Latest News, Blogs & Announcements | Page 132

Daylight Saving Time starts at 2am on Sunday (October 30, 2011). Business will have to adjust their clocks and other systems like their PC networks or clocking regimes which rely on telling the correct time. Also, the EU Working Time Directive provides a complex set of employment rules and regulations that govern the number of hours an employee can work, and ultimately dictates the way all companies within the EU must operate. Tensor supplies time and attendance .NET systems that are the best available at handling all clocking recording methods. Tensor WinTA Lite, WinTA Enterprise, WinTA Access Enterprise, WinTA 16, WinTA CS or Tensor.NET systems will all need their Daylight Saving Time information changed, as this will affect the time shown on your Smart Card clocking stations. The changes are easily done – however, for those who require personal advice, the Tensor Helpdesk is easily contactable by telephone, fax, email or via this link. Helpdesk support is free to customers with current maintenance contracts.  

BBC flagship programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing are threatened with severe disruption if strike action goes ahead. Unions announced on Tuesday (October 25) they are to ballot thousands of BBC staff over job losses. The corporation has had discussions with the likes of the National Union of Journalists since announcing 2,000 jobs cuts earlier this month. The result of the vote is not expected until November 24; therefore any action is likely to be scheduled for December. The time and attendance software for Tensor clocking and payroll systems deals with all manner of working rules and pay bands. Your company’s payroll department can create a wide range of daily working patterns (shifts), with either fixed or flexitime rules. These can run past midnight, making night shifts simple to define. Standard reports in Tensor WinTA include: Weekly Clock Card, Payroll Summary, Absence Summary, Exceptions, Job Booking and Working Time Directive Compliance. Using the Auto Clockout function, employees can be automatically clocked out at a certain time.

Police warned thieves about putting the price of metal ahead of their safety when trying to steal metal from electrical or telephone cables. Officers in Kent have made eight arrests in a fortnight as police confirmed metal theft was becoming a serious issue in the county. Supt Adrian Futers reminded criminals that many cables were live. He said: “Due to the increasing price of metal in the world markets, we are aware that this is becoming a serious issue in Kent.” Beginning with the control of a single door, a Tensor Access Control system can expand upwards to create a large access control network covering a single building or multiple sites. Alternatively, Tensor’s system can remain small granting access to predefined secure areas of your premises. The security system includes real-time monitoring of doors left open, diagrammatically illustrated on an overlay plan of your actual site. In addition, it comes complete with advanced fail-safe features enabling your system to operate even during power failure or in an emergency situation.  

The Ministry of Justice confirmed that taxis are being used to ferry defendants to court by a security company. The prisoners have been going to trial via this unusual mode of transport because the system used by the firm Serco to arrange pick-up and drop-off points failed. Serco, which is paid £42 million per year by the Government to do the job, thus had to rely upon cab drivers around its patch of south and east England. Tensor can supply Visitor Control and Monitoring or Prison Pass software and systems to both private companies and jails. The easy to install computer based pass system registers each visitor, both on and off site. The document scanning facility allows your organisation to make scanned digital copies of special identification documents, accreditations, licenses or insurance documentation provided by the visitor or contractor. Once recorded onto the system, these documents can be retrieved, viewed or recreated and printed on demand. This ensures the proper due diligence procedures have been followed.  

A firm is investigating going over to a regime of longer shift patterns as one way to slash costs. The south-western printing concern Wyndeham has entered talks with the Unite union over the economy drive at its Cornwall base. Wyndeham stated that the depot had “a very positive future” based on implementing changes. Steve Sibbald, Unite national officer, said: “Unite will be urging all employees not to accept any cuts in terms and conditions.” Tensor offers a range of combined payroll and clocking monitoring systems that meet all major hours calculation methods. The WinTAnet time and attendance system can deal with overtime, night shifts and more. Using WinTAnet’s software, work patterns are a combination of daily rules that are either a repeating pattern of shifts or a list of alternative rules. Here, WinTAnet will predict the most appropriate shift depending on when an employee starts work. Each type of pattern can be set up to override the normal pattern and use a specific shift on public holidays.  

A famous landmark has had four plaques stolen from the premises. The bronze information plaques were all taken from mountings within York Minster precinct. York Minster Police said it had increased patrols in the area since the thefts. The incident has left the Minster’s Trust thousands of pounds out of pocket. Police said the CCTV system which usually monitored the Minster precinct was undergoing maintenance when the thieves struck. Tensor can install and maintain surveillance cameras or other security equipment for your premises. A Tensor digital CCTV system works extremely well as a standalone system, and can also be fully integrated with Tensor’s other access control or visitor monitoring equipment. A digital video recorder is able to achieve digital storage multiplexing across up to 16 channels in one standalone box, so all CCTV footage from your site can be recorded on a single unit. Maintenance contracts are available for support of your digital CCTV systems and software, and Tensor supports all of our surveillance products in-house.  

