Time Management System: What It Is and How It Works

Time management system

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Last Updated on October 18, 2021 by Work In My Pajamas

There are employees who are lazy working in any team. This is a real problem for the employer. They spend most of their working hours on anything. Taking their time to drink coffee, surf social networks, and discuss news with colleagues is sacred for them. In between tea parties there is a lunch break, and the end of the day is just around the corner. Anything that we do not have time to do, postponed to tomorrow. And so on ad infinitum.

What boss would tolerate constant excuses and slackers in his team? Not everyone is ready to act as an overseer and stand with a whip over a negligent employee. In this situation, an employee hours tracker comes to the rescue.

Types of Time Recording

Marking employees’ arrival and departure times with a fountain pen is a long and outdated process. In addition, it has many disadvantages. For example, you can falsify data in favor of employees. If you were half an hour late, you would write down that you arrived on time. The notorious “human factor” in action. Controlling the employment of employees in such a way is also questionable. Today, automated timekeeping systems have replaced “by hand” spreadsheets.

There Are Several Types of Staff Time Counts:

  1. Daily. It is successfully used by 80% of enterprises. The system records the hours worked per day. With an eight-hour working day you get 40 hours per week. The period of time from 8:00 to 17:00 or from 9:00 to 18:00 is taken into account. The employee receives a wage based on the hours worked.
  2. Weekly. It is used not so often, for example, when a person works according to a personal schedule or a special mode is set at the enterprise. For example, two days you can work 10 hours, and the next – 5 hours. It is important to reach the required 40 hours in the end.
  3. Summarized. This principle is used by companies with irregular working hours, when the employee’s employment does not fit into one day, week or month. The principle is also justified when it comes to continuous or shift work.
  4. Fingerprint Time Recording. Today, it is possible to keep track of working hours using biometric systems. It is about identifying an employee and determining the time of his/her arrival and departure by a fingerprint. It is enough to put a finger to a biometric reader and the system will register you at your workplace. In addition, the program allows you to monitor the employee during the day online.

1. Accounting of Working Hours by Cards

E-cards are a great option for organizations with a lot of rooms with limited access and where it is possible to put several terminals. With the help of cards you can control the working time of employees in the whole building. Before choosing this method, you should make sure that the Internet in the organization works without failures.

Benefits of ACS:

  1. Card – the employee’s pass, which contains his data and photo;
  2. The card cannot be given to another person or used to let strangers into the company;
  3. Accounting of working hours by cards allows you to keep a schedule of personnel and calculate wages.

This Scheme Also Has Several Disadvantages:

  1. The ACS is maintained by a separate employee. He oversees all actions, makes changes, and adjusts restrictions. To perform these tasks, you have to hire an additional person.
  2. Sophisticated installation. It includes card readers, access controllers, and power supplies.
  3. Employees often lose their contactless plastic cards. In this case, the manager will have to buy them again.

2. Recording the Working Time of Employees by Person

Terminals help control discipline. To do this, you have to walk up to the device and look into it or in its direction. The identity of the employee will be identified by facial geometry. The advantage is that the terminal does not need the Internet to work. Usually it works via a power adapter, but it is possible to use Wi-Fi. In this case it will be possible to put the terminal at any distance from the server with the program.

Such a system is more advantageous than fingerprint control. When a face is read, a large amount of data is processed. This pattern is contained in the computing unit and allows the face to be viewed from all sides. The same template is used for comparison with a person passing through a turnstile.

However, there are pitfalls. The system can make a mistake when it sees two similar-looking people. Because of this, there is a risk that an unauthorized person who looks like your employee enters the building. Sometimes intruders get into businesses this way.

3. Biometric Time Recording

Each employee has his or her own biometric identifier. It is needed to read unique characteristics: retina, fingerprints, tone of voice or vein pattern. These characteristics cannot be faked, forgotten at home, lost. They can be used to pass a security check, mark your presence at work or access restricted information. The data on biometric identifiers is entered into a common database. It can be updated, supplemented or changed at any time.

The approach has one drawback: the high cost of equipment. For example, biometric control requires a powerful processor, biological scanners, and interfaces for transmitting large amounts of data.

In some facilities, it is better to install multiple identification points to track the movement of employees on the territory throughout the working day.

Automated services are relevant for timesheets and reports, load calculations, salaries and fines. They help assess the usefulness of a particular department, the productivity of each employee, establish discipline, and inform about unauthorized connections. Biometric accounting will allow to delimit access by zones.

Benefits of Biometric Time Recording:

The program identifies the person with 100% accuracy. The advantages of this method are obvious: fingerprints are stored in the database, and they cannot be “borrowed”. Of course, you can’t check in for a colleague who is late, either. In addition, this will help optimize the distribution of salaries and bonuses: the employer can see that he is paying the employee for the hours actually worked.

Disadvantages of Biometric Recognition

It is also worth mentioning the disadvantages of biometric recognition. Sometimes it is psychologically difficult for an employee: a person may have an association with fingerprinting in the police or prison.

Other disadvantages of this system are of a technical nature:

  1. Problems with the Internet. Sometimes the software enters and confirms the fingerprint, but the readings do not arrive in the database. You may think the person didn’t show up for work or didn’t go home at all.
  2. In a hurry, you can forget to put your finger on it. It happens that a person is late for the start of the work day, and the system will show that the employee did not show up for duty. As a result, the innocent employee will be forced to prove to his superiors that he was on duty.
  3. The system requires you to repeat the exact position of your finger during the first fingerprint. And that’s a problem because the scanner doesn’t recognize any other options. You have to put your finger at different angles several times before the system recognizes the employee. It takes a while. Time goes by, and other employees are crowded at the entrance, waiting their turn.

4. Time Management Software

Time recording services are in demand in various areas. Managers of medium and large businesses use them to optimize all work processes. The advantages of such software:

  1. The supervisor knows what the employee is doing at his workplace at a certain point in time;
  2. IT-specialists monitor software failures, restore accidentally destroyed data and passwords;
  3. If there is sensitive information in the company, the program will determine which employees violate the security policy.

In addition, the program eliminates the need for paper journals and reduces the workload of individual employees.

Monitoring programs run during business hours, if necessary, you can set the desired schedule or round-the-clock mode. Maintenance of the program does not require new specialists.

One of the most effective timekeeping services is Monitask. The program starts immediately when you turn on your computer and monitors employee’s occupation and activity. So, if nothing happens with the mouse or keyboard for more than five minutes, the system starts counting the time of inactivity. In fact, most pc monitoring software works in a similar fashion.

The service divides all activity into productive and nonproductive. In other words, it is not enough for an employee just to be at the computer and move the mouse around: he or she needs to perform his or her work tasks.

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