How can you ensure there is no employee Time Theft?

What is time theft?

Time theft at a workplace happens when an employee is working less than his/her designated work shift and accepts pay for the time they did not actually work for. Since the employee is not working for the necessary amount of hours or doing the necessary amount of work, it is considered as stealing company time.

Time theft can be committed by any employee in any sector or industry and there are various forms and levels of time theft.

What are some of the ways employees commit time theft?

The Time Round Off

It is a common nature between humans to round off the time when noting or informing the time. It is thus not uncommon for employees to round off the time, in their favour, while filling out the time sheets and there is no way to ensure the time entered by the employees is accurate.

Some employees also find ways around the electronic timekeeping systems like leaving little early and then coming back later to punch in.

The Proxy

Another similar way employees have found around electronic time keeping systems is through proxy punching with the help of their colleagues. In this case the employee gives his swipe card to his friend so he can punch in his ID as well whether it is coming early or leaving late. Even in case of paper time sheets, they sometimes request their friends to sign in for them when they come in to show earlier time or when they are leaving to show later time.

The Social Hour

Most offices have designated lunch or break time for their employees. But there is no system of monitoring breaks in offices. Extending over lunch times or breaks is a simple example of time theft. Whether it’s a 30-minute, 45 minute or one hour long break, employees many a times extend their break duration by 10-30 minutes.

Another example is smoke breaks. Employees that smoke tend to take a break multiple times during the day; sometimes they even use this time to go and buy cigarettes that takes additional time.

These habits largely affect the overall output.

The Maze Of Internet

Many employees have a habit of checking their personal mails, social media sites, playing games online and even online shopping. These personal activities are being done on the company time and they mainly cause under productivity. The Internet is a huge distraction and cause of time theft.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

Many employees are required to go for site visits, sales, meetings, deliveries etc. they leave the office with proper instructions and permissions to perform their functions. While they are out, there is no way of knowing how much time they actually took to complete their tasks, if they made stops on the way or if they are even really where they are supposed to be. This too is a major cause of time theft.

After observing and experiencing this phenomenon, we at Faceorbit have come up with a new, efficient system of employee monitoring that can help deal with the issue of time theft.

How can Faceorbit help to prevent time theft at your workplace?

With our new Smart Attendance System, your employee would need to be physically present to mark their attendance. With facial scanning, the attendance is marked quickly with precise timing. Every time an employee has to enter or leave the office, for break, work visit or any other purpose, they would need to do a scan so that the device also tracks their absence from the office.

With a device monitoring their exact presence in the office, the employees feel more accountable and responsible to work their full shift duration.

We also offer a range of other services that can help you make you and your workplace more efficient.