Do you know where your workers are?
GPS surveillance of employees can help efficiency, but raises privacy concerns
TREENA HEIN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Ryan Vending, a Victoria-based company that fills and services vending machines throughout Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland, wanted to know whether its drivers were receiving fair compensation for the hours and kilometres they logged on their delivery routes. So last fall, the company installed GPS devices into a portion of their 30-vehicle fleet and saw immediate benefits: The technology helped the company confirm its pay calculations were fair and balanced.
Furthermore, Ryan Vending also discovered the technology improved their service-call response times, saved them money on fuel and stopped employees from abusing the privilege of taking company trucks home at night.
Called telematics, the technology goes beyond simply providing businesses with vehicles' locations -- it can also supply data on things like when a vehicle's doors are open, when engines are turned on or when cargo has been picked up. What's more, the technology can also enable a business to remotely control a vehicle by turning off its engine, locking a door or disabling the ignition.
But the technology does have its drawbacks. For every advocate trumpeting the benefits of telematics, there is a critic who says tracking workers violates privacy. Unions, for example, are looking at telematics carefully, and some are negotiating restrictions on monitoring workers in collective agreements.
President of NERO Global Tracking, David Katz, holds up one of his company's GPS devices in Victoria, BC, Tuesday. The GPS units, which are placed beneath the dashboard of vehicles, are used to track vehicles and employees for Sanitech Corp, a carpet and upholstery business in Victoria. Deddeda Stemler for Tech story) (DEDDEDA STEMLER/GLOBE AND MAIL)
However, those concerns do not seem to be diminishing telematic's growing popularity. Recent research says businesses' use of telematics will continue to expand this year, growing into a $1.2-billion (U.S.) industry by the end of this year.
Rob Oughtred, Ryan Vending's director of operations, says he expected some resistance when they decided to install tracking devices from Nero Global Tracking. But his drivers sometimes carry large amounts of money and immediately saw the security benefits in having their home base know where they are at all times. "The biggest hurdle was how we were going to explain it to our drivers," he said. "But [Nero Global Tracking] did a great job" of explaining the security benefits to staff.
Now, not only is Ryan Vending's business more secure, the technology is saving them money. The company has reduced the amount it spends on fuel by improving distribution routes and by making sure drivers obey speed limits. He said that it's difficult to pinpoint when the company will recoup equipment and installation costs, which are about $400 a vehicle, but anticipates they will.
Cost savings and security aren't the only motivations for telematics. The Miller Group, which operates road construction, waste-management and transit services around the world, has used telematics from Toronto-based AirIQ for two years. George South, district manager in the company's Toronto-area waste and recycling division, says the ability to supply municipalities with a record of where trucks have been on any given day is crucial to building and maintaining trust.
For example, if residents call to enquire why their garbage and recycling hasn't yet been picked up, "we can demonstrate to the municipality whether we were there or not, or we can look on the GPS and say [to the caller] 'Yeah, we're one street over from you, just hang tight, we'll be there in half an hour,' " Mr. South says.
Mr. South adds the tracking devices are important to Miller Group in refining maintenance schedules, logging waste-diversion rates and monitoring driving habits.
Private businesses are not the only ones experimenting with telematics. City managers in the Montreal borough of Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, began using GPS tracking of municipal vehicles in 2006 to keep the public informed about snow clearing and sidewalk de-icing.
But not everyone is converting to the tracking technology. Richard Rosenberg, a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of British Columbia and president of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, says he is concerned that employees don't know they're being monitored. For some, he says, having their movements tracked is a condition of employment.
Stephen Marmura, a social scientist with the Queen's University Surveillance Project, a research group that studies processing of personal data in Canada, has similar concerns. "Once you bring in any kind of tracking or surveillance technology into the workplace, even if it's for the good of the workers and even if there are all kinds of wonderful things about it, it can immediately put people on edge or introduce an element which makes them feel they are not respected."
Mr. Rosenberg hopes 2007 updates to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) "will make it very clear what is okay to do and what's not okay" in terms of workplace surveillance.
Big Brother on the job
20
Percentage of Canadians who believe it is acceptable for employers to monitor employee e-mail under any circumstances
17
Percentage of Canadians who believe it is acceptable for employers to monitor employees with closed-circuit cameras under any circumstances
1.4
Percentage of registered Canadian collective agreements in December, 2005, with clauses relating to workplace surveillance
$300-$400
Approximate cost per vehicle to install location-based wireless fleet management
SOURCE: QUEEN'S SURVEILLANCE PROJECT
This article is reprinted from The Globe And Mail.