Is Biometric Attendance Verification Right for your Organization?

Several factors can help you determine whether to invest in biometric time recorders.
First determine whether there is a need for biometric technology in the workplace. Then consider the potential return on investment. Finally, make sure that the work environment is physically suitable for biometric devices, and that employees can accept and use the technology.
1) Evaluate the need for authentication or identification.
As mentioned earlier, a workplace with employee time fraud problem
s, like buddy punching, can benefit greatly from the use of biometric time recorders. A need to control security access to portions of a building can be answered with biometrics,
as well. Alternately, a workplace with no security concerns or hourly workers may not need biometrics to maintain accurate
employee time and attendance records.
2) Consider the cost/benefit ratio. If there is a need for biometrics, consider the cost.
For a smaller organization, the cost of biometric equipment may be greater than any gains from the elimination of time theft. However, the price for biometric technology is dropping as technological advances are made and adoption becomes more widespread.
Economies of scale and sophisticated engineering continue to lower the cost of biometric devices. Lower cost biometric time clocks have begun to enter the market, and may be an option for many organizations. Your time and attendance provider can help you weigh the benefitsof installing biometric time clocks.
3) Assess the compatibility of the biometric technology with the work environment. It is essential that biometric readings be as accurate as possible. For this reason, the environment in which biometric sensors are used is crucial to ensure good
reads of employee biometric characteristics. An environment that is too humid or dirty can obscure the fingerprint on a finger reader platen (or reading surface), making it more difficult to correctly scan the finger. A noisy environment can disrupt the proper collection of voice data.Persons being scanned with the biometric device can also impact the suitability of that device. For example, a retinal scan requires that a person gaze into an eyepiece. Without cooperation, this type of scan could be
difficult. Individuals with worn finger whorls and ridges, due toyears of welding or other occupations, may not be able to
successfully use a finger reader. In any environment, a small percentage of the population cannot use the biometric
system, for example, 3% of people cannot use finger readers, so it is imperative that the device has an alternate method for interaction. For time recorders, this method usually involves the entry of a PIN and passcode instead of the biometric scanner.
4) Be sensitive to the concerns of employees. When considering the purchase of biometric time recorders it is
important to address the privacy concerns of employees. For example, explain to employees thata finger
or hand reader does not store or recognize employee fingerprints—it uses hand or finger measurements to create a
template for the employee. These measurements are used only for in-company authentication and security access.
They cannot be used to recreate biometric data such as a person’s actual fingerprint.
Furthermore, you can emphasize that employee privacy is enhanced with biometric time clocks.When an employee accesses
his benefit time balances using a biometrictime clock, no other employee is privy to these records, increasing the security of his personal information. Employees may also be concerned about the potential health impact of using the same finger orhand sensor that many other employees use. To answer these concerns, assure employees that the sensor is
no more used than a door knob orATM. Furthermore, antibacterial materials are now being developed for some time clocks. One example of a time clock that uses antibacterial materials is the RSIHandPunch, available through Attendance on Demand and InfoTronics, Inc.
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