The Cost of Buddy Punching in Your Business

Can you estimate the cost of buddy punching in your business? According to new research, the buddy punching is costing American businesses at least $373 million in payroll costs nationally every year. According to another survey conducted on 1,000 independent employees, it was found that 16 percent of the respondents gave 15 minutes to co-workers by buddy punching which cost $373 million to the annual payroll bill. Before asking how you can solve this problem, let’s discuss buddy punching in detail. 

What Is Buddy Punching? 

Buddy punching is a simple term that means clocking in for someone else. When one of your employees punches in for others, this is buddy punching. It happens when one employee shares their credentials with others. It can be a password, user id, etc. 

Reason For Buddy Punching 

The lack of proper technology paves the way for buddy punching. Using technology, one employee punches in for another. Here is how it may happen. 

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Using RFID Card Base System 

RFID cards can be passed on to another person, so it becomes easy for the employees to buddy punch for one another. No matter how good the device is, if one employee passes their card to another, buddy punching can happen. 

Using Password-Based System 

A password-based system is the same as an RFID card password-based system in that it can be manipulated; employees can pass on their passwords and credentials to one another, and can punch in for one another. Since there is no system that detects who inputs the password, this becomes tough for the employers to detect the buddy punching. 

Biometric Time Clock a Solution to Buddy Punching 

Only a biometric time clock can save employers millions of dollars from buddy punching. Biometric technology uses human attributes for identification such as a fingerprint, finger vein, or iris. These attributes remain the same and cannot be forged or manipulated. Also, human attributes cannot be passed on to another person like a password or RFID. Moreover, the system provides an accurate result, performs faster, and is very convenient to use. However, if biometrics sounds expensive for you, then you should go for RightPunch (a biometric time clock for Kronos), which is affordable and very easy to deploy and use.  

Real Life Example 

Forever 21, one of the largest retail stores  in the U.S.A., has 700 stores in more than 48 countries. For many years they were unable to identify employee time theft in their retail stores. They were looking for a solution that could accurately track employee time attendance and prevent time theft, buddy punching, and ghost employee problems in their retail stores. To eliminate this problem, Forever 21 wanted to deploy something that is accurate and impossible to manipulate. But not all of the solutions could meet their expectations due to some challenges they were facing deploying such a solution. RightPunch, an affordable PC-based biometric time clock for Kronos, helped them to get rid of this problem, as this affordable biometric time clock completely eliminates buddy punching and time theft at their retail stores.  

So, do you want to receive the same benefits as Forever 21? If you are a Kronos user and looking for such an affordable solution to buddy punching and time theft, then contact us. With over 17 years of experience, we can surely help.