Vehicle Tracking Can Boost Employee Productivity


by Iain Jones

Just imagine that you are able to accompany your employees in their vehicles throughout the course of their working days. You are probably imagining that the picture you observed is one of somewhat greater productivity than normal, not to mention experiencing a different driving style! If so, then you are probably experiencing the same as most managers would if they were to imagine the same scenario.

In the past, managers had very little idea of what actually was happening away from their office once their employees had driven away to work off-site. Businesses had no reliable means of measuring employee performance and accountability, neither could they verify a driver's whereabouts at all during the working day.

Neither could owners ensure that employees only used vehicles for authorised uses.

Many employees are quite understandably not as productive as they should be, when there is no direct presence of a supervisor present. A number of studies estimate that it is perfectly normal for employees to be unproductive for anywhere from one to two hours per day.

For mobile employees, then the figures may well be towards the top end of the range. Extended breaks, unauthorised side trips during business hours and inappropriate routing to job sites all contribute to further non-productive time on the job.

Moreover, it has been reported in the Wall Street Journal that small businesses with remote or unsupervised employees have an extra challenge. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, fifty nine percent of employees outside the office exaggerate the number of hours they report as having been worked.

Of course, you cannot physically accompany your employees on the road, apart from very occasionally, but you can do something that has been shown to be almost as effective, namely to use GPS tracking systems to track their vehicles and give your employees the sense that they could be observed from the office at any time. Psychologically, an employee whose vehicle is being tracked is very aware that their movements can be observed by their supervisors, which can lead to very noticeable changes in habits. One client reports that soon after fitting tracking, employees were suddenly asking in advance if it was alright to pop home to collect something that they had forgotten for the day, so even legitimate departures from the journey to and from the place of work were being carefully thought about.

Independent studies have gone some way to quantify the benefits in terms of productivity, simply through investing in vehicle tracking. For example, the Aberdeen Group reported that organisations experienced a 23 percent increase in the total number of service call completed per day per technician once GPS vehicle tracking was installed in their fleets, as well as other more directly attributable benefits such as a reduction in fuel costs and travelling times.

So, although you can’t physically travel alongside your employees, having a gps vehicle tracking system fitted is the next best thing, and to a large degree changes the mindset of many employees to believe that their every move could be observed.

When employees know that their driving habits are monitored, they comply more readily with cost-effective driving policies and increase productivity.

About the Author

Iain Jones works with Zest Tracking Limited, a specialist in providing vehicle tracking solutions.

See http://www.zesttracking.co.uk/gps-vehicle-tracking.asp for details.



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