Attendees
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First steps · 7/7

What you must ensure as an employer

Recording attendance electronically does not move the employer's duties to the system: the company stays responsible for the records and for its employees' personal data. This chapter, written for a company owner or HR person, sums up what you must ensure. Statutes are cited by their Czech name and section so you can look them up. It is not legal advice; when in doubt, ask your lawyer or payroll accountant.

Working-time records

Under § 96 of the Labour Code (zákoník práce), the employer must record, for every employee, the start and end of the shifts worked, overtime, night work and on-call time.

  • What the system does: when employees clock in and out, the system records the start and end of the shift, breaks and absences, and calculates overtime (if it is enabled both in System and for the employee).
  • What the system does not evaluate separately: night-work hours and on-call time. If you have them, count them with your payroll accountant.
  • What you must set: each employee's working hours (the profile, Employment tab), the minimum break and overtime recording (chapter Setup on Day One). Public holidays are added by the system as paid leave; check them in the monthly sheet.
  • What you must check every month: cards with warnings, corrections, and the manager's signature on the monthly sheet before it goes to payroll (chapter First Month).

Informing employees

Attendance with a kiosk, a phone and chips is not covert monitoring, since employees make every entry themselves. You must still tell them in writing beforehand (§ 316 of the Labour Code (zákoník práce) and Article 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR):

  • what is recorded (arrivals, leaves, breaks, absences, company car rides if you use the module),
  • why (working-time records and payroll),
  • who sees it (managers see their subordinates, administrators everyone, employees themselves),
  • how long it is kept.

A paragraph in an internal notice or in the work rules (pracovní řád) is enough, for example:

The employer keeps working-time records in the electronic system Attendees. The start and end of work, breaks, absences and the reason for an absence are recorded when the employee clocks in at the kiosk at the entrance, with a chip or on a mobile phone. Clocking in from a phone records only the time, not the location. Home office is entered by the employees themselves, who are responsible for its accuracy. The data serve as working-time records under § 96 of the Labour Code (zákoník práce) and as the basis for payroll. They are seen by the employee, their manager and the system administrators. Monthly sheets are kept for at least 3 years, payroll documents for the period set by law.

Controller and processor

Under the GDPR, your company is the controller of its employees' personal data. The operator of Attendees is the processor: it stores the data for you under the data processing agreement you accepted at installation. In practice:

  • You decide who gets access. Give administrator rights only to those who need them.
  • Keep the administrator password safe. Do not share it and do not write it on the kiosk.
  • Remove leavers' access. On the Employment tab set the state to Former, fill in “Employed until” and delete the login (chapter Employees). Their monthly sheets stay.
  • You answer employees' requests. When an employee asks for access to their data, the easiest answer is the PDF of their monthly sheets.

Keeping records

Monthly sheets are the basis for payroll, so keep them after the month ends:

  • Monthly sheets for at least 3 years. That is the limitation period for wage claims (§ 629 of the Civil Code (občanský zákoník)).
  • Payroll sheets (mzdové listy) for 45 years after the year they relate to (§ 35a of Act No. 582/1991 Coll., on the Organisation and Implementation of Social Security (zákon o organizaci a provádění sociálního zabezpečení)). Your payroll accountant keeps these.

Download the PDF monthly sheets of all employees every month and archive them outside the system. The system keeps the data for the duration of the licence; what happens afterwards is described in the retention and deletion policy.

Chips and cards

  • A chip only identifies the employee; it is not biometric data. The system stores only a fingerprint of the chip code.
  • An employee must report a lost chip at once and the administrator disconnects it (chapter Chips, section Lost chip).
  • Chips are not lent. Clocking in with someone else's chip is a false entry in the working-time records.

Phone and home office

Clocking in from a phone records only the time and the type, not the location. Home office records are what the employee declares; say so in the internal notice (template above).

What Attendees does not do

  • no location tracking (no GPS),
  • no camera and no biometrics (fingerprints, faces),
  • no keystroke, screen or computer-activity monitoring,
  • the kiosk shows only tiles with names and states; with “Hide type of unattendance on entry tablets” it hides absence reasons too, so it can stand in a shared entrance.

Before you go live

  1. Set the working hours and break for every employee.
  2. Decide whether you record overtime and enable it in System and for the employees.
  3. Give employees the written notice about the records (template above).
  4. Choose the administrators and managers and set their rights.
  5. For a kiosk in a shared entrance, enable hiding the absence type.
  6. Agree with your payroll accountant who archives the PDF sheets each month, and where.
  7. Set a procedure for a lost chip and for an employee who leaves.