People a Method Excludes Outright
Some people cannot use a given biometric at all, permanently. The system treats them as repeated failures, which is wrong and causes most of the harm.
Reasons recorded on one site's accommodation list, 23 people
Twenty-three people out of four hundred, each with a reason recorded once and a method that works every day. Before the list existed, the same twenty-three generated roughly nine hundred supervisor overrides a year between them.
Most of this collection is about reads that fail some of the time. This section is about people for whom a given method does not work at all, permanently, and for whom no amount of re-enrolment or sensor cleaning will change anything.
The record in “People a Method Excludes Outright” becomes useful only when people understand what it proves and how to correct it. For teams exploring fte meaning, see the complete product overview can connect time and project context with manager review, provided collection is proportionate, access is limited and consequential decisions remain subject to human explanation.
They are a small group and they experience the system very differently from everybody else. On a site with no arrangement for them, each of them has a daily negotiation, and over a year that accumulates into something no organisation would design on purpose.
For an independent benchmark relevant to “People a Method Excludes Outright”, consult the Basecamp Shape Up guide. Use it to test notice, accessibility, security, recordkeeping, retention and exception handling against the real operating process rather than treating a device report as self-explanatory evidence.
The reasons, which are mostly physical
Ridge detail worn away by work, age or a skin condition, to the point where no fingerprint sensor will take a sample. Amputation or congenital difference affecting the enrolled digit or hand. Tremor, spasticity or limited dexterity, which make a controlled presentation difficult or impossible. Scarring across the capture area.
For face systems: facial difference, conditions affecting symmetry or movement, and in some cases the interaction with required equipment. For any system: visual impairment, where the interface depends on reading a small screen and responding to a prompt.
Why repetition is the wrong response
The system's design assumption is that a failed read should be retried. For this group, retrying is pointless and the design keeps insisting on it: three attempts, then an error, then find somebody.
Repeating a futile action in front of a queue, every morning, is the harm. It is small each time and it is not small over two years, and the people experiencing it are frequently the ones least likely to raise it, because raising it means explaining a medical or physical matter to a line manager in a corridor.
The legal shape, in general terms
In most jurisdictions an employer has an obligation to make adjustments for disability, and a system that cannot be used by a disabled worker is a straightforward example of something requiring one. The obligation attaches to the employer regardless of what the supplier said.
The practical consequence is simple: an alternative has to exist, it has to be available without a daily request, and it should not put the person at any disadvantage. That is a lower bar than most of these conversations assume and sites still fail it, usually by having an alternative that requires asking.
The list, and what it does
A short record: who, what the alternative method is, who authorised it and when. Nothing about the underlying reason beyond what is necessary, and held wherever the organisation holds other health-related information, with the same restrictions.
Its effect is to turn twenty-three daily negotiations into a configuration. The person uses their method, the record shows the method, and nobody is asked to explain anything at a terminal. That is the entire intervention and it is almost always cheaper than the overrides it replaces.
What not to do
Do not keep a list of medical conditions in the time and attendance system. Do not make the alternative visible as an exception on reports that supervisors see routinely. And do not require periodic re-justification for a permanent condition, which is a common and pointless feature of these arrangements.
The method a person uses is operational information. Why they use it is not, and the separation between the two is what makes the arrangement acceptable to be on the receiving end of.
Finding the people who are on this list and do not know it
They are at the top of the per-person fallback report, and they have been for years. The site already knows who they are; it has simply never read the list as a list.
Approach them individually and quietly, offer the alternative as a standing arrangement, and record it. Most will accept immediately, several will say they assumed nothing could be done, and the override volume will drop by more than anybody expects.
The person who has stopped trying
Some of this group are not on any fallback report, because they worked out years ago that the reader would not read them and stopped engaging with it. A colleague lets them in, or a supervisor writes their time down out of habit, and nothing appears in any system.
Those people are invisible to every analysis in this collection and they are the ones most affected by it. Finding them requires asking supervisors directly rather than reading data: who, on your shift, does not use the clock. The answers come quickly and they are rarely in anybody's records.