A biometric attendance provider sells and supports fingerprint, face and card devices at client sites. Its people install, configure and repair machines, and answer calls when a client's pay run depends on a device working. Staffing the support desk and field team is the daily task.
Not sure what you need? Tell us about your business in six short steps and we will come to the first meeting prepared.
Share your requirementsA biometric attendance provider supplies fingerprint, face, iris and card devices with software to factories, schools, offices and stores. The team splits into pre-sales, installation engineers, a support desk and software people. Installers travel to client sites, mount devices, set up networks and enrol employees. Support staff answer calls on the day a client runs payroll, when a missing punch becomes urgent. Product knowledge ages quickly because device models and software versions keep changing. Clients keep employee identity data on the provider's systems or devices, so staff handle sensitive information every day. Work comes in spikes around installation projects and month ends, and engineers are often poached by clients and rivals. See also HR for facility management.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in biometric attendance providers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Attendance problems pile up just before payroll, and the desk is stretched on the days it is needed most.
Staff trained on one device are sent to sites with older or newer ones, and visits take longer than quoted.
Travel, waiting at gates and rework are not captured, so visits cost more than the price charged.
A trained installer who knows the client's site is offered a job by the client or by a rival.
Employee fingerprints, photos and attendance records are handled by people who have not been taught why they must be protected.
Pre-sales promise features the engineer then discovers are not supported, and the client blames the installer.
Who attends, how fast and at whose cost depends on what the salesperson said, not on a clear note.
Extra hands hired to enrol hundreds of employees make errors that show up as wrong punches for months.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; HR Technology and Automation; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a biometric attendance providers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
What each engineer must know on each model before going to site, with a short practical check.
What each engineer must know on each model before going to site, with a short practical check. The learning and development process supports it.
More people on the desk in the last and first days of the month, with a standby for sites that cannot wait.
More people on the desk in the last and first days of the month, with a standby for sites that cannot wait.
Start, end, waiting time, reason and outcome, so visit cost and engineer time are visible.
Start, end, waiting time, reason and outcome, so visit cost and engineer time are visible. See the attendance process.
What was promised, what the site has, who the contact is and any special conditions, signed off by pre-sales and the engineer.
What was promised, what the site has, who the contact is and any special conditions, signed off by pre-sales and the engineer.
Why fingerprint and photo data must not be copied, shared or kept on personal phones, with the rule written down.
Why fingerprint and photo data must not be copied, shared or kept on personal phones, with the rule written down. See HR documentation.
A clear path from installer to senior engineer to trainer, with fair pay for on-call work.
A clear path from installer to senior engineer to trainer, with fair pay for on-call work. The compensation benchmarking work helps.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A product ladder and practical checks so each engineer is safe on the models they support.
Visit-level records and a rota built around payroll peaks.
Written rules for data care, handovers and on-call duties that people sign.
A look at why engineers leave and what a career path would cost against rehiring.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in facility management, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Housekeeping, technician and security staff at client sites leave for reasons head office rarely hears. How to ask, what to look for and how to act on it.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
A simple timesheet routine for IT services teams: a short form, daily entry, light approval and a month-end lock that finance can bill from.
6 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Count the calls and tickets in the busiest three days of last month and set cover to that, not to the monthly average. A standby arrangement is cheaper than losing a client.
Show a path to senior roles, pay fairly for on-call and travel, and recognise the work. Many leave because the next step is unclear, not because pay is low.
That the data belongs to the client's employees, what it may and may not be used for, where it can be stored and who to tell if something goes wrong. Put the rule in writing and have it acknowledged.
Seek professional advice on the right arrangement. Whatever the form, brief them properly and check a sample of their work, because their errors become your support calls.
Make the handover note part of the sale, so the engineer can read what was agreed before the visit. Review mismatches in a short monthly meeting.
We would ask how you cover payroll-day calls, what each engineer is trained on and how data care is taught. A good opening project is a training ladder plus a handover note. Scope is written down for you to accept or change.
All 56 business types in facility management · Find another business type
See all HR topics for facility management, or another industry.
Tell us what is slowing your team down. We’ll help you find a practical way forward, starting with a conversation.
