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Carrol Boyes reduces downtime with Trac-Tech system

The brand name Carrol Boyes is synonymous with quality and attention to detail. Managing absenteeism and accurately calculating hours worked had become a pressing issue at the company’s Cape Town and Paarden Eiland facilities. Trac-Tech stepped in to tackle the problem.

Carrol Boyes was established 20 years ago by its namesake and has grown into a household name as a manufacturer of upmarket homeware and tabletop items. The company is headquartered in Cape Town with manufacturing facilities in Paarden Eiland and Tzaneen, retail shops in Johannesburg, Cape Town and New York, and outlets throughout the world.

“The company has grown substantially since its formation, so keeping track of all employees has become a logistical nightmare. We have always had a very flexible approach to starting and finishing times, but lately we had found certain employees taking advantage of the system,” said the company’s human resources manager, Merle Kemp.

Carrol Boyes’ human resources manager, Merle Kemp, with the ViRDI biometric fingerprint reader.

Kemp explained that the company’s existing time and attendance (T&A) system was old and unreliable. “We recently implemented a 40-hour working week, in accordance with legislation, so we required a T&A system that would allow us to accurately track the exact hours worked by each employee. At the same time, the system needed to be able to track the hours worked by certain employees when they moved between our branches.

“We reviewed the requirements of the Carrol Boyes facilities and decided to install a ViRDI biometric fingerprint reader at both the Cape Town head office and the Paarden Eiland factory. These are complemented by Unis and Time Register T & A software,” said Trac-Tech sales manager, Marj Valasek.

The ViRDI biometric fingerprint reader lends itself to reading damaged and almost invisible fingerprints. Virdi uses calibration of minutia points and others to enrol the fingerprint, thus eliminating the problems normally associated with damaged fingerprints.

“We required the system to incorporate specific rules and it needed to allow for flexible start and finish working times and shifts,” said Kemp. The Unis software allows real-time viewing of all clocking data and enables the management to ascertain exactly who is on the two premises at any time.

“I was provided with training on the Unis system and Time Register software at Trac-Tech’s offices. The facilitator ensured that I would be able to quickly and easily enrol each user on the system and that maximised reporting results were available to me instantaneously. The service levels from Trac-Tech, from the initial planning stages through to the system implementation, have been of an exceptionally high standard,” said Kemp.

The system currently monitors the time and attendance of 43employees in Cape Town and 77 employees at the Paarden Eiland manufacturing facility. “Plans are underway to link the system to our VIP Payroll system and we are currently investigating the possibility of extending the T&A system, together with biometric fingerprint readers, at all the retail stores,” said Kemp.

“This user-friendly, reliable and very accurate system has reduced the absenteeism rate and made life much easier for the HR department, by the direct reduction of the time needed to perform the calculation of employee working hours,” Kemp concluded.

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