Commercial Director, Ben Lagden, talks about how Grosvenor Technology’s solutions have increased employee interaction for a more positive work environment.
Grosvenor Technology has over 35 years of experience providing Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions to various geographic and vertical market sectors. The objective is to remove HCM application providers’ challenges in surfacing and providing their products. Within Grosvenor Technology, the Professional Services Team allows the user experience to be tailored specifically to partners’ requirements.
Branding options mean that devices can be customised specifically for larger end-user clients, where their logo, name or brand colours can be incorporated. The aim is to make the time clock experience a true extension of the wider customer experience.
The Advantages of Grosvenor Technology in Human Capital Management
Grosvenor Technology’s hardware is designed with longevity and reliability in mind for high footfall, always-on environments – which is not always the case with cheaper solutions or tablets.
The hardware combined with Grosvenor’s GT Connect platform significantly decreases the total cost of ownership in several areas, including:
- Reduced integration costs with our modular integration approach. This significantly reduces the development needed to take the solution to market both at a clock and a cloud level.
- Significantly simplified asset management with the estate management functionality. You can deploy all security updates, feature enhancements and configuration changes at a click of a button.
- Our platform allows you to take a proactive approach to supporting your estate. Analytical insights mean issues will be identified often before the phone rings. The remote support capabilities have revolutionised the support approach, with software and configuration issues being fixed quickly without needing an onsite engineer visit.
- Buddy punching can account for 2.2% of your total payroll, and biometric solutions will help to eliminate the practice. The ever-changing data protection legal landscape often creates a reluctance to deploy, but GT Connect eradicates the risk by ensuring compliance with privacy-enhancing technology and enforcing processes around consent, retention and deletion of the required biometric data. Your business can capitalise on the savings while maintaining the lowest possible risk.
The Power of our HCM Solutions
Grosvenor Technology designs and manufactures a range of HCM hardware to suit every environment and every budget. From a simple badge-in-badge-out unit to a fully featured touchscreen device with various biometric capabilities, we have something that works in any workplace.
GT4
An entry-level device designed to provide small to medium enterprises with an affordable and fully featured workforce management clock. The GT4 has a high-resolution 4.3” colour screen with 8 soft function keys allowing you to configure multiple nested menu structures to enable time & attendance and Employee Self Service (ESS) data to be captured and displayed. The GT4 is available with a wide range of reader technologies, including an integrated fingerprint biometric device to ensure high levels of security and employee verification.
GT8
The GT8 supports the Android 10 operating system, which can run Android apps natively via a number of other frameworks. This opens up a wide range of possibilities for clients who have already invested in mobile development and self-service applications.
Grosvenor Technology’s flexible approach to app development comprises three options: using our standard ‘off-the-shelf’ application, an app developed in collaboration between Partners and our Professional Services team, or our Partners can develop their own in-house app.
The rich functionality allows employers to support functions such as self-service applications, motivational and informative audio-visual content, training modules, booking services, and employee-engagement functionality for every staff member in their organisation.
Its flexible, open platform creates opportunities for deployment as an adaptable, simple-to-use kiosk in any market sector. Combined secure physical user identification and access to web-based functionality can enhance user experience, provide access to services, drive efficiency or generate additional revenue streams.
GT10
The GT10 clock features a large ‘kiosk’ type screen designed for complex employee self-service applications. The GT10 is available in both Linux and Android versions and supports web-based functionality via the large 10” colour touchscreen display. The GT10 supports a wide choice of conventional reader technologies, including barcode, mag stripe and proximity, as well as fingerprint and facial recognition biometrics.
The Problems We Solve
Across the world, Grosvenor Technology has customers in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, food production, restaurants, supermarkets, and of course, standard office environments.
Some of the more unusual solutions that clients have required include;
- Salt mines where the customer needed an industrial enclosure for the clock to protect it from the elements.
- Prisons where the clock needed to be secured to the wall so it couldn’t be used as a weapon by inmates/employees.
- Adult entertainment venues, the customer had numerous establishments where Grosvenor Technology had to ensure – and even guarantee – that the camera for facial recognition was completely disabled.
The Advantages Of Information Collection
Grosvenor Technology provides secure, at scale, methods of collecting workforce data to provide accurate real-time data to our HCM partners, allowing them to focus on their core business of providing global leading human capital management solutions.
Employees who work shift patterns, particularly within the hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing and retail sectors, typically operate according to a particular schedule pattern. The clocks can enforce different schedules to ensure that employees are only paid according to the schedule defined within the HCM system.
Implementing web-based functionality that can be accessed via the secure user identification integrated into the clock allows real-time data to be presented on the device via a rich web experience while maintaining resilient offline data collection capabilities. Examples of the sort of data that can be presented via this web-based interface include holiday booking, schedule management, audio/video content and training material.
Time Clocks vs Mobile Phone Technology
We all know that mobiles are extremely convenient and portable way of using the service. However, mobile technology poses a multitude of issues in terms of accuracy and security.
When it comes to punching in and out, geofencing technology is often applied to prove a point of presence. But we’ve all been in a city or town, and our Google Maps or car navigation system is wildly inaccurate, showing our location several roads away.
A large part of the value proposition for time and attendance solutions is accuracy and cost-saving. The solution should deliver fast ROI. Ensuring staff are ready to work when they punch in rather than walking to work, or maybe still in the break room a significant walking distance away, can impact these savings, particularly when multiplied per employee, several times a day and 365 days a year!
User adoption is an issue for employers too. Having an employee use their personal device introduces a cyber security risk to an organisation. While you can use mobile device management (MDM) platforms to offer varying levels of protection, employees may be unwilling to allow the level of control their employer may insist upon as adequate risk mitigation.
In summary, time clocks offer significant savings and accuracy over mobile solutions. Especially when you consider the total cost of mobile, BYOD, and MDM ownership. Additionally, from a risk perspective, you’ll have a reliable, secure device – designed, tested and certified on your network rather than a multitude of third-party devices varying in age, OS version and security patch level. Your time clock platform will also be continually developed, patched and updated by you via our cloud management platforms, ensuring lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and peace of mind.
The Last 5 Years: The Grosvenor Technology Perspective
One of the most significant changes in the market over the last five years has been the rapid adoption of biometric technology within workforce management devices. This was particularly relevant during the global COVID pandemic, which initially highlighted the need to provide a touchless environment for employees. While this led to a substantial initial demand for facial recognition technology and the use of temperature screening devices to create a safer workplace, we have seen a considerable return to finger biometrics as the world returns to normal.
The greater use of biometric technology and the protection of this data within Grosvenor Technology is a trend that we anticipate will continue to grow for the foreseeable future as the significant reduction in fraud via our solutions and the clear financial impacts are easily demonstrable from an ROI perspective.
And What’s Next?
Security of PII data has become a critical element for global organisations. The introduction of biometric security legislation in many countries has demonstrated the need to ensure that the capture, processing and storage of data must be a core part of any organisation’s strategic security plans.
Grosvenor Technology sees the security of its devices and the GT Connect platform as an integral part of any organisation addressing the need to maintain compliance with current (and future) legislation. The tight integration of our devices into the GT Connect platform ensures that very high levels of data security and encryption are applied at every stage of the workforce data management process.