Ducati Monster Forum

Does anyone have this or a similar service on their work phone so your manager can see where you are?

I have been tasked to investigate this for our sales force as I guess some don't believe they are spending time with customers.

I think it is pretty big brotherish.....but not my decision.

i would think your company's legal department might have an issue with that.

fwiw, it seems that the detailed billing info (which you likely already have, showing course cel tower location of outgoing calls) would be enough to know if they're in the right part of the city or not.

Company owned and paid device.

dozens of companies utilize this.


I have several friends that are pharmaceutical sales reps and they all have it.

oh, i totally understand that. all our phones are company owned.

given my interactions with corporate legal regarding things as simple as what keywords we can block on incoming email and whatnot, i'm pretty sure they'd have issues gps-tracking employees without some sort of employee notification/consent due to privacy concerns.

even with consent, it raises all sorts of issues. for example, do you have a right to track an employee outside of "business" hours? is that... right?

http://boingboing.net/2009/07/30/gps-jammer-plugs-int.html (http://boingboing.net/2009/07/30/gps-jammer-plugs-int.html)

i used to work for a company that did gps-tracking for trucking companies. it was a product that was very popular with the home office, and very unpopular with the truckers (duh :D).

there were records for everything, downtime, speed, location... everything.

lots of equipment sabotage.

now, i think tracking your shipments from point a to point b is a little different than tracking your salesforce out on calls. i mean, there's 16 hours of the day where your sales guy is on their "own time."

Just checked with Legal

employee would have to sign a waiver that we have the ability to track them.

That's why I only have my work cell on me when I am working. I don't use anything I work on for personal use (including the PC I am typing this on as I work on another PC with a separate connection.)

Since you are talking about legal opinions, I would give you one.

You aren't tracking the employee.

You are tracking the company-owned phone.

Employees do not need to give consent to this.  It would be nice to notify them that the phones will be tracked for company related purposes. 

However, some states' laws may or may not be silent on this particular issue.  Only about 15 states have ~extensive~ electronic privacy laws.

Ohio does not have a law (that I could find in my 5 minute search) regarding employee privacy using company-owned property.  Some states have found this privacy extends when dealing with personal matters (I.e. personal phone call on company phone).

However, the substance of tracking someone is NON specific, i.e. you know they are in a building, but you don't know which room.  You don't know if it is the bathroom or the main offices.

I would argue that is general enough to protect personal privacy.  An employer has the right to know where an employee is while on company time.

We used to have camera's in our trucks that would record 30 seconds before and after an "accident".
The damn things would turn on when you hit a speed bump.

Now we have computers in our trucks that track where you are, how much time you've spent on a call, did you take a good route, and hell how much time your truck has been idleing.

how did they know an accident was about to happen in 30 seconds?  seems like a nice feature.

the unit is constantly recording but when you have an accident it saves the 30 seconds prior to incident.

after typing this out im not sure if you were joking or really asking?

I assume they are like an oscilloscope, they are recording live all the time, then when a trigger event happens, they save the last 30sec recorded and then forward 30seconds (pre trigger and post trigger)

mitt

See, what they are bringing back is what about after business hours?

weekends, holidays, etc.

hehehe... i'd just forward my work phone to my personal phone and then turn the work phone off.  ;D

hahahahaha

"Company time" means any time of day that the employee is working on behalf of the company.  1st, 2nd or 3rd shift, or even weekends.

during work hours. oh yeah, follow them, fine with me.

I have a buddy that wrenches for UPS. he tells me quite a few stories about that happens when the drivers go some where other then where they're supposed to be.

one truck got robbed while the guy was visiting his GF for a lunch quickie. (woops)

another go vandalized when the guy decided to take a extended break. (he was sleeping and kids spray painted the truck  [laugh])

another driver got busted rubbing one out behind a building. (ohh, so fired)

when your on company time, your ass belongs to the business you don't like then start your own business then you too can learn the meaning of time in business.

once you clock out, turn the damn thing off and turn your personal phone on and go about your day.

 [laugh]

now how did they catch him doing that?  was he there for 5 hours??

no dude, one of the employees went out back to have a smoke (it was at a target) looked over and saw the dude and called UPS.. he was canned on the spot.

oic.. but still, that is just freakin' bizarre. 

he must have some mental problems to do it like that.

That's something. Back when I had a retail store our regular UPS driver "had back problems" so he only worked 2-3 weeks a year and they had someone else the rest of the time. UPS never got rid of the guy.

Maybe he was wearing the wrong socks.  :P

 [laugh] [laugh] [laugh]

UPS now has Telemetrics_tm on all the trucks in my district.  We had to take a mandatory training session and sign paperwork stating that we had received the training.

Besides engine management stuff the mechanics track, we're tracked by location, seat belt use, front bulkhead door (but not the rear door, go figure?), idle time, speed, DIAD use while in motion, & backing.

That's not including all the things the DIAD tracks.

Even though we're tracked by all these items, management can't use them for disciplinary action against the drivers.  They still need to witness the events. 

The seatbelt sensor in my package car malfunctioned & management was all in a tizzy about how I had 153 no seatbelt events one day.  I told them that as far as I could tell that all the equipment was working and that I always use my seatbelt.  If the sensors failed, that wasn't my fault.  That was the last I heard about that.

On the other hand, this one poor make the beast with two backs of a driver had an accident, he was making a left turn, ran wide and hit a power pole, knocking down power lines on a state highway, causing traffic to be stopped for 2 hours.  Management found out he was both talking on his cell phone and using the DIAD when he hit the pole.  Both are big  no-no's, they have a sign posted in each truck prohibiting cell phone use and DIAD use when the vehicle is in motion.

Needless to say he was fired. 

For anyone with a smartphone with GPS, Google Latitude brings this service to anyone.

The iPhone 'supports' Google Latitude, but doesn't do background updates - which is pretty useless.

Fancy letting your girlfriend (or boyfriend) know where you are 24/7? ;-)