Time and Attendance Systems (revisited)

Time and attendance - those are the words that the man uses to keep track of us while we’re at work (or while we’re not, as the case may be). I remember punching a time clock in my earliest jobs. And then there was the kludgey “accumulator” — a crude time and attendance monitoring system from the late ’80s. Things have sure changed since those days! Today, companies are just as likely to have fingerprint-based time and attendance systems …

To be sure, I've been very happy to be out here working on my own. I don't have to answer to the man or his time and attendance solution du jour.

But if I ran my own company with employees (hence, making me the man), I'd probably want a Windows-based system in place to make things easier for everyone.

Today's flock of time and attendance systems eliminate the need to tally hand-written time cards, as they reduce the time it takes to process payroll. The data can be exported from the point of entry into the payroll system ... as long as the employee remembers to punch in or out (that was always my problem).

Biometrics is all the buzz. Hand recognition technology allows the system to know exactly who's in and who's out. "Hey buddy, can I lend you a hand?" has grown a whole new meaning. I guess we can forget that old double-punching routine.

When I first posted this article on Time and Attendence Systems this summer, Gnomie Chris had some tales to share ...

I recently spent a year and a half working for a call center (a whole other story) and the time system there was the same old system cubed. We had electronic ID tags which recorded when we came in the door. We then had to log into the network at our desks (we weren't officially at work until we did this - I figure that they got an average of ten free minutes out of us each day as we had to boot our machines and get all of our programs ready to go before we could take calls.) We then had to log into our phones, which meant we were ready to take calls.

If we "punched in" to the network much before we "punched in" to our phones we were scolded. Once we were working, our lunch breaks and our two 15 min. breaks were scheduled for us each day. Sometimes these were ridiculous, as when my first break of the day ended 15 minutes before my lunch break started. We also had to remember to punch out from both the phone and the time system for a quick bathroom break.

It gets even more absurd ...

For one contract I worked that had extra security, our time clock program wasn't available on the same network as our work machines, so everyone on the contract had to line up at one or two machines outside our secure room to punch in and out of work and lunch. Just like having a time clock, except slower and more awkward. Interestingly, forgetting to punch in required much running around to supervisors to get corrected, but they never seemed to have trouble fixing things if you forgot to punch out at the end of your shift.

On their own merits, time and attendance systems aren't necessarily evil. It all comes down to the quality of the implementation and the intelligence thereof.

If you're looking to implement (with intelligence, of course), you'll find a raft of companies that provide time and attendance solutions, including TimeCentre, BioAttend, TimeClock, Plus, Qquest, Lucky Technology (now that's a name to love), InfoTronics, and many others.