Abstract:
Managing and monitoring attendance of employees is a very important aspect for smooth functioning
of any public or private organization. In order to avoid human bias and direct human intervention,
government institutions have implemented Biometric Attendance System to record employee
attendance on daily basis. This research aims to understand the nature, employees’ attitudes, issues
and challenges of Biometric Attendance System. Employees belong to five categories of a university
have been selected as the sample and questionnaires and structured interviews were used to collect
the data. In addition to descriptive methods, reliability (Cronbach’s alpha & KMO Bartlett tests),
regression and correlation analysis were used to analysis the data. Hosmer-Lemeshow test was
applied to determine the goodness in fit in the model in regression analysis. The study revealed that
attitudes towards Biometric attendance system depend on job category, age, work experience and
gender. According to the developed indices, employees think that previous manual system had
difficulties while current biometric attendance system made them feel easy and supervision on
employees has been increased as well. Current biometric system has to bear more expenditure than
previous manual system. There are four important factors affecting the overall attitudes towards the
biometric attendance system; prevailing attitudes towards manual attendance system which affect
negatively, general attitudes towards biometric system, attitudes on supervision, and attitudes on
efficiency which are positive. The study also indicates the issues and challenges faced in Biometric
attendance System including possible misconducts done by operators, inability to ensure the presence
inside the office and issues in marking attendance when working at outstations. Suggestions to
improve existing loopholes of the system and policy implications have also been highlighted. The
study can be further extended to analyze effectiveness of Biometric Attendance System on other
government institutions.
