Peter F. Drucker once famously said, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve/manage it.” This thought has been one of the main cornerstones of almost all the modern day business establishments. They spend millions on designing and implementing performance measurement and management (PMM) systems across all the divisions so that the right metrics gets captured, measured, analyzed and managed. This leads the modern day businesses towards their productivity and revenue goals.

Unlike the operational divisions of the modern business establishments, where a PMM system can be easily integrated for defining and capturing the metrics, it becomes very daunting for the one division which mainly manages the most critical asset of the business, the human capital. The human resources (HR) division is tasked with the performance measurement and management of employees, and it quickly gets very challenging as it can get very subjective. But with the right PMM system, you can add objectivity and capture the performance of the employee more accurately.

One such essential PMM system is a biometric attendance system which is a system that requires unique biometric traits such as fingerprints or iris scans of employees as the key identification parameter. With the integration of this system, the HR can capture vital metrics about the employees’ engagement. There are many metrics which give interesting insights to the HR. They are as follows:

1. The In and Out Times: With this metric, the HR can know the exact time of entry and exit of each employee. Since the fingerprint/iris scan is the key identification parameter, HR can rule out proxies and be assured that the employee has either entered or exited the premises.
2. The Effective Time: If the HR wants a more specific measurement of the employee engagement, the perfect metric is the effective time. With strategic placement of the biometric sensors, the HR can accurately capture the actual working times of the employees, separating them from the break times.

With these two metrics, the HR can proactively determine the employee engagement pattern over a week/month/quarter/half-year/year. The corresponding corrective actions or rewards can be planned for the employees too.

How the Biometric Attendance Systems benefits the HR to be proactive:

1. The HR can oversee a pattern of employee behavior with the entry, exit and active engagement times.
2. The HR can get very insightful reports with colorful and meaningful graphs about these metrics automatically which was previously done manually.
3. The same system can be integrated with the employee payroll, lessening the burden on the HR.
4. The system enables HR to focus more on new talent acquisition and existing talent requisition activities.

Thus, the Biometric Attendance System is a boon to any modern business establishment and is one of the most effective HR tools that both, the establishment and the HR need to accomplish their productivity and revenue goals. With hundreds of vendors offering biometric systems, it is easier for all the companies to implement one.