Highlights:

1. Facial recognition is rapidly growing worldwide, shaping into a multi-billion-dollar industry with promising prospects.
2. Facial recognition technology is transforming HR and payroll processes, ensuring accuracy and security while eliminating fraud.
3. Facial recognition offers secure, touch-free access in the workplace, contributing to safety and a smoother transition into the digital era.
4. The effectiveness of facial recognition lies in identifying individuals wearing masks and how it bolsters workplace safety and reliability.

 
Facial Recognition is everywhere across the world now and is one of the emerging ways to identify or do things hassle-free. As per a recent report by Future Market Insights ^[1], the global facial recognition market size was valued at USD 5.2 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.1% from 2023 to 2033.

Why Is Facial Recognition Technology Trending in the Enterprise World?

Someone said, “A face is like a work of art; It deserves to be appreciated from different angles”. Let us see from what angles TECHNOLOGY is ready to appreciate a human face!
 

Facial recognition technology is a form of biometric artificial intelligence (AI) that executes identity verification by performing comparisons among video frames or digital images and matching them with the facial images stored in a database.
 
Over the years, facial recognition has been used in various ways. Earlier, it was mainly used while issuing identity documents and, most often, combined with other biometric technologies, such as fingerprints (to prevent ID fraud and identity theft). A lot of companies have started to digitally transform all their functions, like human resources (HR), logistics, and administration.
 
Let us take an example of HR where payroll processing relies directly on time and attendance data from different target sources in different industry verticals, for instance, near-field communication (NFC)/radio-frequency identification (RFID) cards, biometric fingerprint devices, paper-based attendance, Excel notes or Mobile/desktop applications with manual data entry options. It is always a challenge to collect and consolidate data from different target sources and provide it to the payroll system. The need to capture the in-time and out-time to process accurate pay is very critical, where employees are paid on an hourly basis.

Organizations must also ensure that malpractices such as tailgating are eliminated. To avoid hassles and reliance on third-party devices and ways of communication to mark attendance, major software companies introduced facial recognition-based systems, which can identify faces using smartphones or tablets. These systems provide secured access and mark attendance, eliminating the need for extra access cards and specialized devices. In addition, the chances of human error/fraud are drastically reduced, ensuring accurate pay is processed.

One Face - Multiple Facets

The Covid-19 pandemic made every organization start rushing to adopt digitalization at an amazingly fast phase. With digitalization being agnostic to the nature of jobs, both white- and blue-collar workers started to avail its benefits. While a few organizations were having common kiosks set up inside the industries/factories for workers to access their information, there were a few challenges in that approach. One user impersonating another user and getting access to their details was one of the main risks in kiosk usage. To provide better access without any hassles, companies introduced face recognition-based login to the employee self-service application.

In addition to easy access, it helped address concerns around safety, being a touch-free access system. This type of innovation helps HR to effectively engage employees and make them feel valued, safe, and part of the digital evolution.

Myths About Facial Recognition

Despite the increasing prevalence of facial recognition in the workplace, there are still several misconceptions about its capabilities and limitations that persist. One common misconception is that facial recognition systems will not be able to differentiate between pictures or videos of an individual’s face and their actual face. However, the latest systems are equipped with liveness detection algorithms that ensure that they are scanning a live face, eliminating the possibility of malpractices. Another misconception regarding these systems is that they cannot recognize a person’s face if they are wearing a mask (during the flu season, for example).

However, when a person’s face is registered in the system, the system captures multiple points on the person’s face, which are mapped to a coordinate system. When a person is wearing a mask, the facial recognition system can successfully identify that person by detecting the coordinates of the points not covered by the mask and matching the captured image with a face in its database having points in the same locations. These systems can also be further trained to selectively admit people who are wearing face masks, ensuring safety in the workplace. The advanced capabilities of facial recognition systems ensure their reliability and effectiveness in enforcing workplace protocols.

Conclusion

As part of digitalization across all organizations, I believe that facial recognition is here to stay and expand. We can already see facial recognition adopted across different sectors and different use cases, and this has been only increasing and improving. Mobile phone manufacturers are also leveraging this technology to unlock apps – bidding goodbye to typing the user credentials. Airports have started adopting facial recognition for immigration clearance. Banks have started to adopt paying by using face in order to avoid carrying chip or payWave cards. With these innovations, people have begun to realize the benefits of facial recognition technology in their daily lives. The time is ripe for payroll to get a smarter face as well.
 
Footnote
[1] Source URL - https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/facial-recognition-market

Author Bio

Balamalai Ranganathan Murugesan is the Head of HR & Payroll Product Strategy and Enablement at Ramco Systems. Balamalai has an extensive 360-degree experience in the HR-payroll product business lifecycle and payroll managed services transformations.

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