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Taking T&A on the road

Time and attendance (T&A) is nothing new in South Africa. Ever since employees clocked in manually with cards, some clocking in when they weren’t even there or didn’t even exist, employers have been measuring the time staff spend on the job. With the sudden increase in working from home in 2020, some companies even started to put spyware on their staffs’ systems to keep tabs on them from afar as a remote means of T&A.

Due to buddy-clocking and ghost workers, card-based T&A; has given way in many instances to biometric systems where employees have to clock in with their fingerprint. This works well in ensuring accurate payment for hours worked by real people who actually exist. Unfortunately, for the many workers who spend their time on the road, ensuring they are working their full number of hours can be tricky. GPS tracking can let employers know where they are, but not that they are doing their jobs correctly.

As Jarrison System’s Alastair McPhail puts it, “Where exactly are your employees and how much time do they require to perform their job functions whilst out on the road or at home?”

To answer this question, business needs data from their employees as they move around, recording their movements and accurately calculating the time spent on each task. A new solution from Jarrison Systems does this: JT Clock.

“JT Clock is a mobile clocking solution for Apple and Android smartphones,” McPhail explains. “It allows employees to clock in and out via their mobile, even using fingerprint verification if required via the smart phone’s biometric reader or a USB-attached reader. All data is sent to and collated in the Jarrison Time application. It can be used by solo workers or teams, providing GPS location and even geofencing. Moreover, new workers can be added via the app by a supervisor and synchronised to Jarrison Time.”

Job costing is also included, allowing staff to note when they start a specific job and when they knock-off. Management can set which teams are sent to which sites from Jarrison Time, which automatically notifies employees via their mobiles. Each clocking can also include a photograph to prove the job was done – both for the employer and the customer.

McPhail adds that the app also works in offline mode. If staff move into an area with no network coverage, the app works as normal, and the data will be synchronised once connectivity is resumed.

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