HUMAN RESOURCES, THOUGHT LEADERSHIP, ENTERPRISE SECURITY

It’s hard running a small business. You must wear many hats at once to get things off the ground. You need to secure financing. You need to bring customers in the door, so add marketing and sales to your list. You are responsible for all the administrative work, all bill payments, and all vendor negotiations. You’ll also need to be a social media and marketing expert. And all of this has to happen simultaneously while providing the good or service you sell. Time often feels too short for small business owners because there is always so much to do, and everything is important.  

As any small business owner knows, hiring can be challenging once the business gets off the ground. Finding the right people is critical to the success of any business. Hiring is incredibly challenging because you need to source, screen, onboard, and train candidates while still performing your other duties. 

Amidst all this activity as a small business owner, you might think security isn’t important. Yours is, after all, just a small business. And the problem can go sometimes go deeper than protecting your company from cyberattacks. Staff turnover is high in many industries, such as the service industry, construction, retail, and hospitality, and it’s typical for workers to come and go often. With so many people coming and going, how can the busy small business owner streamline the hiring process and ensure that once hired, their ever-changing roster of staff members have access to the places and spaces they need to do their jobs?   

Biometrics can help to alleviate small business owners’ challenges in several key areas. You might think biometrics is a strategy and tech function for larger enterprises and can’t help smaller businesses, but this isn’t true.  

There are two core areas central to small businesses (and all businesses) where biometrics can help: onboarding and authentication.  

Onboarding in the Small Business

For many businesses today, the onboarding process is still quite cumbersome. New employees have to appear in person with documents and photocopies. Access cards or physical keys may need to be made. Ensuring these individuals are who they say they are and can access the physical and logical spaces they need is hard to track and manage. 

With biometrics, those challenges disappear. The onboarding process can take place remotely, quickly, and securely. A biometrics platform can verify core identity documents like driver’s licenses and passports. With biometrics, the employee doesn’t have to set foot in the same building as the onboarding team, yet can still be verified and hired securely. Cutting down on in-person visits for onboarding can save a business time and money. Remote onboarding also provides added convenience for the new hire, who may not be able to travel to your site at a mutually convenient time. 

Quickly and securely authenticating documents provides a seamless onboarding process. Biometric identity proofing can capture the front and back of the document and detect security features. Server-centric or browser-based architecture provides flexibility based on how a company does business. Overall, mobile onboarding makes identity proofing more robust, secure, and convenient regardless of the business size.  

Authentication in the Small Business

Once workers are in the door with a secure mobile onboarding process, it’s time to ensure they have appropriate access to what they’ll need to be successful in their new role. Consider what spaces they’ll need to access, both physical and virtual. 

Depending on your industry, employees may need secure access to physical spaces like equipment rooms, surgical suites, and the like. For virtual access, they may need access to shared network drives, databases, customer lists, and other information.  

Biometric authentication isn’t just easier for the small business – it’s easier for the employees as well. Staff can access secure areas with a facial scan or a fingerprint reading instead of scanning keycards or being forced to remember security codes to access doors and spaces.  

The best biometric platforms bring you authentication in the cloud. Cloud-based biometrics enables organizations to acquire search and enroll capabilities without building those systems themselves. Organizations of all types can quickly add biometrics technology to existing processes for use in their day-to-day identity management operations.  

Small Business Administration

Ultimately, it can be quite gratifying to be a small business owner. While a lot of work is involved in small business administration, you also get to realize an original idea and help it grow. Running a small business is challenging because there is a lot to do, and much of it will fall on the owner. 

Biometrics and security allow each employee’s physical characteristics to become their key, physically and virtually. They will feel secure knowing they have the access they need to do their job, and you will sleep well at night knowing that you not only hired the right people, but you are using the right tools to protect your business. The peace of mind of knowing that your hard work is protected by cutting-edge technology and that your data is secure allows you to focus your attention on the areas of running the business that you love.