EFFECTIVENESS OF USING BIOMETRIC ATTENDANCE SYSTEM (FINGER PRINT) IN PUBLIC SECTOR: A CASE STUDY OF ABC UNIVERSITY, SRI LANKA

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.