GPS Tracking ROI

Here’s an excerpt from a news article that I feel deserves a lot of comment and explanation.  As regular readers know (and if you aren’t a regular reader, why don’t you subscribe to GPS Tracking ROI’s syndication feed or subscribe to receive GPS Tracking ROI direct to your email inbox) so you don’t miss an article) I often take a news article and make a daily blog post from it, but the one in question covers so much ground I think I’ll make several different articles from it.  My thanks to a very good writer, Asher Moses of Stuff.cp.nz

GPS tracking can ‘drive employees over edge’

By ASHER MOSES - SMH | Friday, 12 September 2008

… In March last year, Leon Dousset, a Telstra technician for 32 years, committed suicide. Friends and family told Four Corners this was due to Telstra’s stringent performance targets and the installation of the GPS trackers.

Colleague John Hitchiner, a former Telstra linesman, told the program Dousset had said he felt the GPS devices were “demeaning” to staff and showed a “lack of trust on the part of the company”.

Four Corners also published a letter from Dousset’s doctor which read: “I have been looking after Leon who had been suffering depression related to stresses at work. He never mentioned any problems at home but did tell me he was upset at finally being forced to have a GPS in his work vehicle to track his movements. Unfortunately he committed suicide as a result of his severe depression.”

Telstra said it was not aware of Dousset’s condition…

First of all very few of my readers are from New Zealand, but I encourage you to read an give some thought to the whole article.  It’s virtually 100% applicable to business in almost any country.  Moses makes so very good points, provides a lot of good information, and mistakes or glosses over a few things … That’s what I’m here for *smile*.

The title comes from the next paragraph beyond the snippet I quoted above as a comment from a principal in the company who supplied the GPS Tracking system which is alleged to have contributed to Mr. Dousset’s regrettable death.  I second Mr. Thomas’s view wholeheartedly.

One of the reasons I said the article was as applicable to US readers as to those from New Zealand is that the Kiwis seem to have adopted the current sad state of affairs in my native US.  The “blame” mentality.  When any sad event occurs it just has to be someone else’s fault.  It’s certainly a tragic thing that Mr. Dousset chose to end his life by his own hand … but the fact is, it was Mr. Dousset’s decision to do so.  Sorry to have to call a spade a spade, but he did it.  GPS tracking didn’t do it, the equipment supplier didn’t do it, the employer didn’t do it … he did it.  Might as well blame the sun coming up on the morning of the man’s death … after all, that may have distressed him also.

GPS tracking is a legal, intelligent and demonstrably successful tool of business.  For every person who claims it “demeans” an employee or “invades his privacy” (you mean when a person hires on his activities in support of his employer are secret?), GPS tracking provides a positive bottom line ROI for the companies smart enough to use it, GPS tracking enhances employee safety (I personally have been involved in saving lives using GPS tracking) and it rewards and confirms the good deeds of the best employees while highlighting the improper actions of the few miscreants.

To publish the article in the tone in which it is written is certainly a bit on the sensational side … and that’s why I’ll be writing more of a more balanced review of the issues.  Stay tuned.