Buddy Punching

Buddy Punching is a scheme of time theft or fraud when employees clock in/out for their coworker. As a result, they attract more compensation for hours that were not worked. Generally, buddy punching is rampant in situations where workers are required to use time clock systems or punch cards to document their working time, it gives room for unscrupulous employees to take advantage of gaps or flaws in the system to tamper with their recording time. Buddy punching is destructive to time and attendance tracking systems, hence making the payroll amounts calculated inaccurate, labour cost may also go up and productivity may decrease.

Example of Buddy Punching:

To illustrate, consider two workers, Alice and Bob, who are assigned to the same shift at a manufacturing plant. They are required to use a time clock system and clock in and out. One time, Bob got to work late, but instead of clocking in when he actually arrived, he asked Alice to punch in for him at the scheduled starting time. Through this act, Bob artificially amends his present record as if he was there on time and worked the whole shift. The dishonest means of buddy punching enables Bob to evade disciplinary action for tardiness and get paid the full amount of hours he did not work. Biometric time clock systems, electronic time tracking software, or other identity verification methods can be utilized by employers to mitigate buddy time clocking.