Employees’ productivity

There is no doubt that the attendance and absence of employees is important in all establishments. Some establishments have indicators to calculate the cost of employees’ absence, their lack of attendance leads to delay in doing the job and receiving undeserved salaries, as the number of working hours is set in the working contract. Also, this matter causes trouble to some officials especially when they come in the morning to start work with an incomplete team while people wait in halls to process their transactions.

The idea of using biometric devices to register staff attendance came about when a group of employees did not comply with attendance and exit, as many of them either do not come to office, or used silicon prints for their fingerprints that others can use on the devices for them. In addition, there is a group of employees who would fingerprint in the morning, then go home to sleep, or spend the day in malls, before coming back to fingerprint again at time for checkout. But before the introduction of the biometric system for attendance, why wasn’t a survey done to find out the true reason for lack of attendance of employees? Or is it that the system was implemented directly without sufficient research?

What if there are other reasons than laxity? Maybe the notion that there are too many employees carrying out the same job at the same department makes the employee frustrated and makes him feel that his presence or absence is the same. Maybe there is lack of a good working environment. I remember a colleague who did not report to work in a ministry for two years because there was no office for her. This and other matters must be corrected before direct implementation is made as a reaction to a specific matter.

There was talk about exempting employees who have been in service for 25 years from the fingerprint, and there is no realistic reason for that, because like the rest of employees, they have rights and duties. Exemption should be done for some jobs that require field work, which makes it difficult for the employee to come to office, or for the establishment to be based on setting goals and projects for each employee, so what is important is to fulfill the goals on time, and of course, our establishments are built on this system.

The fingerprint system will not guarantee the employee’s productivity and will not solve the true problem which is over-employment, so concentration should be on employing manpower in a true manner so that the state can benefit from them. There should be a suitable working environment with evaluation systems that show the employees productivity, and not to continue with the policy of distributing wealth indirectly. If it was proven that an employee was negligent in attending, then simply enforce the law on him until he gets terminated and becomes an example for others. But to have a fingerprint system while the employee knows he is protected against termination, then nothing really has changed.