One of my businesses is currently involved in a lawsuit by someone claiming they suffered a loss due to injury from stepping on a landscaping rock (about 3in x 2in x 1in) in the parking lot. They apparently took a picture of the rock, which was adjacent to the curb. The lawyer is claiming the business is responsible for ensuring the parking lot is clear of obstacles.
The crux of the case is not about whether or not this event even took place or if this person is faking it, they don’t have to prove that without wasting a lot of my insurance company’s money. The important part of the case is whether or not the business took reasonable steps to ensure the parking lot was free of obstruction.
For this, the plaintiff’s lawyer has deposed the facilities’ manager, the landscaping company, and any staff working that day. All incredibly costly procedural tactics to try and get a settlement. Which they most likely will get from the insurance company.
However, these legal costs might be avoided if I could produce electronic logs proving the facilities manager performed routine inspection duties. This is one example of when breaching an employees’ privacy in the manner in question can further management’s goal (and bottom line).
It's the same issue. Knowing where the janitor was is not the same as knowing whether she did her job. Knowing where your facilities manager was is not the same as knowing whether he did his.
Like I said, IANAL. I have no idea how well that would hold up in court. Regardless, I'm confident security cameras would be at least just as effective for defending your business in cases like this.
Any holes in the offense don’t matter, because the plaintiff isn’t going to suffer any loss, and their lawyer is working on commission.
So the only person that stands to lose is business and insurance company. Insurance company will fight if it’s open and shut, meaning they don’t think they will have to risk a lot of legal fees trying to shoot down various plaintiff’s claims.
But if it looks like plaintiff could drag this out and find a possibility of culpability on behalf of the business, the insurance company will pay to make them go away. And the business’ insurance premiums will rise.
Security camera footage would of course be the gold standard in this case. But storing video for so long and having so many cameras is also costly. Using GPS to prove your employee did their duties of at least inspecting the parking lot by showing they walked around it at various times might be something the insurance company can use in their defense.
Also, in my specific example, the plaintiff waited almost 11 months to file their lawsuit. These type of people know to wait as long as the legal system allows them to, to increase the likelihood the business has misplaced or thrown out records and memories get fuzzy.
If that's the case, isn't your business already going what is "reasonable" by virtue of employing a facilities manager whose job includes ensuring the grounds are clear of dangerous obstructions while the facility is in operation?
Regardless, this scenario doesn't really jive with my assertion that it should be illegal for employers to track their employees. Were that the case, the court's definition of what is "reasonable" could not include maintaining records of your employees' locations throughout the workday, as doing so would be illegal. Although your scenario does at least provide a hypothetical for why a business would consider tracking employees in the absence of such a law. Hopefully courts never set a precedent to actively encourage that kind of tracking.
The ability to track people's precise locations due to the proliferation of smartphones and various wireless technologies is pretty new, and probably hasn't been tested in various court cases yet.
I know at one point, it was enough to have paper logs of your drivers. But now, electronic GPS tracking is so cheap and commonplace, that the court might say as a business, it is your responsibility to utilize it to ensure your drivers are not regularly speeding.
The problem with civil cases is there are few well defined standards. And if you're in the sweet spot where your business is doing well enough to be a nice target, but not well enough to have lawyers on staff who can deal with swatting them down, then you've got some decent risk exposure you need to address. And the best way to do that is to have as much information as possible.
I'm sure the only reason this issue of tracking is coming up is only because it's so incredibly cheap to track them, since the employee already has a phone on them, the access points or wireless signals are already there, it costs almost nothing to physically download the app and enable functionality, and it costs almost nothing to store this data. At that point, it's a calculation of do we spend this minimal fee to protect from a host of litigation where we can prove this person was at this place at this time.
I find that many of my friends who are office employees or haven't operated a public facing business are unaware of these types of problems that you don't have to deal with when you don't physically entertain random people of the public, thereby greatly reducing your risk exposure to these kinds of scams.
>Regardless, this scenario doesn't really jive with my assertion that it should be illegal for employers to track their employees.
Yes, if it was illegal, it would eliminate this problem. But my intent was to show that at least some of the impetus might not be to make the employees' life worse.
I presume there was a job which needed doing, which is why management hired someone to do it. Management may have difficulty evaluating the quality or extent of the work done on any given day, but they should at least be able to evaluate whether it was done at all.
My point is location tracking doesn't provide management any assurances that the employee has done their job at all, much less how well they did it. It's a breach of the employee's privacy which doesn't even further management's goals any more than my privacy-respecting scanner solution.