Small company sees big gains in accuracy, speed with biometric scanners
Running a weekly payroll for 200 employees at Dynamic Team Sports used to take one person about six hours — almost a full day. Now, it takes about 30 seconds.
The Toronto-based sportswear manufacturer replaced its punch-card system four years ago with one that scans employee’s fingerprints. To clock in, workers now enter a personal identification number (PIN) and then place a finger on the scanner, eliminating the costly problem of “buddy-punching” — clocking in an absent co-worker — when there are no senior managers around on the overnight shift.
“It gives us indisputable facts of when that employee punched in and when that employee punched out,” says Melanie Oleskiw, HR manager at Dynamic. “No one else can do that for you.”
The technology has also lessened the administrative load. Time and attendance data is instantly recorded and can be retrieved at any time in less than a minute. The biometric scanner also instantly calculates shift premiums and statutory holidays, alerts employees to upcoming events and provides access to holiday schedules or vacation records.
Once a week, all of that information is uploaded and sent to the company’s payroll provider with just one keystroke.
An increasingly popular technology, biometrics identify people using physical characteristics such as fingerprints and handprints. With fingerprints, the scanner reads a specific number of points on the finger to create a profile, which is then translated into a series of zeroes and ones, called an algorithm. That unique combination is stored and becomes the employee identification. Hand biometrics work similarly by scanning the geometry of the hand and seeking a match between the template stored for the person and the hand being scanned.
Biometrics are accurate, convenient and low maintenance, says Ed Van Hooydonk, business development director for Mitrefinch Canada, a Mississauga, Ont.-based time and attendance systems company.
“Once I register the person on the system, their template is stored and that’s all we have to do. I have to issue a PIN to them once, but once that’s done, I don’t have to worry about maintaining a card. I don’t have to worry about it getting lost. I don’t have to worry about reissuing a new card a year or two down the road when it wears out,” he says.
Scanners range from about $600 to as much as $3,500 but quickly pay for themselves, says Van Hooydonk, because losing a few minutes of productivity a day can end up costing a company thousands of dollars over a year.
Laws outdated
But some employees feel the scanners invade their privacy. And while provinces do have privacy legislation, nothing yet applies specifically to hand or fingerprint scanning, says Paul Boniferro, a labour lawyer at McCarthy Tetrault in Toronto. The technology has been challenged before labour arbitrators and most cases have been decided on very specific points of law, he says.
“The challenge, according to the arbitrator, is that before you tell me you need that kind of a system, you have to prove to me that you have a problem,” he says. “I think that’s just not keeping up with the times.”
So during collective bargaining, Boniferro has started inserting language into contracts that gives management the right to implement any kind of time management system that is “reasonable.”
Employee issues, such as concerns about privacy, can mean biometrics are not the right answer for everyone, says Van Hooydonk, and the scanners should not be considered a necessity unless there’s a major buddy-punching problem with swipe cards or expensive overhead related to managing cards.
“Biometrics is not the be all and end all for everyone and I think every organization has to kind of look inside and determine if it helps them further their business and if it does, great,” he says. “But if it’s not needed, don’t go there because you are adding another level of complexity to your system.”
But this approach has paid off for Dynamic Team Sports, says Oleskiw. Employees adopted the technology quickly and within months it was running smoothly, though there have been a few quirks — faint fingerprint profiles the machine won’t capture or sweaty hands that make it impossible for the scanner to recognize the fingerprint — and in these cases, employees have been issued swipe cards.
However, those inconveniences are minor compared with the time and cost savings, says Oleskiw, and companies with fewer employees who may have more than one job site or those with multiple departments should consider the technology.
Danielle Harder is a Whitby, Ont.-based freelance writer.
The Toronto-based sportswear manufacturer replaced its punch-card system four years ago with one that scans employee’s fingerprints. To clock in, workers now enter a personal identification number (PIN) and then place a finger on the scanner, eliminating the costly problem of “buddy-punching” — clocking in an absent co-worker — when there are no senior managers around on the overnight shift.
“It gives us indisputable facts of when that employee punched in and when that employee punched out,” says Melanie Oleskiw, HR manager at Dynamic. “No one else can do that for you.”
The technology has also lessened the administrative load. Time and attendance data is instantly recorded and can be retrieved at any time in less than a minute. The biometric scanner also instantly calculates shift premiums and statutory holidays, alerts employees to upcoming events and provides access to holiday schedules or vacation records.
Once a week, all of that information is uploaded and sent to the company’s payroll provider with just one keystroke.
An increasingly popular technology, biometrics identify people using physical characteristics such as fingerprints and handprints. With fingerprints, the scanner reads a specific number of points on the finger to create a profile, which is then translated into a series of zeroes and ones, called an algorithm. That unique combination is stored and becomes the employee identification. Hand biometrics work similarly by scanning the geometry of the hand and seeking a match between the template stored for the person and the hand being scanned.
Biometrics are accurate, convenient and low maintenance, says Ed Van Hooydonk, business development director for Mitrefinch Canada, a Mississauga, Ont.-based time and attendance systems company.
“Once I register the person on the system, their template is stored and that’s all we have to do. I have to issue a PIN to them once, but once that’s done, I don’t have to worry about maintaining a card. I don’t have to worry about it getting lost. I don’t have to worry about reissuing a new card a year or two down the road when it wears out,” he says.
Scanners range from about $600 to as much as $3,500 but quickly pay for themselves, says Van Hooydonk, because losing a few minutes of productivity a day can end up costing a company thousands of dollars over a year.
Laws outdated
But some employees feel the scanners invade their privacy. And while provinces do have privacy legislation, nothing yet applies specifically to hand or fingerprint scanning, says Paul Boniferro, a labour lawyer at McCarthy Tetrault in Toronto. The technology has been challenged before labour arbitrators and most cases have been decided on very specific points of law, he says.
“The challenge, according to the arbitrator, is that before you tell me you need that kind of a system, you have to prove to me that you have a problem,” he says. “I think that’s just not keeping up with the times.”
So during collective bargaining, Boniferro has started inserting language into contracts that gives management the right to implement any kind of time management system that is “reasonable.”
Employee issues, such as concerns about privacy, can mean biometrics are not the right answer for everyone, says Van Hooydonk, and the scanners should not be considered a necessity unless there’s a major buddy-punching problem with swipe cards or expensive overhead related to managing cards.
“Biometrics is not the be all and end all for everyone and I think every organization has to kind of look inside and determine if it helps them further their business and if it does, great,” he says. “But if it’s not needed, don’t go there because you are adding another level of complexity to your system.”
But this approach has paid off for Dynamic Team Sports, says Oleskiw. Employees adopted the technology quickly and within months it was running smoothly, though there have been a few quirks — faint fingerprint profiles the machine won’t capture or sweaty hands that make it impossible for the scanner to recognize the fingerprint — and in these cases, employees have been issued swipe cards.
However, those inconveniences are minor compared with the time and cost savings, says Oleskiw, and companies with fewer employees who may have more than one job site or those with multiple departments should consider the technology.
Danielle Harder is a Whitby, Ont.-based freelance writer.
