How Can We Stop Employees from Misusing Lunch Breaks and Improve Attendance?

Dear all,

We have over 1200 employees in our organization. We have a proximity card punching system for attendance. We have a canteen for hostelers. We have to punch in the card reader for each in & out. Our lunch duration is one hour. For our working convenience, we have set our lunchtime between 12:30 and 3:30.

The problem is:

a) Some of the hostelers are dining during lunch hours without punching out.
b) After having lunch at the canteen, they punch out and leave the campus, spending an additional hour outside.
c) As a result, we are losing man-hours.

We have implemented a 3/4 system, such as installing a separate card reader at the dining hall, but that hasn't helped us reduce this practice.

Can you all suggest some ideas to resolve this issue?

Thanks in advance.

BPOSITIVE

Hi,

For such a situation, what I suggest is that you install a separate card-punching machine at the canteen. Anyone who comes to the canteen must punch in their time of arrival and time of departure. Later, you can calculate the time difference between the departure time from the office and the arrival time at the canteen, and vice versa.

This solution might help alleviate your problem to a great extent.

Let me know if you need any further assistance.

You can also try installing a CCTV in the cafe and then randomly check the presence against the record you fetch from the punching system. Strict disciplinary action for the defaulters as a follow-up will surely help. However, you'll have to see the cost-effectiveness of installing a CCTV as against losing the man-hours.

All the best for your efforts though :-)

I was once managing a retail workforce management project. SAP's iTimeClock is a tool that I found to be very effective in tracking time. However, after having wide and in-depth discussions with my retail partners, my understanding is the following (addressing your concern, given the measures you have already taken).

There is no easy (or foolproof) electronic/technological way of tracking break times. After several days of discussions with a range of technology and retail partners, our conclusion was that the only way to enforce honest timekeeping is to provide for a techno-manual solution. Implement a time punching system that takes employee's ID number (or a punch card in your case) to punch time in and out. This time is then approved by their immediate supervisor. We need to put in enough HR processes to make it mandatory for the supervisors to track and approve time correctly. Tying the time tracking, approval, and following the HR processes activities to the individual's performance reviews would help incentivize employees at all levels to follow the processes.

Since the time tracking technology is tied to the individual's employee ID, each employee is responsible for time logging. If one employee gains access to another's ID or badge or punch card to punch time for him or her, then the individual whose time is being punched is held accountable - not the one who is actually punching.

All this, at the end of each day (or payroll period) is verified and approved by the supervisor, who then becomes accountable for accurate time logging of his or her staff. There would be multiple levels of such checks and balances, all the way up to VP or Senior VP level in the retail organization.

This system was widely discussed and implemented in over 15,000 stores nationwide (in the US) for this company I was working for. It is still not 100% foolproof, but pretty close to it - because the chain of accountability goes all the way from individual store representatives up to Regional VPs, to corporate VP to Senior VP in the Retail space. There have to be many broken links in this chain for someone to break the rules and effectively get away with it. Further, because this is tied to individual's performance reviews at every level in the organization, everyone would be incentivized to log their time accurately as well as ensure their staff is logging their time correctly.

That said, it is easier to track an employee's movements in a store by a store supervisor. However, it may not be just as simple in your organization to do so (if you are running an office or a factory or a manufacturing plant. However, it could be a possibility to adapt the above idea and tailor it to your specific needs and constraints. Regardless, this would be a large project if you have to run this for an entire corporation (depending on the size of your company) and at any size, it would require the sponsorship and commitment of the senior leaders and top brass of the company.

All the best.

Regards,

--Som G

Indians are experts in malpractices. No other nationals can match Indians' skills in manipulations and malpractices. To avoid this, organizations, especially the HR department, have to ensure that the employees they target possess minimum standards as below:

- Should exhibit punctuality.
- Should be from a good academic background.
- Should be well-mannered.
- Should have a good and disciplined family background.
- Should have good communication skills.
- Must have a good sense of humor.
- Should have good intellectual quality.

Only then can employees show some degree of respect for your systems and procedures. If you recruit people from campuses as if picking them up from street corners of any town without considering the mentioned credentials, you are bound to face problems, and every solution becomes the genesis of the next problem. Only a disciplined workforce can make things work in an environment where a large workforce is employed because you cannot counsel each and every individual employee.

Partho

Hi there,

It is natural that with 1200 employees, there has to be a perfect system of discipline enforced. The lack of this shows up in different ways. Your organization must have its own certified standing orders. If they are in existence, you will surely have mention of timings and grace timings.

There are factories where employees punch at the gate and take time to reach their workplace because of the huge size of the premises. A period of grace time is given in such cases. For example, if you punch in at 8:30 am as per the rule, you are given 5 to 10 minutes to start your work. This grace time depends on the traveling time a normal person would take to reach the work location.

Similarly, when it comes to the dining hall, you could install a rotating gate (turnstile) that unlocks only when employees swipe their card, allowing one person in at a time.

It's important to have a fixed grace time for reaching the workplace after lunch hours. Additionally, ensure that security at the gate insists on a signed gate pass from each person leaving the premises at times other than closing time.

Consider starting to deduct pay for delayed work starts beyond the grace time. Enforce the rule of marking a person absent if they report later than the given time limit.

There may be some resistance to these changes, but they are necessary to prevent increased suffering for management. Remember, without discipline, your business enterprise will incur losses, and innocent employees will also suffer. Maintain fairness but be firm in your approach.

Regards