The 'buddy punch' is something that most companies have hoped would have gone away by now, but unfortunately it is here to stay. For those who aren't aware, it is simply the process of someone else (an employee's 'buddy') going through the door and clocking in with their card too. It'd quite simple and very effective in a large company where the cards are taken as an accurate view of employee attendance.
Trouble is, it's open to fraud.
Some companies have taken some quite drastic measures to stamp this sort of activity out, ranging from security guards on the door to CCTV cameras above the clocking-in machines, however these are expensive options and in some cases (in the case of CCTV especially) can cause consternation amongst staff. One thing you really shouldn't do if you want to keep a happy workforce is give the impression that 'Big Brother' is watching them - this will cause many more problems than it solves.
If you speak to HR companies, they will tell you that the carrot is far more effective than the stick in these situations and that one of the best ways to combat buddy punching is to simply make it an easy option not to want to do it. For example, make people responsible for their own clocking in procedure by ensuring they look up to their peers and let the staff self-regulate.
This is obviously easier said than done and so luckily, for those who want a technological answer to the problem and not an HR one (which let's face it - sounds OK unless you're actually working for the company that has the problem), there are many ways to combat it.
Technology to the rescue!
Luckily there is a particularly easy way to eliminate buddy punching altogether and it comes in the form of 'biometric' clocking. Anything with the word 'biometric' in it may sound a little bit scary, but all it means is that it uses some form of recognition that is based on the body parts of the person using it. You may well have seen a lot of it in the press where the iris or fingerprints are used to recognise a person, although it has also met with a lot of consternation and resistance from many quarters - mostly the human rights contingent.
Although these methods can be seen as a little over the top, there are other ways that seem to be an ideal compromise. One of these is to use a system that recognises the person's hand shape and along with a PIN will clock the person in. This is an extremely easy system to implement and it is also incredibly quick to use. One of the big technological problems with biometric systems in the past has been the issue of processor power. Consider the complexity of the iris or fingerprint and you can quickly see that when you've got any decent number of staff in your company that very quickly you are going to need some pretty powerful computers to handle the search and give a positive when someone logs in.
Again, by giving a combination of hand punching together with a PIN, the problem is solved. The PIN finds the record and then the hand print simply confirms it.
This solution in conjunction with an effective HR policy can ensure your staff is happy as well as keeping your HR records accurate.
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