I am in Texas too. You are going to have to get a watchdog that you can trust. I don't know about your company but put pressure on your managers to watchdog. If your employees use Kronos, the managers can check after the punch and see if the employee fudged or not. You can go to the main computer and check too. Threaten to write them up and in turn they can threaten to write the employee up if the times are not honored. Make a memo, send it to all employees that over 2 "missing punch sheets" will be terms for a write up and over 3 means dismissal. Make your managers responsible and aware and you can stay on them to make them aware.
From what I have seen, unless you make the managers of the departments uncomfortable, the employees under them will be lax in their management of their time. I worked for a man who ran his ship so tight that if he saw someone standing around, he would go back to the computer, find out if he or she was on the clock and then call to the department and tell the manager to have them clock out and go home. It boils down to awareness and consistency.
I wouldn't be concerned at this point about the past wrongdoing, I would make an action plan to improve the awareness from this point forward. If this problem is formost in your mind, make some changes. If you are considering bugging the office, it sounds like you need more control. Be strict and forceful even if you haven't been in the past. You don't need friends, you need people under you that you can trust and if you don't have them, get rid of them, transfer them, make their lives a living hell. I have seen it done and it isn't pretty, but when we had this problem, we all got to where we were afraid not to report any inconsistencies.
Another thought that worked and again this is for the retail environment that I worked as a personnel manager. The managers could change punches. My store manager made the department managers sign a sheet at the end of the day that everyone was within their hours. The department managers stayed on the workers to be consistent. If they had a day off, the first thing they checked was the punch read out and made a copy for the employee. If they didn't punch in or out, they would sign the copy and put it in their employee file. Three times you were out of there. We lost 15 people, but the problem went away.
Hope these suggestions help.
