Attendance Time ClocksAttendance time clocks have been in use since time immemorial in workplaces that require employees to work for some amount of time each day, especially when they are paid in proportion to the number of work hours they put in. These clocks are basically meant to track and record the time when the person enters and leaves the workplace so that pay can be calculated accordingly. In some more sophisticated versions, these attendance time clocks can even keep records of the actual work that the employee performs, which is beneficial if the decided pay scale is based on the kind of work done. In olden days, the attendance time clocks functioned on mechanical principles. People when they entered their workplace would either have to hand-punch a clocking device or plug it into an electric socket. While leaving, they would enter the time recorded in a ledger and stop the clock. This was prone to several problems, including people cheating on the number of hours that were actually shown on the clocks. Also, since mechanical clocks could be used by anybody, it was quite possible that people could clock in for their friends and thus cheat. Today's attendance time clocks are definitely much more sophisticated. They work on individual recognition principles. The most common of these use swipe card to recognize the employee. Each employee is given a swipe card that has a unique identification. While reporting for work, the employee has to swipe the card into specific readers on the clocking equipment and their time would be automatically recorded. The same would happen when they clock out. Another sophisticated kind of attendance time clock that is used today is the type that uses retinal or fingerprint recognition. For fingerprint recognition, the employee has to place the right (or left, depending on the device) palm on a reader that would then identify the employee and record the time against them. The retinal readers do not even need this much contact. The employee simply needs to bring their eyes in proximity to a reader area, which identifies them and records their time against their names. There are actually several benefits of attendance time clocks apart from the fact that they act as clocking devices. Here are some of them:- 1. These clocks act as security devices in most cases. The modern ones that work by recognizing the employee in some way or the other are specifically designed for security. They will stop unauthorized people from entering into the workplace. 2. Secondly, they can help prevent people clocking in unauthorized overtime which can prove to be a loss to the company in some way or the other. 3. Modern time clocks also help prevent workplaces from getting cheated when people clock in for their friends. 4. The attendance time clocks are a very good solution for large organizations to find out exactly about the work hours they are getting from their employees. It is unimaginable to keep track of this information on a manual basis. Attendance time clocks are certainly very important devices for the time and attendance requirements of an organization that hires employees, whether it is big or small. They have always been used, and are also evolving all the time. |