Remote and field staff: three ways to handle off-site clock-ins

Phone-based attendance with GPS is great for staff who work on site: they can only clock in within a set distance of the building. But what about the sales rep who starts the day at a client’s office, the auditor working from a branch for a week, or the developer who works from home on Fridays?

You need a clear rule for clock-ins that happen away from your approved sites. There are three sensible options.

Option 1: Don’t allow it

Off-site clock-ins are blocked. Staff can only clock in at an approved site.

Good for: factories, hospitals, shops and any job that can only be done in one place.

Watch out for: genuine exceptions, such as a staff member sent to another branch for the day. Either add the site, or have a manager record their attendance.

Option 2: Allow it, with approval

Staff can clock in from anywhere, but an off-site clock-in creates a request that a supervisor approves. Until it’s approved, it doesn’t count.

Good for: office teams with occasional remote days, and field staff whose locations vary.

Watch out for: approval backlogs. Set a rule that supervisors approve within a day, or the requests pile up at month end.

Option 3: Allow it outright

Off-site clock-ins count straight away, with the location recorded.

Good for: fully remote roles, and senior staff you trust to manage their own time.

Watch out for: checking out. Decide whether staff must clock out from roughly the same place they clocked in, so a “remote day” doesn’t start at home and end on the beach.

You’ll probably need exceptions

Most organisations pick one policy for everyone, then need exceptions:

• One person who keeps clocking in remotely without a good reason, whom you want to restrict to approved sites only.
• A security guard who should only clock in at the two client sites they’re assigned to, not at any site in the company.
• A field team that needs a looser policy than head office.

Set the default at company level, then allow restrictions per employee.

Write the rules down

Whatever you choose, put it in writing:

1. Which roles may clock in off-site, and when.
2. Whether approval is needed, who approves, and how fast.
3. How lateness is judged for remote clock-ins.
4. What location information you record, and that it’s only taken at clock-in and clock-out.
5. What happens with repeated misuse.

Questions we often hear

Is it legal to record an employee’s location?

Location data is personal data, so data protection laws apply, such as Ghana’s Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) and the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023. Keep it proportionate: record location at clock-in and clock-out only, tell staff in writing what you record and why, and limit who can see it.

What about staff with no smartphone or no data?

Give them another way to clock in, such as a biometric reader or NFC card at the office, or let a supervisor record their attendance. A policy that only works for people with new phones isn’t a fair policy.

How do we handle someone who’s late on a remote day?

Use the same start time as on office days unless their role says otherwise, and decide how many minutes’ grace you allow. Measure it the same way for everyone, so remote staff aren’t judged more harshly or more gently than the rest of the team.

How Eban handles it

In Eban you choose one of these three remote attendance modes for your organisation: off-site clock-ins disabled, allowed with a request that goes for approval, or allowed directly. You can then restrict individual employees, either blocking remote clock-ins for that person or limiting them to specific sites. Remote check-outs can be tied to the check-in location within a radius you set, and you can set how lateness is measured for remote staff. Every clock-in records where it happened, so supervisors can see at a glance who was where.