Long gone are the days when the only available method of tracking employee attendance were pen and paper sheets. Biometric attendance systems are now becoming the weapon of choice for businesses trying to minimize time theft and reduce costs related to lost productivity. While biometrics is not a fool-proof solution, the advantages of biometric attendance systems far outweigh any potential downsides.

Advantages of Biometric Time Attendance Systems

1. High Accuracy

Regardless of anything else that a biometric attendance system can provide, the ability to accurately keep track of your employees’ attendance might be worth the cost of admission alone. Thanks to a wealth of different possible biometric markers, it is devilishly difficult for anyone to fake their attendance.

On top of that, biometric attendance systems allow your company to keep track of any number of people simultaneously without error or shenanigans. In fact, the NCheck biometric attendance system is able to identify employees in a group using multiple biomarkers or even if they wear a mask.

2. Eliminates Time Theft

This is a big benefit that a biometric attendance system offers, and it should not be understated how drastic an impact time theft can impose. Even if your employees intend to be upstanding and honorable, people are imperfect and there will eventually be instances where accidental time theft occurs.

Of course, not everyone is as forthright as the best of us, so being able to identify and stop intentional timesheet fraud is arguably more important. Not only will stopping malicious time theft save you money, but it will help shape company culture by demonstrating that there are consequences for bad behavior that can dissuade the next person from trying the same.

3. Prevents Buddy Punching

This benefit relates back to the prevention of time theft, but it deserves its own special mention given the eye-popping statistics surrounding its occurrence. From a macro perspective, “buddy punching” alone costs US businesses $373 million a year ^[1] which does not even include other forms of time theft.

Aside from the fact that the cost itself is enormous, it is also a widespread event with up to 16% of employees admitting to buddy punching^[2]— and that is just the people who admitted to it. Keep in mind, buddy punching is not only time theft, but it is one of the forms of time theft that involves multiple employees breaking policy.

Not only does this practice cost your company money, but it also works to erode the corporate culture as more people become accustomed to breaking policy. Thankfully, biometric attendance systems eliminate buddy punching altogether as one person cannot reasonably mimic the biomarkers of another person.

4. Provides Good ROI

This should be somewhat obvious given the drastic impact that employee time theft has on most companies and a biometric attendance system’s ability to prevent it. However, some biometric attendance systems take this a step further by offering formats that eliminate your need for hardware and further reduce overhead.

For instance, by choosing a cloud-based biometric attendance system, you will not need to house IT hardware on-site to keep track of the data. You can also take this a step further– especially given how working environments continue to change– by using this service to keep track of remote employees, saving the cost of office space.

5. Boosts Employee Morale

While this list may focus on all of the ways to prevent bad actors from gaming the system, making sure that disobedience gets properly punished is only half of the coin.

Installing a biometric attendance system with the intention of clamping down on time theft might be necessary, but it can also sour the company culture and make employees feel resentful or paranoid. That drop in company morale can end up costing you more in lost productivity than you otherwise might– though it would likely still be a net gain overall.

However, just as you can use biometric attendance systems to identify lazy employees, you can use them to distinguish exemplary employees as well. It is worth noting that motivation can often be broken down into “the carrot” or “the stick” or punishment and rewards but lean too heavily on one or the other and the imbalance will rear its head.

Instead, a better approach is to apply both punishment and reward, though consider leaning more heavily on rewards as research shows that to be a more effective form of motivation^[3]. People will do the bare minimum in order to avoid a negative consequence but often go out of their way and apply extraordinary effort to obtain a modest reward.

6. Increases Accountability

While this benefit may seem somewhat straightforward, the ripple effects that accountability offer extend far beyond simple accounting. Relating somewhat back to how rewarding good behavior can help increase employee morale and form the bedrock of a good corporate culture, accountability offers a somewhat more nuanced approach.

That said, there is no getting around the fact that accountability is, at least, necessary for being able to accurately and consistently assign appropriate punishments and rewards. Biometric attendance systems allow you to quickly and accurately identify when someone takes too long of a break, arrive late or leave early, and not even arrive at all.

However, the effect that accountability has on corporate culture cannot be understated given that the company culture can do most of the heavy lifting once established. For example, by using biometric attendance systems, you can not only identify individuals who perform poorly but also connect those individuals to different groups.

One way of nudging employees who break company policy is by grouping them with employees who exemplify it and tying their punishments or rewards to one another. Assuming the “problem employee” can be rehabilitated and the exemplary employees are coached not to socially punish or stigmatize, the soft influence of social expectation can go a long way.

7. Simplifies Payroll

Depending on the current method of tracking employee hours, verifying and collating payroll can be a laborious, time-consuming, and expensive process. Thankfully, biometric attendance systems can simplify this service into an automated process that requires no additional overhead and is just as accurate as of its initial tracking functions.

As if that were not enough, the NCheck biometric attendance system also integrates with some of the most popular payroll software and services already on the market. Whether you use Tally ERP or QuickBooks Intuit, NCheck biometric systems work seamlessly to automate the payroll which also increases your ROI and mitigates litigious claims.

8. Physical Contact is Not Required

Contactless biometric attendance systems can mitigate the spread of pathogens in your organization. Considering the statistical probability that the occurrence of pandemics is likely to increase in the future^[3], it makes sense to implement biometric systems that can scan employee’s irises and faces.

For starters, NCheck is a biometric attendance system that can accurately identify employees while wearing a mask, helping ensure that employees follow proper pandemic protocols. Even better, this service can apply its multiplicate accuracy to people wearing masks to safeguard whole groups of people.

However, pandemics and even the flu are almost certainly going to hit your business at some point in time, but being able to limit the spread of them is paramount to making it through relatively unscathed. This is where NCheck’s ability to keep track of employee contact comes in handy, as it can identify the potential spread of disease within your company and help you isolate it.

The final touch

In the end, the advantages of biometric attendance systems far outweigh the initial cost of setting them up whether you look at it from an efficiency, investment, or cultural perspective. Keep in mind, your competition is likely not going to leave those profits on the table, so the sooner you invest the better you can compete.

While there are plenty of options on the market, NCheck provides a wealth of integrated and streamlined features to make sure that you get the most out of your investment.

Sources:

^{[1, 2]} https://www.tsheets.com/resources/prevent-buddy-punching

^[3]https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/family-affair/200809/rewards-are-better-punishment-here-s-why

^[4]https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/5-reasons-why-pandemics-like-covid-19-are-becoming-more-likely