Business management requires utilizing available resources for maximum efficiency. Your workers are one of the most critical resources, and workforce management is essential to ensure your business is profitable.
For any organization, the time a worker spends on a particular task translates into the company’s output when adjusted for the salary paid. You must have measures in place to accurately monitor employee time and attendance. Every year, time theft costs employers billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Among the most widely adopted solutions, the biometric attendance system is one. This article will explore biometric attendance systems and how they work. We will analyze the scope of such attendance systems and how we can overcome the limitations.
Table of Contents
What is a biometric attendance system?
A biometric attendance system is a hardware-based or software-based solution to record employee attendance using biometric data such as fingerprints, iris, hand geometry recognition, face recognition, etc. As compared to traditional employee time and attendance systems, biometric solutions provide an advanced layer of security because they utilize specific attributes that are unique to an individual.
In doing so, a biometric system eliminates the possibility of malpractices like buddy punching, in which a co-worker can clock in for a colleague using their time card. The biometric attendance systems are a significant upgrade to the existing time cards; however, their reliance on hardware limits their robustness and safety in a post-pandemic era.
Software-based biometric attendance systems overcome this limitation with their robust and cloud-based design.
How does biometric attendance system work?
A biometric attendance system utilizes sensors to record and match the unique biometric attributes of the employees with the data in the database to allow clocking in and out of the workplace. As we mentioned before, these attendance systems are entirely dependent on hardware for performance.
How the employee biometric attendance system works depends on the type of attribute it uses to identify workers. For instance, a fingerprint biometric attendance system uses sensors to scan the fingerprint of the workers. It then maps these on various coordinates defined within the system and compares them to the fingerprint data stored in the database.
Each biometric entry is converted into a unique code that one person can only enter. This eliminates any possibility of using another employee as a proxy. The accuracy of a biometric attendance system is very high. However, it requires a clean environment for sensors to work as they cannot correctly read fingerprints and other biometric data.
The existing hardware-based biometric systems are facing tough competition from software-based employee time and attendance systems. The new-age hardware-less attendance systems are cloud-based and can be remotely deployed at any work location. Furthermore, these systems do not use only sensors to read biometric data.
They use advanced AI-based tech like face recognition that makes them much more suitable for hostile work conditions such as high temperatures in the mining field, humid environments of manufacturing units, and dirt-filled construction sites. Their touchless approach makes them a lot more accurate.
5 Benefits of using a biometric attendance system
1. Eliminates time theft
This is the most significant benefit of using a biometric staff attendance management system in your company. Time theft is a common problem that costs companies a lot of money as they have to pay for the hour’s workers are not working. Even if you have an upstanding and honorable workforce, there can be times when some workers are involved in time theft.
To discourage such behavior, biometric attendance systems are good options. However, if you are planning to upgrade to an attendance system it is better to invest in software solutions such as Truein.
Truein can provide all these security features of a biometric attendance system that can safeguard against time theft. It is not a hardware-based employee time and attendance system, so companies in the construction, manufacturing, retail, facility management, and hospitality industries can deploy it without additional cost.
2. Highly accurate as compared to other attendance systems
The accuracy of biometric attendance systems is incredibly high, which makes them suitable for any company. Due to the advancement of technology and the availability of susceptible sensors, no one can fake their attendance if the company uses a biometric attendance system.
On top of that, these systems record clock-in time accurately without any errors. Please note that the accuracy is high, but there is a limitation to how the biometric attendance system works when the location of the device has high humidity, high temperatures, moisture, or dirt.
The sensors lose efficiency, and workers are forced to try multiple times to record their attendance. Software-based biometric attendance systems that use face recognition and AI-based algorithms for efficiency are more reliable and efficient, as they perform accurately in any work environment.
3. Prevents buddy punching
Buddy punching is when a worker blocks in for a colleague using the time card. Such an activity records inaccurate attendance of the absent employees, and employers pay for the hours workers have not worked. As biometric attendance systems use unique physical attributes to identify and record attendance, they eliminate buddy punching in the workplace.
4. Automates the payroll process
Almost every biometric attendance system is compatible with the most commonly used payroll software. These systems also have an inbuilt capability to facilitate work calculation, attendance report generation, leave management, etc. The automation of all these administrative tasks makes the payroll process highly efficient.
This frees up time for the managers to focus on essential business activities that contribute to the company’s growth.
5. No hardware or physical contact required
As we mentioned, biometric systems are several types, and this benefit is particular to software-based attendance systems such as Truein. The software solutions require no physical contact to identify and record attendance. This is a significant advantage of switching to biometric attendance systems as the attendance keeping and facility operations are not affected by hardware failure.
Cloud-based solutions like Truein are portable, require no additional peripherals, hence have zero maintenance cost, and can be centrally upgraded. Truein is AI-based and can identify workers with masks on or changing official attributes such as glasses.
As this biometric attendance system is cloud-based, there is no requirement for additional peripherals to be installed at the construction site, facility, manufacturing unit, or anywhere within the company. Workers can download the Truein app directly on their smartphones to record their attendance.
This software-based biometric attendance system is a complete employee time management solution as it allows managers to track the location of workers with geofencing and GPS tracking.
Which industries should use a biometric attendance system?
Any industry where companies have human resource management and payroll should use biometric attendance systems. Almost any industry can use a biometric attendance system to make workforce management easier. Whether in manufacturing, retail, facility management, construction, mining, services sector, or any other industry, using a biometric attendance system can bring accuracy, automation, and efficiency to employee identification and attendance.
Over 300 customers in more than 25 countries are already using Truein to optimize workforce utilization and plug revenue leakages such as time theft and erroneous work hours calculations. Our superior algorithms and advanced technologies are helping industries record the attendance of blue-collar workers in real time.
Some brands that trust Truein for employee time and attendance management include Tata Projects, Fiat, Schindler, Dominion, and Godrej. Schedule a free demo today and see how it can help to automate the time and attendance management in your organization.
Conclusion
Now you know what a biometric attendance system is and how it works. For any industry, a biometric attendance system is a management tool that can offer several benefits including automation of workforce management, accurate payroll, and improved security.
There is no better solution to track employee time and attendance with the added benefit of foolproof security, automation, and efficiency.
