Globe and Mail
Put your finger on a more efficient system
- Biometrics
- Scan of original article from Globe and Mail
Scanning devices help companies keep track of their employees. They also keep workers honest
GRANT BUCKLER
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
MAY 13, 2008 AT 12:40 PM EDT
Like many workers who are paid hourly, employees at Dynamic Team Sports
Canada Co. in Toronto used to punch time clocks. The sportswear
company's human
resources staff had to prepare time cards for more than 200 employees,
calculate hours manually and enter the data in a payroll system.
It took four to six hours a week, says Melanie Oleskiw, Dynamic's
human resources manager. And there were problems with a few employees
on the midnight shift
"buddy punching" - punching absent co-workers' time cards to inflate their hours worked.
So, three and half years ago, Dynamic Team Sports replaced its
punch-card system with one that scans employees' fingerprints. To clock
in, a worker first enters a
personal identification code, then places his or her finger on a scanner.
There are no time cards to prepare, Ms. Oleskiw says, and it takes less
than a minute to transfer a week's data into the payroll system, plus
perhaps half an hour of
editing to clean up any discrepancies. And the system eliminates buddy punching.
Biometrics, an umbrella term for systems that identify people using
unique physical characteristics, is becoming an increasingly popular
alternative to punch cards
for recording employee time and attendance.
Biometrics may sound too high-tech for your business, but if you have more than a couple of dozen employees, it's worth a look, experts say.
Fingerprints are probably the most well-known example of biometrics; other devices scan entire hands, eyes and even faces.
Finger and hand scanning systems are equally popular for time and
attendance, says Nancy Gaughan, marketing manager at International Time
Recorder Inc. in
Toronto, which supplied Dynamic Team Sports' system.
Some businesses choose the hand scanners, which identify the hand by
its shape and the length of the fingers, because fingerprints carry a
connotation of criminal
identification. Employees might also have concerns about their fingerprints being handed over to police, she says.
