One of the most hotly contested forms of employee monitoring, often involves GPS tracking devices. In a world where technology is at our fingertips tracking can take place on lots of devices not just GPS in vehicles.  There are situations where the employee’s job requires that the employee drives to various locations, and obeys the rules of the road. Often businesses can land themselves in trouble if there isn’t a legitimate reason for tracking or monitoring devices in vehicles.

Legitimate business reasons why you might choose to utilise GPS tracking include an interest in confirmed time worked, improving response time, efficiency of routing, helping prevent theft and increasing productivity together with Health and Safety and driver welfare. Before you commence with any employee monitoring, be sure to explore any specific state laws relating to privacy. In Western Australia, these are strict and we are well versed in helping you put the right governance in place.

Other best practices to include are:

Only monitor staff during work hours

Have clearly written polices which specifically relate to your business and the use of GPS tracking, including why it’s been used, when it will be used and the rights related to privacy. Check with us before implementing any policy or you could end up with a difficult and costly situation to manage.

Employee surveillance is often seen as blatant invasion of a person’s confidentiality. However, with careful management and your policies clearly spelled out such that it can be demonstrated to be for the betterment of your business and, it goes without saying, in line with the relevant state laws, you are perfectly within your rights to keep a reasonable check on your employees.