Facial recognition in the workplace is going to become more and more commonplace in a post-pandemic world. Business owners across the globe are looking for contactless ways for employees to clock in and out and calculate payroll. As a result, biometric time and attendance solutions will become more utilized than they previously were. 

However, facial recognition technology can conjure up a negative image for some. But this needn’t be the case. If done securely and in line with biometric time clock laws, facial recognition is a far cry from an Orwellian future.

If you’re still on the fence, allow us to twist your arm with the five profound benefits facial recognition technology can have on your business’s time and attendance monitoring.  

1. Improves Workplace Security

Employees are likely to be a little bit wary of returning to the office after a year of working in their pajamas at home. However, you can make them feel more secure and safe as they return to work post-COVID by utilizing facial recognition technology. 

One of the benefits of biometric facial recognition is it can stop unauthorized personnel from entering your workplace. Facial recognition can be used to recognize employees upon entry and confirm or deny access. This is especially useful if your business has an expensive inventory, sensitive information, or demands certain sanitary measures. 

Furthermore, using a biometric time clock with facial recognition also keeps employee data safer than a manual time and attendance system ever could.

Think of it this way, you cannot alter your face or unique fingerprint. Therefore, it’s impossible for other employees or people outside of your organization to access an employee’s data. This keeps an employee’s work schedule, rate of pay, and any other private work information confidential and only accessible to that employee. 

2. Prevents Buddy Punching

As mentioned above, a biometric time and attendance system only lets an employee clock in as themselves. So, this not only benefits employees; it also benefits you. This is because facial recognition completely eradicates buddy punching, one of the most common forms of employee time theft. 

Buddy punching is when an employee logs in for another employee to ensure they aren’t marked late or even absent from work. This can be difficult for businesses to tackle. It’s even more difficult to tackle if you have a remote workforce who clock in from different locations. 

However, facial recognition technology ensures that this practice is no longer possible. This can save your business a lot of money as well as help you tackle employee tardiness and absenteeism.

Moreover, some facial recognition time and attendance solutions can also track whether employees are clocking in from the correct location. For example, Timerack’s employee time clock app has a geofencing attendance system that provides a timestamped GPS record for where a remote employee has tracked in from. Facial recognition technology and geofencing ensure that the right employee is checking in, and not from the couch!

3. Helps You Save Time and Grow Your Business

Employee time and attendance tasks take a lot of time. If you still run off a manual time and attendance system, there are countless administrative tasks you need to complete. These include:

  • The processing of paper sheets and time cards
  • Creating employee schedules
  • Authorizing employee leave and overtime
  • Manually creating payroll

Moreover, this is before you factor in mopping up the occasional mistakes or discrepancies that come through human error. However, a fully automated time and attendance system with facial recognition provides you with one easy-to-manage central location in which to manage and execute these processes.

Not having to do all of these tasks on a weekly or monthly basis will free you up to do more pressing and meaningful tasks. As a result, you’ll be able to focus on what’s important; growing your business. 

4. Makes Your Workplace More COVID complaint

As already touched on, some of your employees will likely harbor some concerns about returning to work. This is understandable. Although vaccination rollouts are now in full swing, we all still need to be cautious of coronavirus. 

Clocking in and out through facial recognition technology allows for a cleaner and hands-free method of entering the workplace. This is way more sanitary than entering a code into a time clock or manually signing in via pen and paper. 

What’s more, a biometric time and attendance system can also be used in conjunction with a COVID-19 employee symptom screening platform. Investing in these kinds of solutions, not only makes your workplace more COVID-compliant, but it also makes employees feel more comfortable returning to the office.

5. Extremely User Friendly

The final item in this list of benefits of biometric facial recognition is its usability. It’s safe to assume that the vast majority of your employees will have taken a selfie before. Clocking in and out via facial recognition technology is as simple as that. 

What’s more, with Timerack’s time and attendance solutions, employees can view their schedule, request time off, or check their payslips in just a few clicks.

Bottom Line

As you can see, facial recognition technology used in conjunction with time and attendance benefits both employee and employer. 

For your employees, their personal data is secure, work information is easier to access, and clocking in and out is cleaner and safer than with a manual system. Whereas, for you, biometrics at work can prevent employee time theft, allow you to easily monitor employee time and attendance, and can help you grow your business. 

However, to tackle some of the apprehensions employees could have about using this technology, it’s best to be transparent and draw up a clear facial recognition privacy policy for your employees. After that, employees are bound to be on board.

The benefits of facial recognition in the workplace are so abundantly clear that, even without a crystal ball, we can safely say that it will become an integral part of our professional lives. So, why wait? Start using this technology now. 
Schedule a personalized demo to see how a facial recognition employee time clock could benefit your business.