Put your finger on a more efficient system

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.

In addition to monitoring time and attendance, some small and medium businesses use their biometric systems to control access to buildings and equipment.

Mitrefinch Ltd., a British maker of human-resources management systems, claims to have been the first company to produce a computerized time-and-attendance system, in the 1970s. Today, Mitrefinch offers systems with fingerprint scanners (built by a Canadian company, BioScrypt Inc. of Toronto), and its products can also work with hand scanners from other suppliers.

“Just about everyone we talk to, whether they’re 25 employees or 2,500, is interested in the conversation about biometrics,” says Ed van Hooydonk, director of business development at Mitrefinch’s Canadian operation in Mississauga, Ont.

That said, companies with fewer than 50 employees frequently decide that the biometric devices don’t make sense for them, Mr. van Hooydonk says. Time clocks with fingerprint scanners sell for between $2,000 and $3,500, he says, while traditional punch-card models typically run $1,000 to $2,000.

Ms. Gaughan says biometric capabilities usually add $300 to $500 to the price of a clock. Bometric devices are most popular with medium to large firms, she says, but “a surprising number of smaller companies are interested too.”

Biometrics are frequently combined with other forms of identification. Employees use a personal ID number or ID card to identify themselves, and then use a finger or hand to confirm their identities.

This makes biometrics work faster, because the system must check the employee’s fingerprint or handprint only against the one stored for that person, rather than search a database of all employees.

The No. 1 advantage of biometric time clocks, Mr. Van Hooydonk says, is eliminating buddy punching, which is a problem with 1 or 2 per cent of the work force, he says.

A secondary advantage is the elimination of punch cards, which can get lost and must be issued to new employees and deactivated when people leave.

Toronto-based Experchem Laboratories Inc. didn’t have a buddy-punching problem before installing a Mitrefinch fingerprint-scanning system last year.

But the analytical testing laboratory, which has about 70 employees, had found its paper-based time and attendance system time-consuming and not always accurate.

Experchem also wanted a way to track exactly who was in its two buildings, says Michael Wiffen, the company’s co-ordinator of information technology.

The system, which uses a combination of finger scanning with identification fobs that employees can attach to their key rings, can show the receptionist at a glance who is in which building.

Mr. Wiffen says Experchem’s system occasionally has trouble reading a dry finger in cold weather, but “we just have hand cream up front to help them.”

The problem is easier to deal with than a lost card. And, as Ms. Oleskiw of Dynamic says, “it’s pretty hard to forget your finger at home.”

Back to main page.