Time theft is a big problem for companies that adds up quickly. Imagine an employee who is 5 minutes late for work and leaves 4 minutes early. 9 minutes a day, times 5 days, times 52 weeks is 39 hours a year in paid but unworked time. Almost a full week! Now imagine you have multiple employees doing this.
That`s why companies all over the world want to track employee attendance in order to ensure that the attendance policy is complied with.
5 old school ways of tracking employee attendance
1. Traditional punch clock – it's a mechanical or electronic device used to track employee attendance. Traditionally the data was recorded on paper punch cards which were physically stamped or punched by the clock. Paper punch cards are still used at some workplaces even today.
A more modern way to punch in today is by using a plastic card which you have to swipe through the punch clock.
This method has quite a significant drawback: it enables employees to cheat. An employee can ask their co-worker to punch in and punch out for them.
2. Manual hand written journal – surprisingly, some companies still use this method to track employee attendance. Yet most modern companies don't use it anymore because it's inconvenient and requires to have a responsible person for filling it in.
3. Paper timesheets – it's already a thing of a past. Using paper timesheets is extremely inefficient at a modern workplace. Firstly, because employees have to constantly keep track of what they do, and if they don`t – they have to come up with something. So there's a place for fraud here. Secondly, the procession of paper time sheets takes a lot more time that could be saved by using automatic time tracking software.
4. Biometric attendance systems – biometric attendance systems have been used for security purposes since 1996 and was first installed at the Olympic Village in Atlanta. Biometric systems are still used for security purposes and attendance tracking because it is impossible to copy a finger or hand print.
5. Honor System – when it is said that something is running under the honor system, it means that it has no strictly enforced rules governing its principles. So basically you trust your employees and they should not abuse the trust placed in them.
Do old ways of tracking employee attendance still work?
Let`s say that only one of these ways works the best nowadays. The rest of them are simply inefficient because of the fast tempo of our office work.
How can companies track attendance properly?
Those who only want to track attendance use a biometric system or a punch clock. But companies that evaluate attendance and performance during the day use a time tracking software. This method makes it possible not only to track attendance, but also allows to monitor employee work at the computer.
Time tracking software allows to streamline the payroll process, save time on processing attendance and performance data. Online time tracking software also costs less then biometric systems or punch clocks and takes less time to implement.
