Tech Mahindra adopts facial recognition to mark attendance

NEW DELHI: Facial recognition could soon jump from your smartphone to your workplace with employers using it to mark attendance and gauge the mood of the workforce.

Tech Mahindra, the fifth largest Indian IT services company by revenue, has launched a facial-recognition system for employees at its Noida office. Employees can now mark their attendance using swipe cards or they can simply look into the new facial-recognition terminal and sign in.

Harshvendra Soin, chief people officer at Tech Mahindra, said the tool would help the organisation measure the mood of employees when they use the system through a functionality called “moodometer”.


The system can recognise nine different facial expressions. It captures the expression on the face of the employees every time he or she uses the system and consolidates the information from all employees daily to create a moodometer score, which reflects the mood of the workforce.

“(Most) organisations do an employee survey once a year but great workplaces do it every single day. We will know locationwise what your moodometer is and if it falls or goes up, it’s either an alarm or something that has gone right” said Soin.

All employees who are using facial recognition have given consent which could be revoked at any time, he said, terming this system to be more secure than swipe cards.

Facial recognition may soon become the mandatory method of marking attendance across Tech Mahindra, Soin said. The company plans to roll out the system to other locations after it receives feedback from the Noida office.

While Tech Mahindra said curbing misuse of swipe cards was not the primary motivation behind setting up this new system, Molik Jain, owner of biometric access solution supplier NavKar Systems, said that indeed was a key reason for most organisations.

“The primary benefit is that you cannot mark attendance by proxy. Factories and workplaces that employ blue collar workers show the greatest demand for facial recognition and fingerprint-based biometric access systems,” said Jain.

Tech Mahindra and others planning to use facial recognition should be aware of employee reaction to such systems, said Deepti Bhatnagar, professor of organisational behaviour at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

“Most employees may feel that the intended purpose is to tighten the attendance system. This may lead to a feeling of not being trusted among some employees,” said Bhatnagar.