Filter Time Explained

In analyzing staff attendances at locations, it becomes clear some locations are “staffing choke points” meaning that many staff walk together past a location at the same time. Filter Time is an Elite-ID innovation that helps in your analysis of staff movement patterns.

An example of a staff attendance choke point is a location near the staff-room where meals are taken. Many staff at the same time will exit to begin their duties. This kind of location will have very high attendance rates because staff pass in groups and often.

A less obvious example is an entrance to a mall. The staff member approaches and is logged. Then the staff member exits the center and checks the pavement, then returns and is logged again. This is logged twice in maybe 30 second intervals. Is ‘Risk’ reduced by having such a short duration between these two attendances?

Is it fair to count all attendances when more than one staff pass at the same time?

This is the question that was asked of us. The rationale is that only one person is required to reduce the risk in an area and more that one person skews a simple average return times calculation unfairly. It is a very good point.

However, if you are paying for that labor yourself, and your contract demands you show your return time, you want to count every single person who moves past and show your diligence in supplying that labor. Why would you not?

How can Elite-ID cater for the need of management wanting a supposedly more true indication of risk, while a contractor wants to show themselves in the best possible light?

So the “Filter Time” was devised by Elite-ID. This allows using a value of “0” so all attendances are used in calculations, or a number can be entered and that, in minutes, causes a location to accept the first attendance then lock that location off for that many minutes.

Example. If say 5 staff pass within a filter time, only the first will be counted till the end of that filter time.

The effect of using a filter time is to reduce your performance (your return time will increase) if more than one staff pass within the time.

What Is The Real Goal of Filter Time?

We believe that if you set a value of “1” to this value, you will improve the real risk analysis of a location by eliminating staff attendances that are redundant.

An area only requires one staff member to reduce the risk in that area, and “1” minute later another staff member can check it and gain the credit for that. If 2 or more staff pass at the same time then it does not significantly benefit over having just one person there.

The measurement of performance will be reduced by this, the return time may increase by 10%, or have no impact, or similar. It all depends on staff patrol patterns.

Filter Time in Use

We have used this option ourselves many times to gauge its impact. You can also.

It is easy to use:

1. Firstly as a reference. Set the filter time in the Time Profile to 0.
2. Run the Risk Management report over a month. Print it out.
3. Return to the Time profile and change the filter time to say “1” minute. You choose, you can use “2” or “3” if you want.
4. Re-run the Risk Management report for the same profile for the same date range. See the difference?

What is the realistic impact?

It all depends on the location and how staff attend it.

For a location in a seldom patrolled mall it will have little impact. For a location near an escalator where many staff travel constantly between floors, or for a location where staff are together and pass all the time in groups, it can have a significant impact.