Though most employees are reliable, there are still a couple who try to scam their timesheets; these are known as time thefts. Time theft is the purposely fraudulent act of an employee faking his hours worked.
This action implies that the employee receives pay for the time that was not put into work. This scam is costly and an extra baggage for a company. Hence, it is vital that you know the most widely recognized ways employees could cheat on your organization’s time and attendance system.
Here they are:
1. Untruthful Attendance Data Entry
In numerous companies, attendance data must be moved from time sheets or time cards into the payroll system. For this situation, a dishonest typist or in-charge might just alter the information. In addition to intended scamming, this system is susceptible to oversights and typographical error.
2. Buddy Punching
When an employee has another close employee to “punch” or sign the time sheet for him; because he is late or he is absent, buddy punching happens. This permits the worker to add hours to his time & attendance system for which he did not work.
3. Inflating Work Hours
Electronic or manual time sheets are utilized in several companies where compensation depends on an hourly rate. Fabricating these records might be as simple as writing the inaccurate start and close time, and inflating the hours worked, depending upon the system.
This data might be hard to validate when your employees start and end shifts at different times. In this case, you would be compensating an employee for hours he didn’t work.
4. Favoritism
Favoritism is precisely favoring somebody not because he is doing an excellent job, but because of some reasons not related to job performance. It shows for instance when a boss picks who gets overtime records even if that employee does not perform well enough to deserve them. Or sometimes he uses the power to override attendance.
5. Human error
When you depend on punch cards or time sheets, there is constantly a possible for human error. Your workers might mistakenly write down their time on the sheet. And your HR department can consume a lot of time amending these mistakes. The mistakes that were overlooked could lead to incorrect compensation for workers and other payroll issues.
How to settle it?
Selecting the most reliable way of tracking your employees time and attendance is a bit tricky. Scamming the attendance system is a serious matter, and as bosses, it’s your job to deal with your workforce in an intelligent and well-organized way. Being mindful that this problem is prevalent all over your workplace is an initial step to putting an end to this fraudulent action.
Also, nowadays, with the initiation of modern technology, there is an assortment of reasonable yet advanced time and attendance systems that will support you in tracking your employees and avoid or at least lessen scam in attendance.
