With the ExakTime attendance software, employees using wireless devices punch in and the employer can verify their identity and location using global positioning system satellite service and facial recognition technology. It works on Apple Inc. iPhones or iPads, the Research in Motion Inc. BlackBerry or handheld devices with Google Inc.’s Android or Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile operating systems.
Metal punch clocks and cardboard time cards have become so last millennium with the advent of software-based time-tracking systems aimed at construction sites.
California-based ExakTime has put a futuristic spin on punching in by incorporating facial recognition and Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking into its PocketClock/GPS time tracking and attendance software system.
Employees clock in and out by punching a green or red touch-screen button on their current iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, or Windows Mobile Smartphone or Tablet. The company’s FaceFront Biometrics photo verification feature uses the device’s front-facing camera lens to snap a photo of employees as they punch the clock.
“This eliminates what’s called buddy-punching—one employee clocking in for another,” says ExakTime’s vice president of marketing, Casey Powers.
“The photos are sent to the office along with the clock data where the bookkeeper can match the employee field photos to their master photos stored in the office as part of our TimeSummit software package.”
Powers notes that a contractor employing 10 employees could lose upwards of 400 hours of work time each year if each employee misses just 10 minutes of work per day. Some contractors purchase smartphones and licences for all of their employees in order to fully roll out the system, while others purchase a licence only for the superintendent, who can punch employees in and out on their behalf.
Recent additions to the package include French-language support and GPS tracking of workers through their hand-helds. Superintendents can map the perimeter of the job site using GPS co-ordinates, a parameter known as a geo-fence. Even if the worker needs to visit multiple job sites, each of those sites can be tagged with its own project name and workers can indicate when they’ve moved from one site to another.
“If they clock in at a project site and then clock out at the beach, the TimeSummit software will flag them,” says Powers.
“What’s cool is that you’ll not only know that they punched out at the wrong place, you’ll know exactly where they were when they did it.”
Additional functionality allows contractors to track the equipment used by each worker. Contractors assign a unique name to each piece of equipment, then track it in real-time by employee and worksite.
“If you take backhoe 1 or jackhammer 3, workers can indicate that on the smartphone,” says Powers.
“You now know who last used the equipment, how long they used it and on which site the equipment is now located. The contractor can maintain a full history of each piece of field equipment.”
Workers can also incorporate field notes into their daily reports, capturing pictures, notes and voice recordings of anything noteworthy on the project site, such as unsafe conditions or work that requires more attention. These notes are logged and sent to the central office.
Whether the reach of the new software appears beneficial or overly authoritarian usually depends on the mindset of the individual worker, notes Powers.
“Workers who are honest love it, because the idea of misrepresenting the number of hours worked offends their sense of honour,” he says.
“People who have a tendency to be dishonest also tend to have a problem with it.”
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