Cut day is a right of passage in high school.
It's the end of the year and you want to party, but your parents would kill you if you ditch school.
And everybody else is doing it so what's the harm? You slip a freshman a fiver to sign you in to homeroom and you are all good.
No harm no foul.
But this isn't high school anymore.
Companies lose thousands a year on no-show pay or errant road warriors billing offsite and are struggling to find ways to clamp down on workday ditchers.
Unfortunately for truant employees, recent technological advances have made playing hooky a headache.
This month, Austin, TX company Legiant introduced the Mobile Timecard, a new iPhone app that tracks attendance for off-site employees.
With GPS monitoring and real-time activity reporting, employers can have total control over their road crews, reducing those paid trips to the hotel bar during work hours.
For those at the office, several biometric solutions have been introduced to reduce the "buddy punch" scenario-where a friend punches your time card for you while you are at the baseball game-including eye scans or fingerprints.
A school in the UK even experimented with facial recognition software to track school attendance last year.
The City of Ely Community College had students sign in by using infra-red facial scanners, saving teachers time.
The company responsible for the devices, Aurora, has moved on to the employment sector, debuting the gizmos at construction sites and office parks.
Most businesses have switched from a traditional punch card system to a slightly more complicated, computer-based attendance system.
But some companies have gone further, switching to a web time sheet that tracks an employee's login location and time to prevent falsifying time sheets.
Time sheet tracking software has expanded by leaps and bounds over the past few years and companies will continue to find new ways to improve.
It's a concept as old as work itself; as long as there are ways of getting something for nothing, people will try their best to get around even the best security measures.
But bailers beware: your company may soon be keeping a much closer eye on you.
It's the end of the year and you want to party, but your parents would kill you if you ditch school.
And everybody else is doing it so what's the harm? You slip a freshman a fiver to sign you in to homeroom and you are all good.
No harm no foul.
But this isn't high school anymore.
Companies lose thousands a year on no-show pay or errant road warriors billing offsite and are struggling to find ways to clamp down on workday ditchers.
Unfortunately for truant employees, recent technological advances have made playing hooky a headache.
This month, Austin, TX company Legiant introduced the Mobile Timecard, a new iPhone app that tracks attendance for off-site employees.
With GPS monitoring and real-time activity reporting, employers can have total control over their road crews, reducing those paid trips to the hotel bar during work hours.
For those at the office, several biometric solutions have been introduced to reduce the "buddy punch" scenario-where a friend punches your time card for you while you are at the baseball game-including eye scans or fingerprints.
A school in the UK even experimented with facial recognition software to track school attendance last year.
The City of Ely Community College had students sign in by using infra-red facial scanners, saving teachers time.
The company responsible for the devices, Aurora, has moved on to the employment sector, debuting the gizmos at construction sites and office parks.
Most businesses have switched from a traditional punch card system to a slightly more complicated, computer-based attendance system.
But some companies have gone further, switching to a web time sheet that tracks an employee's login location and time to prevent falsifying time sheets.
Time sheet tracking software has expanded by leaps and bounds over the past few years and companies will continue to find new ways to improve.
It's a concept as old as work itself; as long as there are ways of getting something for nothing, people will try their best to get around even the best security measures.
But bailers beware: your company may soon be keeping a much closer eye on you.