Business Challenge
Management had concerns regarding the authenticity of attendance records of contractual workers and the possibility of attendance manipulation leading to excess contractor billing and payroll leakages.
Our Approach
Understand
Reviewed the contractor workforce management process including biometric attendance capture, shift allocation, leave management, contractor billing, and payroll verification procedures. Conducted discussions with HR, Production, Security, Contractor Supervisors, and Plant Management.
Assess
Assessed the effectiveness of biometric attendance controls, contractor onboarding records, attendance monitoring mechanisms, contractor billing validation procedures, and physical verification practices.
Identify
Identified unusual attendance patterns where multiple workers exhibited identical leave, absence, weekly-off, shift allocation, and in-out timing trends. Data analytics indicated a potential risk of multiple fingerprints being registered under different worker identities, resulting in possible attendance manipulation.
Analyze
Performed attendance analytics covering attendance trends, shift-wise deployment, leave patterns, weekly-off analysis, in-out time matching, contractor-wise attendance exceptions, and biometric attendance review. Conducted employee master verification and risk-based investigation. To validate findings, an unannounced physical verification was conducted at the plant and attendance records were generated directly from the biometric system (Savior) for comparison with actual worker presence.
Recommend
Recommended strengthening biometric enrollment controls, Aadhaar/identity-based verification during registration, periodic biometric audits, surprise physical verifications, contractor-wise attendance exception reports, attendance-to-billing reconciliation, and enhanced supervisory accountability.
Implement
Assisted management in developing attendance verification SOPs, contractor workforce validation procedures, surprise audit protocols, attendance exception reporting mechanisms, and contractor performance monitoring controls.
Monitor
Established periodic attendance analytics, contractor-wise exception reporting, surprise physical verification schedules, attendance-to-billing reconciliation reviews, and management dashboards for monitoring attendance anomalies.
Outcome
The investigation validated the effectiveness of analytics-driven audit procedures and identified a worker whose attendance was recorded in the biometric system despite not being physically present during the surprise verification. The review strengthened management's control framework, enhanced contractor oversight, reduced the risk of attendance-related payroll leakages, and improved confidence in workforce reporting.
