A high-tech partnership is working to make punching the clock a think of the past.

Workbrain Corp. today announced it has teamed with Cisco Systems, using that company's IP phone to develop what it calls "the industry's first integrated voice and data solution that allows real-time, two-way communication between employees and workforce management systems."

The solution allows employees to complete workforce management transactions through IP telephones and interact in real time with supervisors at the employees' work department, thereby eliminating the labor time lost walking back and forth between the time clock to the work department, Workbrain said in a press release today.

Employees can use Cisco Unified IP Phones to perform tasks such as punching in or out of work and logging hours to cost centers in real time. Cisco's unified voice and data backbone allows employees to also connect in real time with their supervisors, at the point of work, to immediately close the loop on operational workforce tasks. Combined with Workbrain's leading proactive alerts and notifications, Workbrain's total workforce management solution provides the most seamless interchange between organizations and their workforces in the industry.

"This is the most significant change to the time clock in one hundred years, a true milestone," said Howard Tarnoff, Vice President of Channels at Workbrain. "Until now, time clocks have been single-use, uni-directional devices that are often too expensive to locate conveniently throughout the work environment. Conversely, the phone is the most ubiquitous device in the workplace. This new, unified voice and data solution uses Cisco Unified IP Phones to bring real-time interactivity right to the point of work, without requiring any additional hardware investment."