Following a ballot over a pay offer by members of the Communications Workers Union (CWU), more than 100 TV Licensing staff went on a 24-hour walkout. CWU assistant secretary Andy Furey said members are facing a pay cut in real terms. He added: “We're asking for a simple improvement in their pay offer which at 2.6% is almost half the rate of inflation.” The company concerned, Capita, said workers had received a “good and fair offer” considering the economic climate. As well as all aspects of clocking recording and payroll export, Tensor’s WinTAnet computerised Time and Attendance network handles absence planning and entitlement management. Graphical calendar charts in the WinTAnet software provides a colourful way of viewing an individual's or a department's absence records. Each employee can be allocated different entitlements for absence such as annual leave or allowed sickness. The Tensor system quickly identifies missing employees that are expected to be at work and then informs you via automatic email reporting.  

Members of the public have been questioned by officers after a ‘fake police’ raid was mounted on a high street bank. Men dressed in fake police uniforms entered the premises in Glasgow last week and threatened a security guard with what appeared to be a gun. They then drove off towards the M8 motorway with an unspecified amount of cash. A week later officers have been questioning motorists and pedestrians in the area about the gang. Companies taking advantage of a Tensor access or visitor control system can use cutting edge technology like biometrics as a way to provide irrefutable proof of identity. Biometrics is the technique of studying the physical characteristics of a person such as your fingerprint, hand geometry, eye structure or voice pattern. For the effective ‘two-factor’ security authorisation of an individual, fingerprint recognition is used in conjunction with our contactless smart cards. Our recommended product for use with your Tensor system is our smart card access control scanner with built in fingerprint reader, as pictured.  

An official at a leading union said it would stick up for disabled workers at a UK-wide firm. Phil Davies, GMB National Secretary responsible for Remploy members at 54 factories, said: “It is unbelievable that… able bodied bosses [are rewarded] for their failure to provide sufficient work for the factory that is leading to the closure threat.” Staff have received a pay rise offer of £250 while bosses’ bonuses took off. The union claims top Remploy managers’ bonuses average £5,230. All-in-one Time and Attendance recording and payroll systems are available from Tensor that include comprehensive user-definable working patterns, bonus payments, overtime and shifts. With the WinTA software you gain an at-a-glance summary of time and attendance details, showing individuals or groups of employees. In the Employee screens an index tab system is used to hold different categories of information. Some of these are user definable fields, including user definable tables and arrays. This makes available information that could normally take days to produce with older manual card based systems.  

A rural insurer says agricultural theft is on the rise, and this is estimated to have cost the UK farming industry £49.7m in 2010. NFU Mutual said ‘agri-crime’ on farms has risen from £41m in 2009, with power tools like chainsaws, electric drills and lawnmowers the most stolen items in 2010. The organisation surveyed its branch offices in rural towns and villages and found that two-thirds of branches had reported an increase in rural crime in their area. Among the varied options for business access control security supplied by Tensor is VMS (Visitor Management System). Simple to operate, and user friendly with WindowsTM style software, it allows reception and gatehouse staff to quickly check the identity or enter the details of visitors, and print their personalised ID pass. On arrival at a site, a full colour photograph is taken and personal details are recorded and digitally stored. Once the details are safely stored within the PC, an inexpensive bar coded pass is then issued containing a photograph, name and validation dates.  

A teacher who stayed away from school by forging doctor’s notes has avoided being sent to prison. It was revealed in court that Kulvinder Billan forged half a dozen notes and a letter from a doctor so he could avoid teaching at a school in Northampton. The court heard the 31-year-old had a substantial amount of time off sick during his first academic year of 2009/10 but he found it difficult to go back to school in the following year. Pupils, parents and teachers can benefit from a scaled-down time and attendance regime. PC Clock from Tensor is a simple PC based booking system ideal for schools or other organisations where each pupil or employee has access to a PC. The input screen books them ‘in’ and ‘out’ and has an Analysis Module used to calculate the necessary information for the EU Working Time Directive. Pupils are simply presented with an input screen on their PC allowing them to clock in and out.  

Two southern England police authorities could face having to cope with redundancies after signing a merger agreement. A new combined unit will share and manage police data across the two forces, will be based in existing locations across Hampshire and Thames Valley. A police statement said: “The creation of the joint unit will reduce the total number of posts required to deliver information management for the two forces.” The new unit will involve “few, if any, redundancies.” Tensor proximity read smart card clocking methods can save your organisation resources and improve efficiency. The most popular T1305 Tensor Smart Card is the size of a standard credit card (thin and flexible enough to be carried in your wallet) and operates our time and attendance, access control and visitor monitoring systems. The product comes in two different colours, is very secure and is virtually foolproof. The reason is that the smart card microchip is a passive device which holds a unique factory encoded ID number that cannot be duplicated.