Long gone are the days when the only available method of tracking employee attendance were pen and paper sheets. Fingerprint Biometric attendance systems in Kenya are now becoming the weapon of choice for businesses trying to minimize time theft and reduce costs related to lost productivity. While biometrics is not a fool-proof solution, the advantages of biometric attendance systems far outweigh any potential downsides.
Benefits of Fingerprint Biometric Time Attendance Systems in Kenya
1. High Accuracy
Regardless of anything else that a biometric attendance system can provide, the ability to accurately keep track of your employees’ attendance might be worth the cost of admission alone. Thanks to a wealth of different possible biometric markers, it is devilishly difficult for anyone to fake their attendance. On top of that, Fingerprint Biometric attendance systems in Kenya allow your company to keep track of any number of people simultaneously without error or shenanigans.
2. Eliminates Time Theft
This is a big benefit that a biometric attendance system offers, and it should not be understated how drastic an impact time theft can impose. Even if your employees intend to be upstanding and honorable, people are imperfect and there will eventually be instances where accidental time theft occurs.
Of course, not everyone is as forthright as the best of us, so being able to identify and stop intentional timesheet fraud is arguably more important. Not only will stopping malicious time theft save you money, but it will help shape company culture by demonstrating that there are consequences for bad behavior that can dissuade the next person from trying the same.
3. Prevents Buddy Punching
This benefit relates back to the prevention of time theft, but it deserves its own special mention given the eye-popping statistics surrounding its occurrence. From a macro perspective, “buddy punching” alone costs Kenyan businesses millions every year which does not even include other forms of time theft.
Aside from the fact that the cost itself is enormous, it is also a widespread event with up to 16% of employees admitting to buddy punching— and that is just the people who admitted to it. Keep in mind, buddy punching is not only time theft, but it is one of the forms of time theft that involves multiple employees breaking policy.
Not only does this practice cost your company money, but it also works to erode the corporate culture as more people become accustomed to breaking policy. Thankfully, biometric attendance systems eliminate buddy punching altogether as one person cannot reasonably mimic the biomarkers of another person.
4. Provides Good ROI
This should be somewhat obvious given the drastic impact that employee time theft has on most companies and a biometric attendance system’s ability to prevent it. However, some biometric attendance systems take this a step further by offering formats that eliminate your need for hardware and further reduce overhead.
5. Boosts Employee Morale
While this list may focus on all of the ways to prevent bad actors from gaming the system, making sure that disobedience gets properly punished is only half of the coin.
Installing a Fingerprint Biometric attendance systems in Kenya with the intention of clamping down on time theft might be necessary, but it can also sour the company culture and make employees feel resentful or paranoid. That drop in company morale can end up costing you more in lost productivity than you otherwise might– though it would likely still be a net gain overall.
However, just as you can use biometric attendance systems to identify lazy employees, you can use them to distinguish exemplary employees as well. It is worth noting that motivation can often be broken down into “the carrot” or “the stick” or punishment and rewards but lean too heavily on one or the other and the imbalance will rear its head.
Instead, a better approach is to apply both punishment and reward, though consider leaning more heavily on rewards as research shows that to be a more effective form of motivation. People will do the bare minimum in order to avoid a negative consequence but often go out of their way and apply extraordinary effort to obtain a modest reward.
6. Increases Accountability
While this benefit may seem somewhat straightforward, the ripple effects that accountability offer extend far beyond simple accounting. Relating somewhat back to how rewarding good behavior can help increase employee morale and form the bedrock of a good corporate culture, accountability offers a somewhat more nuanced approach.
That said, there is no getting around the fact that accountability is, at least, necessary for being able to accurately and consistently assign appropriate punishments and rewards. Biometric attendance systems allow you to quickly and accurately identify when someone takes too long of a break, arrive late or leave early, and not even arrive at all.
However, the effect that accountability has on corporate culture cannot be understated given that the company culture can do most of the heavy lifting once established. For example, by using biometric attendance systems, you can not only identify individuals who perform poorly but also connect those individuals to different groups.
One way of nudging employees who break company policy is by grouping them with employees who exemplify it and tying their punishments or rewards to one another. Assuming the “problem employee” can be rehabilitated and the exemplary employees are coached not to socially punish or stigmatize, the soft influence of social expectation can go a long way.
The final touch
In the end, the advantages of biometric attendance systems far outweigh the initial cost of setting them up whether you look at it from an efficiency, investment, or cultural perspective. Keep in mind, your competition is likely not going to leave those profits on the table, so the sooner you invest the better you can compete.
While there are plenty of options on the market, SimbaPOS provides a wealth of integrated and streamlined features to make sure that you get the most out of your investment.