Time card fraud can cost your company thousands of dollars in lost profits every year. Utilizing security cameras to help you monitor your time clock areas, entryways, exits, and parking lots can help you combat the actions of dishonest employees who are clocking in co-workers or reporting their own time inaccurately. Learn more about how time card fraud can affect your business and how you can use security cameras to help combat this activity.
Buddy punching
With 59 percent of the American workforce paid on an hourly basis, the prevalence of time card fraud isn’t that shocking. A 2017 study also found that of the 1,000 surveyed hourly employees, 16 percent admitted to punching a coworker’s time sheet, otherwise known as buddy punching.
Buddy punching occurs in businesses where employees believe that management or supervisors won’t notice the buddy punch occurring or the late arrival of the co-worker. Whether a co-worker is running late for the morning or taking a longer than permitted lunch break, this system relies on the clock in area being unmonitored or unattended for periods of time throughout the day.
Leaving early
Sometimes employees may need to leave work early to attend to personal matters, but don’t want to use personal or flex time to offset the working time they will miss. This can lead to an employee leaving early without clocking out and later claiming that they left at the regular time. Like buddy punching, this form of time card fraud depends on the employee knowing that the time card area, entrances, exits, and parking lots are not monitored.
Dollars and cents
While it may seem like no big deal when an employee claims three or four minutes on their payroll that they didn’t actually work, those costs can add up quickly. Let’s say you have 20 employees who are on the clock for even 10 minutes of time each day that they actually were not working, the costs can quickly add up. If they earn the median hourly income of $18.12/hour, you will end up overpaying the following:
$302 each week
$1,208 each month
$14,496 each year
That’s money that you could have reinvested into your company, paid out in raises or bonuses, or used to secure the future viability of your business. And that’s just for one company. Research in 2017 suggests that buddy punching alone may account for more than $373 million dollars in fraudulent payroll expenses every year.
The snowball effect
Time card fraud and other discipline issues can often affect the culture of your workplace, spilling over into other areas of your organization. From clocking a friend in a few minutes early, your employees could quickly graduate to theft of physical items from your business.
To combat time card fraud (and prevent this snowball effect), your company should implement a time card policy that includes an escalating series of repercussions for each infraction. Another step you can take to stop time card fraud is to ensure that sensitive areas can be easily monitored by your management staff by installing security cameras.
Security cameras help keep your employees honest
Security cameras in clock in areas, entryways, exits, and parking lots can help you identify dishonest employees and stop time card theft in its tracks. With staff constraints, it can be difficult to station a staff member in these areas at all times, but security cameras allow your management team to keep an eye on these areas throughout each shift. The footage can be used to address issues as they occur or to gather evidence for disciplinary action against repeat offenders.
With motion detecting, Pan-Tilt-Zoom, infrared, and fisheye 360º cameras, CameraSecurityNow.com can provide all the security cameras for management review you need to help your supervisory staff keep track of when employees are clocking in and out each day. Our expert technicians will install all of your equipment and make sure that your onsite staff knows how to utilize all of the features to make the most of your new video security system. Get a quote for all of your time card security camera needs.
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