Every company loses money in some way or another; after all, even the tightest ship can’t avoid the inevitable pinhole leak here and there. It’s really a question of where the leaks are and how large they are – as well as how well the crew of the ship is able to deal with these leaks when they do occur. However, some leaks are larger and most certainly avoidable. If you haven’t guessed by now, we’re not really talking about ships or you as the owner or manager of a company in your capacity as captain. What we’re here to talk about is one of the biggest money leaks any company deals with – employee time theft. Whether by accident or by design, it costs your company money but thankfully, there is a way to plug this particular leak once and for all and it’s as easy as deploying a new CS time clock.

How Time Theft Happens

Not all time theft occurs because of an employee’s malicious intent. Some of it is quite innocent and completely accidental – not that this makes a difference to its impact on your firm’s bottom line of course. While you wouldn’t necessarily want to punish an employee for absent mindedly forgetting to clock out for lunch or a break, you also want to prevent these kinds of costly accidents from occurring in the first place. The first step to putting a lid on time theft is to upgrade your company’s time and attendance system.

Unlike a Bundy clock, an electronic time clock doesn’t use time cards, so employees can’t punch in for one another easily. Each staff member is given a unique login, either an ID card which can be scanned by a proximity sensor, an individual PIN code or in the case of biometric access control systems, their own fingerprint – making it difficult for your staff to cover for their mates who are running late or out for the day by clocking in for them.

There are also incidences of employee time theft where an unscrupulous employee will deliberately take advantages of the vulnerability of a traditional punch clock by clocking in for the day and then leaving for hours at a time while still being paid as if they’d been on the job all the time. It’s not something that happens at every company fortunately and it may not be happening at yours at the moment, but upgrading to electronic time clocks and especially biometric access control systems which require employees to log in to the system to enter or leave the building, you can put a stop to this costly crime of opportunity once and for all.

We don’t mean to make you doubt your staff. Certainly most, if not all, of your employees would never deliberately defraud your company in this way. However, if you want to be protected from intentional or accidental employee time theft as well as enjoying the savings these time and attendance systems can offer your firm, it’s time to go with a biometric clock and start resting just a little easier.