Monitoring your employees through GPS is a convenient way of helping your business grow. This is especially useful and valuable if you own a construction firm or you are running a business that involves multiple project sites, delivery of the products, and so on.
Although monitoring of the workers can turn out to be hugely beneficial to your company, there are also some things to look out. We want to mark out some of the clear advantages of investing in the GPS tracking software, but we also want to highlight the things that you need to consider in terms of state and other laws, privacy, written policies, etc.
Advantages of GPS Tracking Software and Devices
There are numerous benefits of using GPS to track your employees. Knowing their whereabouts at all times has proven to be an invaluable asset to the companies who rely on timely delivery of the products.
Cost-cut Benefits
For instance, if you are in the transportation business, you can monitor every vehicle at all times. You can check their routes and see if they are using the most optimal itinerary. If there is an overlap between the movements of the vehicles, you can easily access the daily coverage statistics and improve your routing efficiency. That way you will not only save the time (to the benefit of the customers), but you will also save money for the gas, unnecessary wear and tear of the vehicles, the employee’s logged hours, and things like that.
Increased Productivity
In situations where the employees know that they are being monitored through GPS, they tend to increase their productivity levels. Generally, they avoid the common practices of slacking, punching the clock, and acting negligently, sloppy or reckless when it comes to performing their job duties and tasks. Consequently, this can lead to an overall increase in your company’s performances. Real-time fleet tracking, like the one that UniGuard provides, will definitely lead to an upward surge in the strength of your business.
With increased productivity also comes a jump in accountability. Suddenly, everyone is working together as a team, since essentially no one wants to be labeled as a liability, nuisance or a weak link of the group. If everyone starts holding the next person accountable, you’re on the good path of creating a good working environment.
Compliance and Safety
GPS tracking can also help you to ensure that the workers are logging the proper number of rest hours and driving hours. Keeping these records and logs as accurate as possible is making things a lot easier when it comes to providing payroll, various government records, log books, billing, etc.
GPS monitoring not only ensures workers’ compliance with the company rules, but it also encourages safety. For instance, if drivers are well rested, they will not cause risk and put others in jeopardy while driving. To add to that, they will also tend to drive more carefully if they know that they are being watched. You can decrease violent behavior on the road and increase overall traffic safety by penalizing reckless driving.
Pay Attention To the Privacy Laws and Written Policies
If you are not already familiar with privacy laws in your country when it comes to monitoring the workers, we strongly suggest you get acquainted with those first. Different states also have different laws, so you might want to contact the lawyer prior to installing the GPS monitoring software, or before putting the GPS devices into the company’s vehicles.
You want to make sure that you are not violating any privacy laws. For example, if you hand out company phones with pre-installed tracking software to the employees, first you want to ensure that they comply with being monitored in such a way. It is the most common practice that only after they have accepted to be tracked and monitored while working, you can actually supervise and oversee their movements.
Infringing on employee privacy rights is a serious violation of the law. You don’t want to risk getting sued over the issues relating to the tracking of employee’s location.
Conclusion
There are some clear-cut and definite advantages of monitoring your employees through GPS. You can save both time and money by logging and real-time tracking the fleet’s activity. Knowing at all times the location of your workers also gives you the possibility to determine who is productive and who is just flat out careless when it comes to fulfilling the job duties and responsibilities.
The GPS tracking of the employees can also lead to an easier task of logging books, billing, payroll, among other things. You will also increase traffic safety by making sure that the drivers are well rested and ready to perform to the best of their abilities.
Other than that, you want to check the privacy laws in your country or state, prior to installing the monitoring software to company phones, tablets or laptops/ PCs. Consult the lawyer and be sure to tell your employees that they are being monitored before you actually start tracking and logging their activities. That way you will avoid any problems and lawsuits that could potentially damage your company.