Remember the good ‘ol days? It’s when your work time was your work time. Consequently, your time was your time. But since the GPS and smartphone boom, employers can watch their employees literally 24/7. However, this may not be workers’ biggest worry. Smartphone tracking…what worries workers?
It seems like less employees worry about privacy invasion when it comes to smartphone tracking. In fact, they worry more about smartphone impacts. Software tracking firm TSheets polled over 1,000 employees from all walks of life. Furthermore, some of these included those in IT support. Also, keep in mind these workers know bosses are tracking them. But the biggest fear among them was battery life (62%). In second place, the big concern was data consumption (56%).Privacy concerns came in third (52%).
Also, there’s more startling news. It’s illegal for employers to track employees 24 hours a day. But 10% of employees think theirs are tracking them all the time. Another 45% said they didn’t know if the tracking lasted all the time or not. But do you know the ironic thing here? The majority of employees are cool with tracking. Many of them say tracking systems help with accountability issues. Some others say smartphone tracking holds a system of checks and balances. The employer and employee must treat each other right.
And here’s another kicker about smartphone tracking. The majority of these employees say they trust their employer enough to let it happen. Yes, there are great worker/employer relationships where trust runs deep. But that’s not always the case. There are places where trust is a huge issue, and smartphone tracking is a huge privacy invasion. Not to mention it’s illegal to track employees 24 hours a day. What about this? (But speaking of smartphones, you know at Computer Geeks, we’re excellent in smartphone and laptop screen replacement, right?) Okay, I just had to get that in there. What about those who are fired for something they put on Facebook, or social media? And in some cases, some could use smartphone tracking to deliberately set someone up. So lots could go right. But lots could go horribly wrong. Should smartphone tracking be legal at all?