lost or damaged cards. However, information still has to be rewritten on the new cards, and this takes valuable moment. In case of a dispute, an employee could claim that the company manipulated their records.

Biometric based clocking devices are one attempt at tackling these challenges. Instead of relying on cards and their ilk, these use attributes that are unique to each individual, such as fingerprints and retinas, to identify a person. This has a number of benefits over card based contrivances.

Many organizations are slowly turning to these systems because they offer a number of benefits. For instance, there are no cards to be lost, and no matter how powerful a magnetic field is, it will have a hard moment corrupting a fingerprint. Finally, it puts a stop to the nefarious practice of buddy punching. Unless someone dislikes their workplace, they are unlikely to choose cutting off their finger over going to work.

Biometric based time and attendance systems generate extremely accurate records; because of their reliability, they are unlikely to formant disputes; the opposite is more likely to happen. Their high initial cost is offset by the wide range of benefits that they offer. They also ensure that every worker gets what they worked for.




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