Electronic Attendance Monitoring System

Switching job from KPJ Selangor Specialist Hospital to UiTM  is somewhat adventurous for me. Of course, with a totally different job scope (from Quality Assurance Department to Human Resource Department) requires me to start every single things from scratch. Plus, I have no experience at all in working under the government or statutory bodies. What more in an education institutions. The learning curve really make my life miserable, chaotic, hectic and bla..bla..bla.. (But this is what I asked for anyway..couldn't say more..)

Honestly, I hate doing HR job. Especially when you have to deal with so called educated people (i.e Professors, Assoc. Professors, doctors etc.) because they have some kind of 'always-right' attitude that you cannot argue with. (Don't worry Dr. Norzaidi, you are not in my Mr-always-right list..hihi..) But I'm not saying all of them are like that. Some of them are very nice and really down to earth. Whatever it is, job is job. After all, again, this is what I asked for and I have to take up the challenge.

Changing work place of course brings a new working environment to me. Some of the technology used here was never been used in KPJ Selangor. One of them is the Electronic Attendance Monitoring System (EAMS). Though this system has been introduced quite some times ago all over the world, honestly, I have never used it and I never know the existence of that kind of system until I joined UiTM. The first time I used the EAMS was during our Faculty Meeting which involved all of the academicians (over 200 lecturers). Of course to record attendance manually when it involving over 200 people sounds ridiculous. That's why the EAMS was being used here. (In KPJ Selangor, the biggest meeting is involving not more than 40 people only.)

To use the EAMS, the attendee needs to bring their staff ID card. There is a bar code scanner attached with the system (something like the one in supermarket) whereby staff need to scan the bar code on their ID card. Once they scan their bar code, their name will be captured into the system and they do not have to sign or write their name manually. I was so impressed during the first time I use this technology and I found it very useful as it can speed up the registration process for any meetings, workshops, conference etc.

Staff ID Card

Bar Code

Once the meeting is over, staff will have to scan their bar code again for check out process. This can avoid the attendees to be 'MIA' before the meeting is over. List of attendees can be derived from the system and we can easily trace who is not coming, who comes late and who go back earlier before time. This is such a useful technology because we can save more time, lessen the use of paper and reduce the tendency of miscalculating the attendees. Unfortunately, I was unable to snap the picture during the registration process because I was so busy preparing for the meeting. But this is how the system looks like:

Attendees will have to scan their ID card
 (Image source: http://www.bates.edu/Images/printrelswipe.jpg)

Attendance is captured into the system
(Image source: http://www.loftytechnologies.com/images/attendance-management.jpg)

Attendance list derived from the EAMS (converted to excel format)