The Ethics of Keeping Track of Your Employees’ GPS Location

Is it ethical to GPS-track your employees?

Many employers and companies will definitely see a benefit to knowing where their employees are when they’re on the clock. The trouble is the ethics of it – should we be tracking other humans?

Most people would agree that if an employee is on the clock, being paid to be in a certain place at a certain time, but they breach these terms, they are in the wrong. Therefore yes, it is ok to track your employees. However, tracking someone’s personal device or in their personal time, outside of work, would definitely be considered unethical.

Who would be tracked and why?

Primarily, drivers and employees using company cars – these are typically jobs that make it easy to abuse company time and funds. An employee on company time using company fuel could quite easily run a few personal errands in between.

The solution …