Geofencing
Restricting clock-in to a defined radius around a workplace, so a punch can only be recorded from the site the shift belongs to.
Geofencing draws a radius around a workplace and only accepts a clock-in from inside it. The device checks its own location at the moment of the punch, compares it to the site the shift belongs to, and refuses the punch if the two do not match. It is the common answer to clocking in from the car park, or from bed.
What it is good at, and what it is not
A geofence is good at one specific thing: making the claim that somebody was at work at a particular moment verifiable rather than assumed. It is not an attendance policy, it is not a productivity measure, and it does not tell you what happened after the punch. Treating it as more than a location check is how a reasonable control becomes surveillance.
- A radius per site, sized to the building rather than the postcode
- A location captured with the punch and stored on the record
- A clear message when a punch is refused, and why
- Recorded location even when enforcement is switched off
Where teams get it wrong
Two mistakes recur. The first is a radius set too tight, so staff standing at the far end of a warehouse are refused and start ringing a manager to be clocked in manually, which is worse than no geofence at all. The second is blocking the clock-out as well as the clock-in. Refusing a clock-out does not undo work that has already happened; it just leaves an open shift and a timesheet somebody has to repair.
“A geofence should make an honest punch effortless and a dishonest one awkward. Anything stricter costs you more than it saves.”
How Formclock handles this: time clock.
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