Avoid Clock Creep

Shifts might have designated end times, but often an employee’s work may not. It is common in many organizations for an employee to clock out after their shift has ended, which tacks on time to their time worked. This may only be a few minutes each day, but cumulatively, this can add up to meaningful amounts of time that require paying overtime or trigger other requirements. This “clock creep” can be costly for businesses and result in unexpected budget impact.

Integrating ZKTeco’s Ultima device with your organization’s Human Capital Management system (HCM) can help to avoid clock creep by using rounding rules for time punches falling outside of the employee’s scheduled shift. For example, if an employee’s shift ends at 5:00PM, but she clocks out at 5:03, Ultima’s rounding rule function will record the punch out time as 5:00 if there is a rounding rule that records time in fifteen minute increments and defaults back to the prior quarter hour. Ultima will then push the rounded time to the HCM.

Rounding rules can be applied individually to all punch types. These rules are also customizable to a specific organization’s policies and labor law requirements.

Simplify Payroll and HR Processes

Rounding rules help Human Resources (HR) teams avoid the time-intensive work required to verify punch times to avoid clock creep. This results in more efficient payroll processes. This also enables HR professionals to identify real issues, such as unapproved or excessive overtime, which may require attention. By surfacing real time punch issues, HR professionals will be better equipped to remedy issues and avoid significant budget issues down the line.

Further, because the review process will be less intensive, HR can enlist people managers to help identify punch time anomalies and work with their team members to resolve the issue.

Simple Solutions to Avoid Complex Problems

Implementing rounding rules can help an organization better manage their employees time and avoiding unexpected or unintentional budget or employment law compliance issues. Clock creep impacts businesses of all sizes and of all types. Utilizing the Ultima timeclock’s rounding rules function, in combination with your HCM’s shift scheduling process, can help to avoid clock creep and headaches and issues that come with it.

Say Goodbye Paper Visitor Logs and Protect Your Facility - Visitor Check-in Made Easy

A Simple Process for Visitors and Facility Administrators

The Ultima device is simple for visitors to use, providing easy to follow prompts, guiding them through the check-in process without the need for assistance. Here is an example of a typical visitor’s check-in experience:

• The visitor will check-in on the Ultima device by providing personal information and will indicate the person the visitor is there to see.
• Next, the visitor will be asked a series of attestation questions. This attestation feature can be used to ask COVID-19-related questions and to gather information required by state and local health authorities.
• The Ultima device will then record the visitor’s body temperature using Ultima’s built-in thermal camera and, if enabled, take a still-image snapshot of the visitor for identification purposes.
• When the visitor check-in process is completed, a Red Flag alert will be sent to up to three personnel within your organization if the visitor’s attestation responses or body temperature reading indicate that there is an issue and the visitor should not be allowed into the facility (e.g., the visitor has a fever or indicates a recent potential exposure to COVID-19)

Many Useful Features, One Powerful Device

As this example illustrates, the visitor module is easy to use. But because every business has different requirements, the module is designed with many customizable features.

Thermal Module: Ultima’s thermal module will read a visitor’s body temperature and indicate whether that temperate is within an acceptable temperature range. If the visitor’s temperature falls outside of that range, a warning will be triggered. This module works with Ultima’s mask recognition functionality, which does not require removing a face mask.

Attestation Questions: The visitor module can be configured to ask visitors attestation questions to gather critical wellness information or other information from visitors to your facility. All of this information can be stored for future reference, (e.g., for contract tracing) or passed on to a third party system (e.g., an Amazon S3 bucket).

Photographs for Security: Ultima is equipped with a camera which can be used to capture a visitor’s image for security purposes. The visitor’s image is linked to other data collected during the check-in process and can be stored for future reference and identification purposes.

Notifications: Ultima can be configured to send a Red Flag warning notification to three individuals within the organization based on how a visitor answers attestation questions or if a body temperature reading indicates a visitor has a fever. This notification can be customized to include the visitor’s answers to the attestation questions, temperature data, and photograph, providing facility managers with critical information in real time.

Data Storage: Ultima can store visitor records, including attestation question answers and temperature data. Because temperature information may be considered health information under HIPPA, the visitor module can also be configured to provide a temperature reading for compliance purposes, but not store the visitor’s temperature information.

Configuration Menus: With all of these available features, Ultima’s administrative menus are designed to make configuration easy. Administrators can choose from many optional features in an easy-to-navigate set of menus to customize their solution, as needed

By integrating visitor management into the Ultima device, organizations can simplify and streamline workforce data management and visitor management into one versatile device and leverage Ultima’s many technical, integration, and installation options. Visitor management has become more complicated and business-critical during the COVID-19 pandemic. Speak with a ZKTeco representative today about how the Ultima visitor management system can work for your organization.