GPS prevents time theft and keeps employees accountable
If humans were all angels, there’d be no need for an organization like the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).
But we’re an imperfect species. And one of humans’ imperfections is the temptation to, well, let’s say bend some truths in our own favor. For many humans, that temptation can be overwhelming when an opportunity presents itself to grab some easy, unearned money. Here’s one example from a study cited by the ACFE’s Pacific Northwest Chapter:
“Time theft can account for up to 4.5 hours per week per employee. Over the course of a year, this can add up to thousands of dollars per individual, costs that affect both the organization’s profitability and its ability
to allocate resources effectively.”
Are they at a jobsite? Lunch? Somewhere else?
The report explains that time theft employees billing for hours they didn’t work typically involves subtle offenses like extending a lunch break or stepping away from tasks to take personal time without telling a supervisor.
In more serious cases, the researchers say, it involves things like “buddy punching.” And no, that isn’t some amateur fight club for coworkers letting off steam in the parking lot. Buddy punching refers to one employee clocking in and out for another who isn’t actually at work.
It’s bad enough that these types of time theft add up to thousands of dollars per employee every
year. But for a business like yours, the situation could be even worse.
Buddy punching, for example, is a fraud committed by employees who are actually onsite at an
employer’s facility. (Well, at least one of them is.) Obviously, engaging in massive payroll theft using this strategy pretending you’re at work for long stretches of time when you’re in fact sitting on a beach isn’t easy if you work in a factory, store, or office where colleagues can see you’re not
there.
But what about employees in the field?
Think about the field-service employees driving your company’s vehicles all day. Once these workers leave your parking lot to start their deliveries or service appointments for the day, do you know exactly how much time they’re spending…
- On the road to jobsites?
- At each jobsite or scheduled appointment?
- At lunch or on other breaks?…
If the answer is that you have no idea and your employees know that as well how can you rule out
the possibility that some of them are lying to you? Remember: we’re imperfect, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners is a real thing, and many employees exaggerate their timesheets because… Hey, free money!
Keep the trust. But use GPS to verify.
We’re going to show you below how equipping your fleet with GPS trackers can solve the common time-theft problem and potentially save your business from needlessly paying out many thousands of dollars in, well, let’s call it inaccurate employee payroll. First, though, it’s worth dealing head-on with an issue you might be grappling with.
Your business is not a family. Your employees are not your relatives. (If they were, you wouldn’t need to pay them to show up.) Yes, your employees deserve to be treated professionally and ethically something we’re sure your company already does.
But you do not owe your workers complete trust in how they report their billable hours. If they’re billing you honestly and recording their hours in good faith, then adding some location tracking and timesheet automation will only make their jobs easier. And if they’re lying to you about their hours, then adding a GPS solution will help eliminate those unearned payments. Either way, everyone
behaving honestly wins.
GPS to the rescue!
Before we discuss the general ways GPS tracking can help bring down employee time theft, let’s look at an interesting, real-world example of how it did just that. Some years ago, several Amtrak employees were arrested and charged with a variety of overtime- fraud schemes. According to evidence presented by federal prosecutors, these men bilked their organization for hundreds of unearned overtime hours, essentially stealing tens of thousands of
dollars. In one of the cases, investigators realized Amtrak had provided them a big lead in proving the employee’s overtime claims were fraudulent. Here’s how the local news reported it:
“Investigators again looked at cell phone records and billing records but also tracked data from a GPS device that had been attached to his Amtrak-issued vehicle. Harper allegedly overbilled Amtrak for more than 200 hours of overtime when he was not present at work, resulting in losses of more than $20,000, the complaint says.”
When you know exactly where your field-service employees are throughout the day, and your team can quickly generate reports using minute-by-minute data covering an entire pay period, there won’t be much room left for timesheet inaccuracies. Now let’s discuss a few ways GPS vehicle trackers can help your company prevent this sort of theft (and some other potential problems) from ever happening in the first place.
1. GPS tracking keeps everyone accountable.
When field-service employees know you’ve installed GPS tracking units in your vehicles, they’ll be a lot less tempted to inflate, exaggerate, or round up their hours worked. That’s just one reason (of many) that we advise our business customers to be fully candid with their workers about their GPS tracking. (Another reason, by the way, is that it’s an honorable and professional thing to do. You certainly have a legal and moral right to monitor your employees’ movements when they’re on the clock and driving your vehicles. But we believe your employees also have a moral right to know you’re tracking them.)
“Most employees will determine immediately that overstating
their timesheets by a few unearned hours isn’t worth losing their jobs and harming their professional reputations.
So simply by telling your field service team that you’re now able to monitor their locations and movements on the road, you’ll be making it a lot easier for those
employees to make the right decisions.”
2. GPS data reduces good-faith errors as well.
So far, we’ve focused on businesses overpaying employees because those employees have lied and engaged in other forms of time theft. And we’re not overstating the case. One study by Software Advice found that 43% of workers admit to inflating their hours on a timesheet.
But not all inaccurate timesheets are the result of fraud. Maybe some of your drivers are just lousy record-keepers. Maybe some are lazy and, rather than stopping to note their time worked after each job, they prefer to wait until the end of a pay period and just estimate everything on their timesheet.
One of the great benefits of GPS vehicle tracking solutions is that they’ll keep these records for you. Rather than asking your drivers to prepare their own timesheets, your team can run reports using the tracking devices’ historical data and produce accurate-to-the-minute timesheets for every field-service employee, every pay period.
“If you’re counting, that’s two ways GPS tracking devices can
save you money:
Reducing needless payouts for unearned employee overtime, and reducing your staff’s time spent manually preparing and reviewing employee timesheets.”
3. BONUS: GPS data protects you from fraudulent client complaints.
In addition to giving your employees an easy answer to the “Should I round-up?” question (Not if you want to keep your job), the right GPS solution can also help protect your business and also your field-service employees against inaccurate or fraudulent complaints from customers.
Say a customer claims your driver showed up late for a job, or didn’t show up at all. Or imagine your field-service rep left a jobsite to grab a necessary part for the job and the customer later claims the rep never returned to finish the work. Without indisputable evidence disproving the angry customer’s claims, your business could face big problems, even legal action.
But with a GPS tracker installed in the employee’s company vehicle, you’ll have that proof: historical data showing exactly where the vehicle was and for how long. And if you really want to get advanced and protect your business, you can supplement the GPS tracker with a video telematics solution that records and stores video proof of your vehicle’s whereabouts minute by minute.
Sorry, Angry Customer, but you’ll have to find some other service business to harass!
