December 2008 - Capturing employee working hours

Softworks adds a new touch to capturing employee working hours

The principles of punch-card technology have been around for more than 100 years, and Bray based, Softworks have been involved for over 12 years. But it is biometrics that has recently garnered the lion's share of interest from key Irish employers. Seen as a solution to thwart the time cards, a term coined within the industry as "buddy-punching," has always caused employers to lose a certain amount of money, as co-workers clock their friends in and out.

For years Supervisors have had to stand next to time clocks to monitor employees entering and leaving the premises to prevent dishonest employees from cheating the system.

Earlier this year, Softworks rolled out its first biometric fingerprint scanner. "Employee clock cards and passwords have never been truly foolproof, because you can always pass those onto someone else," says Dianne Flood, HR Analyst with Softworks Computing. "How much money is lost as a result of buddy punching, early or late arrivals, and long breaks has never been truly investigated". Employers responding to a recent Softworks on-line survey believed that between five and ten percent of all payroll time is lost due to buddy punching. A recovery of one hour per week per employee for a company of 100 people, paying their employees e10 per hour, will result in an annual savings in excess of e50,000.

The biometric terminal prevents the loss of valuable work hours stolen from a company by ensuring that the employee must be present in order to capture in and out times. Not only do biometric readers eliminate buddy punching, they can also eliminate the expense of replacing lost or forgotten employee swipe badges.

"Privacy concerns are the most likely roadblock encountered," continued Flood. However companies concerned with their employees' privacy need not worry about information being collected and stored in a database that could be later penetrated or altered. The fingerprint scanner does not actually capture the fingerprint itself as an image. The scanner will measure points on the fingertip and convert that straight into mathematical points. There is no image to be captured, so if database is stolen, all the thief would have is a set of meaningless numbers.

Most companies will not have statistics on exactly how many employees are buddy punching. The general rule of thumb is that if you know buddy punching is occurring well then there is room for improvement.