Tracking employees’ attendance is important for any organisation. The main reason for attendance record is to reduce absenteeism and to ensure that employees comply the working schedule, as one of companies big problems is time theft. Imagine having multiple employees who come late and leave early but you pay them for full-time salary in a year. It would be a big loss for the company itself. Furthermore, by record attendance we can see how much time we spent for working and what we have done in that time.
In business, the purpose of attendance tracking data also have these following purposes.
Old Ways to Record Attendance
There are a lot of ways to record attendance and here we listed out some of the old ways to check attendance.
1. Traditional Punch Clock
This method involve a mechanical or electronic device for attendance taking. As its name, the data was recorded on the paper punch cards which were stamped or punched by the connected clock. It enables employees to cheat. An employee can ask their co-worker to punch in and punch out for them as no verification is needed.
2. Paper Timesheets
This method is extremely inefficient for the modern workplace. Because employee still have to manually enter their working hours and it took a long time to make a report out of it. Also, there is a possible dishonesty here because employees can make up something they do just for the sake of filling the timesheet.
3. Card Swipe
Card swipe is basically a more contemporary method of punch clock. By using swipe card which is compatible with magnetic card reader, employees can swipe in and out of work. This method can save time as administrator can automatically build timesheet to check punctuality. However, same as traditional punch clock, employee can cheat on this method. You can swipe in for your co-worker without direct verification.
4. Manual Handwritten Journal
Manual handwritten journal is inconvenient and requires to have a responsible person for filling it in. It is not efficient enough, so that most modern companies don’t use it anymore.
5. Honor System
In the honor system, there are no strict rules governing its principles. Basically you trust your employees and they should not abuse the trust placed in them. But there is a chance if employees might abuse the trust the company has in them.
Do these old ways of taking attendance still work?
We can say that companies around the world still use some of those methods. However nowadays in the fast-paced working environment, these old methods are too inconvenient and inefficient.
The New Ways of Taking Attendance
Along with technological advancement, the method of taking attendance record has been evolved through years. Biometric system using fingerprint is the most common way of taking attendance that is used by companies to ensure that employees are truly present by scanning their fingerprint or handprint. People nowadays are more likely to use the latest technology for their workplace. That is why you should take advantage of technology for your workplace. The newest way of taking attendance involve scanning QR code and taking photo of your employees when they check-in/out of work. This is like the future of tracking employees attendance. You can use installed a tablet with attendance software or ask your employees to install attendance software in their mobile phone. Compared to the old ways, the new ways are more time saving, simpler, and efficient.
In HRMLabs we provide a mobile app for tracking attendance. Employees could easily check in and check out with their phone. This method also minimize fraud as our mobile app take your employees’ photo when they check-in/out. It is easier for companies to track because the data will be automatically recorded and generated as attendance report.
The data can go all the way for another process such as payroll and leave management. Isn’t that interesting to try this new technology? Contact us here and we can see how record attendance is just simple and easy
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