Keeping track of all employees’ attendance can be overwhelming for business owners, making attendance tracking systems crucial. They help track when employees report and leave work, preventing time theft and buddy punching. Companies have shifted to attendance tracking systems as they also help determine employee salaries, resulting in better payroll management.
There are two main types of attendance tracking, automated systems and traditional tracking systems. These two systems have different designs, working mechanisms, benefits, and drawbacks. Businesses can choose to use either, but how do you know which is better between biometric and traditional attendance systems?
How Do Companies Choose?
The specific requirements and the size of a company will help determine which attendance tracking system it needs. Some will go for the traditional methods, usually preferred by companies with fewer employees. Biometric attendance systems like biometric face attendance machines or fingerprint scanners are ideal for large corporations with many employees. They are also suitable for clocking in visitors and managing employee payrolls.
Traditional Attendance Methods
One of the major requirements with these systems is that the company will have to invest in a dedicated, skilled and efficient HR team. These HR professionals will be the ones logging in the employee attendance and their work hours. The system usually involves using paper punching cards and punch machines. These systems involve lots of work and sometimes can take up to days to generate the correct total working hours of each employee. The generated data goes to the payroll department without guaranteeing 100% accuracy.
Advantages of Traditional Attendance Methods
- Simple to administer
- No technology expenses
Disadvantages of Traditional Attendance Methods
- They are highly susceptible to human error,
- They are inaccurate and easy to manipulate,
- High possibility of human error,
- Not integrated with other systems and low scalability.
Biometric Attendance Machines
Employee biometric attendance tracking is more accurate as compared to traditional systems. They extract data quite fast and efficiently. They use a person’s physical characteristics, like a face, fingerprint, and iris, to identify them. They check in the system providing data that could help analyse the payroll. Most biometric attendance systems are cloud-based which makes workforce management simpler.
Which Attendance Machines Work Better?
Biometric attendance systems are better than traditional ones because of the following reasons:-
- Greater accuracy – Accuracy is crucial when it comes to security. Buddy punching and stealing working hours could cause the business significantly. While it automates the process, the biometric face attendance machine adds accuracy to your workforce and payroll management.
- Heightened security – Biometric attendance systems are the most secure and require an employee’s minimal physical presence to monitor the process. Stealing work hours and buddy punching can become things of the past with this system which can, in turn, save the company lots of money.
- Easy to use – Employee biometric attendance systems have an easy-to-use interface and are easy to install. After installation, the employee can register their face, fingers or iris while the management can upload the attendance reports in only a few clicks.
- Efficient – Biometric attendance machines only take a few minutes to calculate the employee work hours, something not possible with traditional systems, saving the HR more time on work they could have spent hours or days doing.
Biometric attendance systems are better for time and attendance tracking. They are slowly becoming the standard accepted systems. On the other hand, the traditional methods remain in use, especially in companies with fewer employees. Investing in a biometric attendance system is best if you have a fast-growing enterprise, as it helps improve accuracy and prevent buddy punching and theft of work hours.
