Company

Lathem History

Dependable Timekeeping Solutions Since 1919

We are deeply inspired by our customers and their employees, and we owe it to them to provide great products and service. We are problem solvers. We are focused, driven, and fun. Our mission is to be a great place to work, grow in the markets we serve, and provide the best workforce management products available.

Helping businesses of all sizes better manage employee time & attendance.

In 1919, when George Lathem and his son, Louie P. Lathem began selling time clocks, the father and son sales team traveled by train throughout the Southeast, getting off at the whistle-stops of small towns and looking for the telltale smokestacks of local factories. In those days, manufacturers and factories were one of the few markets for the time clocks and for the night watchman patrol clocks that the Lathem boys offered.

Today, Lathem is celebrating its 100th anniversary as a family-owned and operated US business headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Lathem is one of the world's leading innovators and producers of time keeping products for businesses and institutions. More than 1 million companies worldwide utilize Lathem products every day to help manage their organizations.

Lathem. Your Trusted Partner for Employee Time Tracking for Over 100 Years.

The Lathem Time Company's business grew and expanded throughout North America with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, requiring American businesses to keep and report accurate employee time records. Following World War II, the Lathems resigned their sales relationship with another manufacturer and Harrison Hooper joined the team. Mr Hooper was the chief engineer and designer at Lathem in the early years and he helped develop Lathem's first employee time clock or time recorder, as it was called back then. In 1945, Louie P. Lathem, Jr., joined the business; in 1947 Lathem developed its first security time clock - the Series 76 Lathem Watchman Clock, named for the company's first address, 76 Spring Street. Over the next decades, Lathem began building a network of independent office supply and dealerships that today is worldwide.

The legacy of Lathem management was passed on to the next generation of the Lathem and Hooper families with the promise to carry on the the tradition of highest quality and dedicated customer service when Bill Lathem became the Chief Executive Officer and Ann Hooper, (now retired) became the Chief Financial Officer.

Punch Clocks to Biometrics to Cloud-based Solutions

Although known many decades for durable time clocks or "punch clocks" and institutional wall clocks, Lathem has earned industry accolades for biometric advancements such as face recognition for automated employee time, attendance and access control.

Current products include electro-mechanical time card clocks, document stamp time clocks, automated plug-n-play employee time clocks, mobile and cloud-based time clock systems, as well as wireless and synchronized wall clocks; spanning business products that matter most to the success of those running a small business today.

Engineering, design, manufacturing expertise, and world-wide partnerships all lend themselves to the Lathem brand name. The Lathem team works diligently to ensure strict quality and cost control at each stage of production. New products are carefully and extensively tested before entering the marketplace so that every customer is assured of the best quality products every time.

People you can rely on means products you can trust

Lathem employees average an astounding 18 years of service, often unheard of in today's economy. Many have tenures of more than 25 years with the company. Each employee embodies the company's core values of dependability, respect, integrity, flexibility, and being a team player. This commitment is evidenced in every package that ships to a customer with pride of craftsmanship and attention to detail at the core of Lathem's culture.