Mention Fleet GPS tracking to a business owner and they will likely start thinking about efficiency, productivity and knowing where their vehicles are. But try mentioning it to the people who are actually driving those vehicles every day and you will face a very different reaction.
Why do they need to know where I am? Don’t they trust me? Is someone going to be watching me all day? I don’t want them to know where I am after hours!
These are all reasonable concerns. Let’s be honest, nobody particularly likes the feeling of being watched. So introducing vehicle tracking without properly explaining why it is being used is a good way to create suspicion among employees. In fact, employee resistance can be one of the biggest obstacles for companies looking to modernise their fleet management.
The reality, though, is that no sane manager has the time to sit and watch their employees move around on a map waiting to catch them out. Used properly, fleet GPS tracking can solve some of the everyday frustrations experienced by the people behind the wheel. Much of the difference comes down to how the technology is introduced and how the information it collects is actually used.
Explain why you are introducing it
The rookie mistake many companies make is to simply install GPS tracking and then explain it to employees afterwards. It is much better to start by explaining what problem the business is trying to solve and how it will make everyone’s life easier.
Perhaps too much time is being spent manually filling out vehicle logbooks. Maybe the business needs a better way of dispatching technicians to urgent jobs, or there are safety concerns around employees working alone. There may even have been disagreements with customers about when somebody arrived at a job and how long they were there.
Being upfront about the reason for introducing the technology helps establish from the beginning that there is a practical purpose behind it. Just as importantly, employees should understand how it can make their working day easier as well.
It can provide an extra layer of safety
Consider a technician working alone at a customer’s premises late in the afternoon. The office closes, everyone heads home, but the technician’s vehicle is still at the job several hours later. Without some way of knowing this, nobody may realise that anything is unusual.
Vehicle location information can give a business another way of identifying situations where a field employee might need assistance. GPS tracking is not a replacement for normal workplace safety procedures or simply picking up the phone, but for people who spend most of their working day away from an office, knowing the location of a company vehicle can be genuinely useful.
This benefit can easily be overlooked when GPS tracking is presented purely as a way of improving productivity.
Nobody enjoys filling out a logbook
Ask people who spend their day on the road what they would like to do less of and paperwork will almost always be at the top of the list.
Traditional vehicle logbooks require drivers to record trips, kilometres and other information manually. It is repetitive, easy to forget and often gets done at the end of the day when the employee would much rather be heading home.
Modern GPS fleet tracking systems such as Fleetlog can automate much of this trip information in the background, creating a record of vehicle movements without the driver having to manually write down every journey. For the employee, that means one less administrative job to worry about. For the business, it will likely mean more complete and consistent records.
It is a simple example of the technology benefiting both sides.
It can make the last job of the day a little fairer
Here is a situation that will be familiar to plenty of trades and service businesses. It is 4pm and an urgent customer call comes in. One technician is about to finish their current job, while another still has about half an hour of work to do.
Without knowing exactly where everyone is, the obvious decision might be to send the first technician because they are available sooner. The problem is that they could be an hour and a half away from the customer, while the second technician might only be five minutes down the road.
Choosing to wait another half hour for the closer technician may actually get someone to the customer sooner and save the other employee an unnecessary trip across town at the end of a long day.
This is where knowing where vehicles are can become genuinely useful. Instead of using tracking to ask where an employee has been all day, the business can use it to work out who is actually in the best position to take the next job.
Driver information needs to be used sensibly
Modern vehicle tracking systems can record more than just location. Depending on the system being used, businesses may also have access to information about speeding, harsh braking, acceleration and other driving behaviour.
Employees may understandably feel uncomfortable about this, particularly if they think every minor event is going to be scrutinised by management. If that is how the information is used, it will probably create resentment fairly quickly.
Rather than jumping on every little event, look for patterns. If the same driver is constantly recording harsh braking events, there might be something worth discussing. Then again, the problem might be an unrealistic schedule or a particular route they are regularly being sent on. The plethora of Melbourne potholes require the occasional harsh swerve, for example. The data can tell you something is happening, but it doesn’t always tell you why.
The information can show what happened, but there may still need to be a conversation to understand why it happened.
Why not use the driver ratings for an internal competition or even monthly rewards? Imagine having your staff chatting amongst themselves comparing their driver ratings. Next thing you know they are competing to jump up the leaderboard to be the safest driver in the office.
Sometimes the technology can support the employee
There is another side to vehicle tracking that does not get talked about as much. Sometimes the information can help an employee when their version of events is questioned.
Imagine a customer contacts the office and complains that a technician was only at their premises for 20 minutes even though they have been charged for an hour. The technician is adamant they were there for more than an hour. GPS records can help you avoid the old “he said, she said” situation.
Vehicle history can provide an objective record of when the vehicle arrived and when it left. Rather than putting the employee in the uncomfortable position of having to prove they are telling the truth, the business has information it can check.
In a situation like that, the same technology an employee might initially have regarded as surveillance can actually work in their favour.
Trust still matters
Having said all of this, businesses should never dismiss concerns about privacy. GPS tracking can collect detailed information about where company vehicles have been and when they were there, so that information needs to be handled responsibly. Businesses also need to understand the workplace surveillance and privacy requirements that apply to them and be clear with employees about what information is being collected and why.
Technology should not become a replacement for trust between an employer and an employee. If anything, it should help remove some of the everyday situations that can put that trust under pressure.
That is why the way GPS tracking is introduced matters so much. If the only explanation an employee receives is that management wants to know where the vehicles are, it is hardly surprising if the reaction is negative. If the conversation also covers safety, less paperwork, more sensible job allocation and having accurate information when something is disputed, there is a much better chance employees will understand why the technology is being introduced.
Most people are comfortable with technology when they can see that it has a useful purpose. GPS vehicle tracking should be no different.
