Regularizing attendance is one of the key challenges for any organization that actively tracks employee attendance. HR managers get a flood of requests from employees requesting a correction (formal term is ‘regularization’) of attendance entries recorded by an attendance management system.

This problem is more severe across organizations running multiple shifts and having a mix of permanent/temporary workforce. Scale of the problem increases exponentially if company has more than 100 employees checking-in daily. In this article, we explore the attendance regularization challenge in detail and suggest potential solutions for the same.

What is attendance regularization?

Regularization of attendance is a term used to ‘correct’ the entries recorded by an attendance management system, be it biometric or RFID based. Corrections happen either because of missed entries, incorrect shifts or system errors.

1. Missed entries:

Missed entries happen because employees either forget to swipe during check-in or check-out process. Some common reasons for missed entries are:

1. Employees simply forgets to register thumbprint or forgets to to carry his/her RFID card

2. System errors or database issues

3. Off-site or travel (very common issue for fixed location devices)

4. Work-from-home (a new reality in the post-Covid world)

Every attendance system has some provision to override back-dated entries and handle such corrections. Missed entries are very common problem regardless of the kind of attendance management solution.

2. Incorrect shift assignment:

Companies that maintain an active shift roster often encounter situations where an employee who was supposed to check-in for Shift A (as per pre-assigned roster) turns up in Shift B. Since attendance tracking system is expecting Shift A, it does not record check-in/check-out time of a person who comes in Shift B. This leads to a costly exercise of going into the database and making necessary corrections.

For companies engaging blue collar workers, it is very common to dynamically change shifts of employees based on varying shop-floor/production demand. Also, unexpected breakdowns or plant shutdowns need a quick reallocation of resources to address the immediate issue at-hand. Pre-assigned shift rosters cant keep up with this dynamic allocation of human resources and therein lies the problem.

3. System issues and database errors

Depending on which attendance management system is in use, companies have system issues from time-to-time that include:

1. Undetected check-ins: In biometric systems, people encounter a situation wherein thumb impressions are not properly detected. Finger print readers also are prone to errors due to environmental conditions such as high moisture etc. RFID cards are reliant on carrying a physical card at all times and there is always the issue of proxy attendance.
2. Database connectivity: Often times, databases have issues connecting to the attendance terminal and pulling the latest data. Lack of data flow into the database leads to a delay in correction of any check-in data
3. Lack of real-time data: Most hardware devices don’t support ‘cloud’ technologies. As a result, data is stored on a desktop software and is not easily accessible to other employees on demand. Frequency of updating of this data is also erratic.
4. Power failure: Most biometric devices are low-cost and support a backup of merely 2-3 hours. System does not function incase of extended power disruptions.

What is the challenge with regularization?

Challenge is that most employees report corrections right at the end of the month or just before the salary payment cycle. Since salary payment is linked to the check-in data, employees report correction at the last moment.

This leads to following challenges:

1. Delay in payroll: Since corrections need to be made before payroll, pending regularization requests cause a delay in salary disbursements
2. Last minute rush: Key managers handling attendance get overwhelmed with requests that pour in at the last minute. This creates unnecessary stress in the system
3. Lack of notifications: Employees get to know that there are issues with their attendance entries after a significant delay. Existing solutions do a poor job in communicating any anomalies in real-time. These delays are also a major reason of a last minute corrections before payroll finalization.
4. Unstructured requests: What makes it even more challenging is that all regularization requests are made verbally, or via email etc. Such requests become difficult to manage at scale and can often lead to frustrating errors in payroll

Prevailing solutions to solve the attendance regularization problem

Some common practices followed by small and medium sized businesses to solve the regularization problem:

1. Maintain a manual register:

This is a common method popular among small and medium enterprises, employing blue collar workers. Apart from checking in via an attendance management system, employees are expected to write down the time & sign a register. When faced with any discrepancy, HR managers cross-check entries in the system with those physically entered in the register

2. Weekly review of missed entries:

Some companies have a proactive correction policy where each employee is asked to send in correction requests within a specific time window. This forces employees to check their attendance, work hours, overtime hours and report corrections.

How Arvi.ai makes attendance regularization super simple

1. Instant communication

Arvi is a fully cloud-enabled solution where data from the check-in device flows to our cloud databases in real-time. Any missed check-ins or anomalies are instantly detected by our back-end systems and an email/SMS or Whatsapp alert is sent to respective employee and attendance manager with relevant details. Employees can immediately detect the mistake and report to the HR manager via our mobile app. Instant communication and real-time alerts make the entire regularization process smooth and seamless.

2. Auto-correction algorithms for mismatched shifts

Our roster allocation algorithms are smart enough to detect any anomalies in swipes data viz-a-viz shift roster. When faced with such anomalies, our back-end infrastructure makes necessary corrections and sends a report to HR manager for a one-time approval. This saves a lot of time for managers while simultaneously reducing the number of regularization requests.

3. Power back-up and zero risk of losing data

Arvi uses a ‘tablet’ or ‘mobile phone’ as a check-in device. Today’s mobile devices come with long back-up times that can be further increased by purchasing low-cost power backups. Companies can get a full 24-hour power backup at a very low cost for a standard android/iOS device.

4. Supports remote attendance capture

Perhaps the biggest value add is that each employee can check-in from his/her own mobile phone. Employees traveling or working remotely don’t have to worry about missing the attendance for the day. They can simply login to ‘Arvi selfie-check’ app on their mobile phone using their official credentials and record attendance/GPS location.

For a free 30-day trial of arvi selfie-check attendance management solution, please visit arvi.ai, register and start using the solution, no credit cards required.