4 ms·

Personnel location crosses a line to me. If you want to track location, put the locator on company property like the cleaning cart that custodians push around.

neaden 6y ago
This might be legal, but it's still bad management. If you don't trust your employees and you don't think you can evaluate the results of their work, in this case if things are clean, that's on you as a manager to figure out. Tying it in to the process like this and you end up getting false flags when they spend a long time cleaning a mess, or reward them for not cleaning sufficiently to hit their movement metrics.
- michaelt 6y ago
  A small minority of work can't easily be directly evaluated. If I hire a security patrol company, and they contract to provide a patrol that will visit twice a night and walk around the building, nonperformance would be almost undetectable.
  - neaden 6y ago
    There may be cases sure, but this isn't one of them.
  - ipaddr 6y ago
    If a robbery or damaged occured you would know. If you audited the cameras. If you had a second employee. Tracking location by the second isn't necessary and can be defeated with a rc car and a piece of tape by a 6 year old or robot (the tommy robot from the 80s would be perfect) or drone if you want to stay upto date.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Punch clocks were standard 100 years ago. The nightguard was supposed to press the button on clocks dotted around the building when he passed them. No app on the personal phone required.
  - yencabulator 6y ago
    Security patrols have little RFID style markers around the building they scan to prove when they were there. That's standard practice at least in Europe.
barbazoo 6y ago
Fwiw, it's not tracking location > The app, called Blip, generates a geofence — a virtual boundary, created by the employer using GPS — that detects when an employee enters or leaves.
- overscore 6y ago
  That is location tracking.
- input_sh 6y ago
  What is that if not location tracking?
  - barbazoo 6y ago
    I understand location tracking as being tracked, i.e. someone knows where I am at any given time. Here it's a binary information. Inside the fence (place of employment) or not. Once you're out, all the employer knows is that you're not at work. Don't get me wrong, I despise this but it's not tracking strictly speaking.
    - type0 6y ago
      How should anyone know this? Is this app open source?
    - input_sh 6y ago
      > Inside the fence (place of employment) or not. But to do that you have to share location permissions all the time with the app. And you have to trust it enough to give it those permissions. Also here's a solution with no app and no location tracking: detect when a phone has connected to on-premise WiFi.
      - m0dest 6y ago
        >Also here's a solution with no app and no location tracking: detect when a phone has connected to on-premise WiFi. I was about to suggest the same. Always-on location tracking is an extremely lazy and disrespectful way to replace a punch card. Here's your replacement app: - When arriving at work, you open the app while on employer's WiFi and tap "Start my shift" - Before leaving work, you open the app and tap "End my shift" (but this is not required) - During your shift, the service tries to periodically validate that your phone is still on WiFi (via LAN pings, silent push notifications that trigger checkins, or background polling) - During your shift, if the service can't verify that your phone is still on the WiFi for 30+ minutes, it sends you a push notification asking you to open the app and check in. Otherwise, it ends your shift. - If there's some WiFi dead zone in the workplace where they need to work for more than an hour, give the employee the option to respond with a one-time GPS location instead of joining the WiFi. Boom. This was not hard. Doesn't even need internal infrastructure; can do this whole thing based on WAN IPs.

neaden 6y ago

This might be legal, but it's still bad management. If you don't trust your employees and you don't think you can evaluate the results of their work, in this case if things are clean, that's on you as a manager to figure out. Tying it in to the process like this and you end up getting false flags when they spend a long time cleaning a mess, or reward them for not cleaning sufficiently to hit their movement metrics.

michaelt 6y ago
A small minority of work can't easily be directly evaluated. If I hire a security patrol company, and they contract to provide a patrol that will visit twice a night and walk around the building, nonperformance would be almost undetectable.
- neaden 6y ago
  There may be cases sure, but this isn't one of them.
- ipaddr 6y ago
  If a robbery or damaged occured you would know. If you audited the cameras. If you had a second employee. Tracking location by the second isn't necessary and can be defeated with a rc car and a piece of tape by a 6 year old or robot (the tommy robot from the 80s would be perfect) or drone if you want to stay upto date.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Punch clocks were standard 100 years ago. The nightguard was supposed to press the button on clocks dotted around the building when he passed them. No app on the personal phone required.
- yencabulator 6y ago
  Security patrols have little RFID style markers around the building they scan to prove when they were there. That's standard practice at least in Europe.

barbazoo 6y ago

Fwiw, it's not tracking location > The app, called Blip, generates a geofence — a virtual boundary, created by the employer using GPS — that detects when an employee enters or leaves.

overscore 6y ago
That is location tracking.
input_sh 6y ago
What is that if not location tracking?
- barbazoo 6y ago
  I understand location tracking as being tracked, i.e. someone knows where I am at any given time. Here it's a binary information. Inside the fence (place of employment) or not. Once you're out, all the employer knows is that you're not at work. Don't get me wrong, I despise this but it's not tracking strictly speaking.
  - type0 6y ago
    How should anyone know this? Is this app open source?
  - input_sh 6y ago
    > Inside the fence (place of employment) or not. But to do that you have to share location permissions all the time with the app. And you have to trust it enough to give it those permissions. Also here's a solution with no app and no location tracking: detect when a phone has connected to on-premise WiFi.
    - m0dest 6y ago
      >Also here's a solution with no app and no location tracking: detect when a phone has connected to on-premise WiFi. I was about to suggest the same. Always-on location tracking is an extremely lazy and disrespectful way to replace a punch card. Here's your replacement app: - When arriving at work, you open the app while on employer's WiFi and tap "Start my shift" - Before leaving work, you open the app and tap "End my shift" (but this is not required) - During your shift, the service tries to periodically validate that your phone is still on WiFi (via LAN pings, silent push notifications that trigger checkins, or background polling) - During your shift, if the service can't verify that your phone is still on the WiFi for 30+ minutes, it sends you a push notification asking you to open the app and check in. Otherwise, it ends your shift. - If there's some WiFi dead zone in the workplace where they need to work for more than an hour, give the employee the option to respond with a one-time GPS location instead of joining the WiFi. Boom. This was not hard. Doesn't even need internal infrastructure; can do this whole thing based on WAN IPs.