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HR departments use biometrics to account for employee attendance
Some companies are replacing traditional ID cards with something its hard to claim you forgot to bring to work: your fingerprints. Users walk us through their first impressions of the technology7/20/2007 12:34:00 PM By: Grant Buckler
Until last year, Experchem Laboratories relied on paper for keeping track of employees’ hours. It was a cumbersome system, says Mike Wiffen, information technology co-ordinator for the Toronto analytical testing laboratory. So last year Experchem went looking for something better.
“We wanted something that would keep track of people’s hours for payroll purposes and also keep track of who’s on site at any given time,” Wiffen says.
The system that Experchem installed in November and put into full operation at the beginning of January lets employees clock in and out by waving an electronic fob close to a reader and then placing a fingertip on an electronic fingerprint reader.
It’s one example of the growing use of biometrics – primarily fingerprints but also in some cases the entire hand, or face recognition or eye scans – for human resources applications such as time and attendance and access control.
“Five or six years ago, biometrics was out there but I guess it required more education,” says Ed Van Hooydonk, director of business development at the Canadian branch of Mitrefinch, the British producer of employee management technology that provided Experchem’s system. “What we’re seeing now is about 50 per cent of the business we bring in has some biometric component with it.”
Colin Soutar, chief technology officer at Bioscrypt, a prominent Canadian producer of biometrics technology, says time and attendance systems are the biggest market for the biometric identity-verification modules his company produces for other manufacturers – including Mitrefinch – to incorporate in their products.
“There’s a fairly tangible and immediate return in investment that our customers are seeing,” Soutar says.
That benefit comes partly from eliminating time-consuming paperwork, as Experchem did, but having employees’ comings and goings recorded automatically rather than entered manually on time sheets.
Other technology, like smart cards, could achieve that benefit too. But biometrics has another benefit in time-and-attendance applications: It eliminates the time-honoured practice of “buddy punching.” That’s where one employee takes another’s card and clocks in or out on his or her behalf, covering up for a late arrival or allowing the second person to make a fraudulent overtime claim.
Wiffen says buddy punching isn’t a problem at Experchem today since the company is still fairly small, but he regards the biometric technology as “future-proofing” against the day when it might become an issue.
Another advantage over a card system, he says, is that cards are easy to forget or lose. “It’s easy to forget a card. It’s hard to forget your finger.” The proximity fobs Experchem uses in conjunction with fingerprint readers can be kept attached to a key ring, so they’re harder to forget than a card.
Some systems use only a biometric identifier, with no card, fob or identification number. Many use a combination, though, and Soutar says there are a couple of reasons for this. First, two-factor authentication is inherently more secure. Second, identifying a person by matching a fingerprint against a database becomes too cumbersome with more than about 500 users.
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