Biometric time and attendance systems can reduce the losses caused by “phantom hours”

Biometric time and attendance systems can help prevent the losses caused by staff clocking “phantom hours”, which equate to about £37 million a week for UK businesses, according to a recent survey by Rotaready.

The research reveals that shift workers in the retail, hospitality and leisure industries overstate their working hours by almost half an hour a week on average. With a combined workforce of 8.3 million, these ‘phantom hours’ cost UK businesses £37m each week, or £1.9bn annually.

Rota scheduling issues are cited by employees as the main reason they overstate their hours, with half of respondents stating “I worked through my break” and others arguing they simply had “too much to do”. Other reasons include being underpaid (15%) and one in six do it simply because “everyone does”.

Rota-related concerns are the main cause of absences with almost half (48%) stating that ‘making shift patterns fairer’ would have prevented them from pulling a sickie and four in ten (38%) saying that ‘sharing the rota in better time’ would have kept them honest. Anecdotal insights from the survey show that many contributing factors could be easily resolved, these include “more flexibility”, “ability to swap shifts”, and “enough time for sleep between shifts.”

Time & Attendance UK – expert suppliers of biometric time and attendance systems

Keeping tabs on when staff are supposed to be at work and all other matters of absence or lateness reporting are covered by Time and Attendance UK clocking systems.

Biometrics can be added to your time and attendance system to provide irrefutable proof of identity. Time and Attendance UK have a range of dermal fingerprint scanners that read below the surface layer of skin down to the dermal layer where your true fingerprint resides. You can choose where you wish your biometric readers to be.

If you want to find out more about the range of affordable, reliable solutions provided by Time & Attendance UK, just contact our dedicated product team, they’ll be more than happy to answer any question you might have.