I worked retail in highschool during the 90s. It was exactly like this. Just because something is possible with modern tech doesn't mean it should be done or is better than bog simple stuff like a log book.

As Meja sang some years back: it's all about the money (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcXMhwF4EtQ)(cute song)

Logbooks: someone needs to distribute them, collect them, read them, transfer the (many many many) written lines to a computer, validate the signature samples/writing style, etc. etc. An app that automates that in 2 mins is so much better.

A solution could be: 1) give each employee a (corporate) cheap $100 android phone, 2) configure these to allow only 1-2 apps to 'escape' to the internet so the bandwidth is not wasted on updates or browsing, 3) provide a 1GB per year data plan, 4) ask them to switch on right before entering the 'site' and switch off right when they leave the 'site' 5) give them a monthly $5 subsidy to keep it charged.

They don’t need to do anything but distribute and maybe collect them. Typically they simply look at them periodically and make sure they’re being filled out, and only closely looked at if there’s some kind of incident.

Yes and no.

This would cover some of the functions. How about overtime? How about 'less time'? How about an extra Sudnay because game/football/concert/office-party?

The HR of each company would need this data to adjust salaries.

I am not discussing incidents and/or user-access-management (apologies if my above comment was misunderstood). I meant it for time-tracking purposes. An app where one can add an exception note "I had to pop to X shop to buy Y material" would also help document and approve. Geofencing requirement makes sense in some lines of work and a work-phone (switched on only the work-hours) is a reasonably 'invasive' tool.

Maybe I just don't know how this industry works. Do people get paid based on the actual number of bathrooms cleaned and such? To be clear I'm talking about places where one of the regular employees just has 'bathroom duty'.

I've seen these logs and to me it always seemed that the point was for customers to see that the place was actually maintained. A customer can't tell whether a bathroom is cleaned only once a month and that's why it looks the way it does or whether the last guy just trashed the place after the last cleaning, which was an hour ago and based on the previous logs you can see, it will be cleaned again soon. Or that the cleaners didn't clean and just wrote on the paper. Which technology doesn't solve. You just wave the badge or whatever but don't do anything. And no, location tracking doesn't help with that. A dedicated slacker can listen to music or watch YouTube in different locations.

I always wondered what prevented an employee from skipping several check-ins, then filling in the missing signatures/timestamps at one time.

Random checks at random time.

This is also how Environmental Health and Safety ensures lab safety checks were done on things like the eye wash station.