The Hindu Business Line : Don't sign the attendance register, just log in!

REMEMBER your college days when half the class hollered `Present, Sir!' and provided "proxy" attendance for the rest that bunked class? You leave the fun and carefree ways behind when you step into a job. You're to dutifully sign the attendance register if you want to pick up the full salary cheque at the end of the month. Right? Wrong.

Companies are getting rid of what many consider a "chore." The spectacle of having one or two persons in the personnel department going through attendance registers and posting the entries into another bulky "master" ledger is now passé.

The companies are addressing the issue in different ways. For instance, at Royal Sundaram Alliance Insurance Company, employees just need to log into their computers and their attendance is automatically registered. All employees, about 420 of them across the country, use a portal-based system.

According to Mr Prabhu Nambiappan, Vice-President (Human Resources), Royal Sundaram Alliance Insurance Company, "Employees are provided `password-protected' access to HR and administrative information on the portal. Logging attendance is the first automatic alert of the personal screen. Further, as all Team Heads have access to the calendars of individual members, efficient holiday and travel planning without hindrance to smooth delivery of operations is possible."

The computer software industry seems to have gone a step ahead. Though most IT and BPO companies still insist on employees swiping magnetic cards to record attendance, some companies do not make this mandatory. Sasken Systems, a provider of embedded software for telecom companies that has about 1,440 employees on its rolls, does not see value in making attendance compulsory. Says Mr Hari Iyer, the Vice-President & Culture Officer, "This is a culture based on integrity and trust. There is zero monitoring." The company has no time-keeping systems and there is no recorded monitoring of leave either. If you get sick, you get time off for as long as it takes for you to recover. Says Mr Iyer: "We don't believe a person can fall ill only for a specified period of time."

According to Mr T. Chandramohan, CEO, BharatPlanet Consulting, a smaller company that provides software services and e-mail marketing services, "I require employees to be in the office for half a day." Here he means `day' to be the time the sun is up. He arrives in office latest by 10 a.m. so that he can delegate work or ensure that client e-mails are taken care of. "I tend to take an afternoon nap in office so that I can work well into the night. Some of my employees also do that." Since many employees stay up late in the night to interact with clients, there are no timings as such.

There is one common thread running across all these companies that do not take a strict view of attendance per se: Most employees are accountable to at least one superior who knows what the employee is doing on a daily basis. So quantity of work tends to get recorded on a daily basis while quality is determined by client satisfaction.

In today's location-independent environment, is it necessary to come into the office at all? Sure. Ask any BPO company and they'll tell you why.

Says Mr P. Ravishankar, head-HR, SlashSupport, a company offering technical support, "Most of our employees need to connect with clients and customers through telecom circuits and networks, which are dedicated and hence available only in the office premises."

For some though, employees keeping good time are not so much a worry as employee absenteeism. Especially in the BPO sector, which employs young graduates who want a good job but also want to have a good time. Ask this BPO company in New Delhi, some of whose young employees use company transport to get to office, walk over to the nearest multiplex, catch a couple of good movies and then catch the company's comfortable bus back home to end the day. Time for bus drivers to mark attendance only after the employee crosses into the company premises?

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