I received a leaflet from this company that set me wondering about the ethics of employers actively scrutinising the detailed behaviours of their employees.
Specifically, the system that this company is promoting is GPS based vehicle tracking and information system (a logical extension of the tachograph, I suppose), but it breaks down the information to minute detail, timing stops (with exact location) to the second.
Now I suppose the standard response to this is going to be that the employee enters a contract, accepting such scrutiny as part of the terms of employment, so nothing unethical is happening, but I have mixed feelings about where this sort of thing can lead.
There was a fly-on-the-wall documentary about an office on TV lately and they showed a new member of staff being run through the regs “here are the 7 valid reasons that you may leave your desk; you may not leave your desk for any other reason without seeking permission from your line manager, here are the five reasons why you may speak to another employee, you may not converse with another employee for any other reason” and so on.
So my concern is that systems like MinorPlanet’s could open the way to a situation where employees are automatically assumed to be untrustworthy and are constantly held under suspicion of slacking, with the burden of proof of innocence shifting to the employee.
Are my concerns ungrounded? is this just another fallacious slippery slope?
The market will handle this. If it’s as unwelcome and invasive as it seems, talented persons will choose to work elsewhere, and the company will suffer. If it’s not as bad as it all that, or if the benefits outweigh the discomfort (e.g., for a cool $2M per year, I believe I might work under such conditions, and smile all the way to the bank), then the company will flourish.
Sure, as I said, I suspected that the answer would be something like that, but while the market is handling it, real people are being shat on, which seems undesirable.
So says the simple answer that looks at “the market,” rather than the individual, the economy, or the time frame. In an economy where unemployment is skyrocketing, the market is plummeting, and jobs of any sort (let alone ones that use the individual’s talents) are few and far between, these talented individuals will usually have to suck it up and deal with unwelcome, invasive, unethical, and often illegal workplaces.
Judging from your bet of a $90 bottle of scotch (and I won’t take your bet, but if you want to send one my way, I’ll take the bottle), Bricker, you’re comfortable in your position and income. But what happens if you lose your job, burn through your savings and (possibly) worthless 401(k)? Would it still take $2000 per year–sorry, to an ex-buyer, M=1000–or $2,000,000 per year to get you to take a job with that kind of atmosphere?
Or would it merely take enough money to pay the mortgage and the bills? Seems to me that one of the main differences between economic conservatives and liberals is that the conservatives look at “the market,” and liberals look at the suffering individuals.
To clarify for people, this is the type of system that companies would use to track their fleet of vehicles, not to watch their employees. You would find something like this on commercial trucks, rental cars or police and safety vehicles, not Joe or Jane Officeworkers car. It would be prohibitively expensive to install a system like this on every employees car for the sole purpose of seeing where they go.
So in a sense, the “market” does provide a degree of protection. Companies would only want to use this system if there was a significant benefit in doing so.
As for employers right to “spy” on their employees, there is nothing wrong with a company wanting to know how and where their assets are used. Only the most short-sighted employers scrutinize employees to the level of timing bathroom breaks and what-not. The objective of measuring how long employees take to perform a specific task or drive a specific route is to figure out better ways to accomplish the same goal. it isn’t to whip employees into working faster. It’s the diference between working smarter and working harder.
A little clarification please: Are you saying that the company you work for is tracking your car that you own and drive on your off-work time? Or are you just saying that maybe they COULD do that? Or are you talking about tracking commercial vehicles like delivery trucks? I’m not getting your point.
Yuck. I wouldn’t work for a company like that. They’re just cutting their own throats anyway, since unhappy employees are sure to be less productive. I don’t really see how it’s unethical, though - just obnoxious.
I remember reading a local news article a few months back about a hijacked truck that was quickly recovered (and the hijacker quickly arrested) because the stolen truck was equipped with one of those GPS systems. I think the truck was stolen when the driver stopped at a diner for lunch.
They were offering their services to my company, this set me thinking about the possible abuses of such a system.
from the site:
I don’t think it’s terribly unlikely that abuse of such a system would occur (once installed, having been justified by the other selling points).
Of course it’s not immediately easy to justify any kind of leeway which employees should enjoy if there is a direct financial impact, but it’s easy to overlook morale and give-and-take (I know someone who works for a manager that won’t let him take an extra ten minutes on his lunch break once a week, even though he usually cuts his break short by choice).
So do you think it would be unethical, for example, to track a courier who is paid to make deliveries on a particular schedule, and is using a company truck? Or to track a bus driver to make sure he follows the correct route? For that matter, do you think it’s unethical to have those signs on vehicles that say “How’s my driving?” and have an 800 number to call? Is snooping EVER o.k., and if so, at what point does it become unethical, in your opinion?
But to answer your question, I feel that it would become unethical when the employee is treated as if under constant (active)suspicion of misconduct and regularly expected to bear the burden of proof of innocence.
I didn’t mean to assume anything - I was just trying to expand the discussion. Sorry if I offended you.
I was just hoping you could offer a little more detail of what specific kinds of situations you think would be inappropriate. Here’s what I think: If someone is hired specifically to drive a vehicle, e.g. a UPS driver or whatever, I don’t think it would be inappropriate to monitor their whereabouts during the day. I heard of a particular highway worker who would take a government vehicle out every day, park it on the street, and take a nap. I can see how it might be advantageous to be able to monitor a vehicle in cases where the employee is basically out on the road all day and cannot be supervised directly.
You said you were thinking about possible abuses, so I was curious as to specifically how you think the system might be abused. I apologize if I sounded judgmental.
Having driven ambulances with this type of system in place, I can tell you that its a mixed blessing. You can’t screw around because your dispatcher can look at a monitor with your gps coordinates overlayed on a map of your area, they know where you are within a hundred meters or so. OTOH you can call in and request assistance/backup/additional units to your location and the dispatcher can look up and eyeball whos closest and redirect them to you without giving them a detailed location. This was over 10 years ago, so im sure the systems are far more accurate now. My current employer had a stolen truck recovered in less than an hour with one of these systems.
I hate to break it to you but generally speaking many employees will screw around if given the chance, since us dopers are all model employees who would never screw around. I think the biggest issue is that many people go into these types of occupations knowing they will be out and about and pretty free to do as they please as long as they don’t get too far off track. This type of system will make it more difficult for an employee to indulge what they percieve to be an inherent flexibility in thier job.
Abuses, plenty. The minute a star employee hits the streets, managers often start looking at that employee as the new standard. Even when they fire the guy, for being so loaded on crystal meth that he couldn’t sit still if he wanted to, his performance would still be considered achievable to non-pharmacutecally enhanced employees(I have actually seen this happen). If an employer wanted to really nitpick, They could start using it to tag people for being a couple minutes one way or the other on their lunchbreaks (as long as its not always late, this is harmless) Or penalizing an employee for stopping for a cup of coffee and getting immediately back on the road after all of 4-5 minutes. It would add whole new areas of employee policy to avoid mass firings in many cases.
My first thought was for use in transporting prisoners. I’ve heard, throught the years, several females make the claim that they were sexually assaulted by officers transporting them. had the vehicles been equiped with these, it would have been fairly simple to substantiate/disprove completely those allegations.