Houston
- Travel buyers who are assessing traveler-tracking technology should carefully
consider policies around usage, according to security experts speaking here
this month at HospitalityLawyer.com's Global Congress on travel risk
management.
Even as tracking
technology through smartphones and other personal devices improves, a
successful policy above all should be aware of its limitations, said Charlie
LeBlanc, president of security and intelligence at risk management firm
FrontierMedex. Despite sales pitches to the contrary, all tracking technology has
gaps, he said.
"We've field-tested
10 different technologies, both GPS- and GSM-based, and whether off iPhones, Androids
or BlackBerrys, we haven't found a device that works perfectly in all
locations, especially on an international basis," LeBlanc said. "Depending
on the technology, your results may vary."
Land O'Lakes director of
global security Don Taussig, for example, said his organization has a number of
employees deployed around the world who are beyond the reach of cell phone
technology, in areas including those near the Kenya-Somalia border. For those
cases, he said the agricultural cooperative needs alternative plans.
Scheduling regular
check-ins through a hotline for travelers in high-risk areas is one solution, Taussig
said. A company could require a traveler to check in once a day, for example, then
begin a response should they fail to do so.
Even where
communications technology works, there is no guarantee that a company will find
travelers during a crisis; technology only is as good as how cooperative
travelers are in using it.
Companies that take a
more open approach to mobile devices by allowing employees to use their own
preferred smartphone rather than requiring a company-issued one might face
further stumbling blocks. For example, LeBlanc described how a few clients that
no longer reimburse mobile device costs but want to install tracking apps are
battling disgruntled employee groups.
Kevin Troutman, a
partner at the Houston-based law firm Fisher & Phillips, recommended that
companies be completely up front with employees about the degree to which they
plan to use tracking technology—whether it would be used during working hours, during
personal time while traveling on company business or only when the traveler is
in a high-risk area, for example. Companies also should ask employees to sign
an agreement regarding the policy, he said.
"You may go so far
as to have that employee request whether they want to be tracked beyond working
hours, and some may say yes," Troutman said. "The right to privacy is
not so deeply held in the private sector. But you don't have carte blanche
either, so make sure you tell the employees in case you run into a problem
where they say they didn't know you were going to be tracking them."
Once policy is set,
companies should be sure not to use tracking for other purposes, LeBlanc said.
Besides potential legal implications—U.S. laws around employee tracking remain
somewhat murky—the effectiveness of the program may be diluted.
"If the purpose of
a program is to track employees, you can't turn around and use that technology
to bolster a fraud investigation case or see that the employee was visiting a
certain vendor that was on a banned list," LeBlanc explained. "The
wider the scope you make in that policy, the less you're going to get true
participation."
If employees become too
leery about employers tracking their whereabouts, they simply might turn off
their phones or leave them behind, rendering tracking technology useless. LeBlanc
said that's an especially high risk for companies that use "geo-fencing"—automated
alerts that notify a company when, for example, an employee enters a
particularly unseemly neighborhood of Bangkok.
Programs that inadvertently
encourage employees to ditch their mobile devices may increase risks even for
travelers in low-risk destinations. "For many of us, that cell phone is literally
a lifeline," LeBlanc said. "Try to find a pay phone in Houston. If
they leave one communication device sitting in a hotel, it causes more problems
than it solves."
Companies also should
ensure that tracking and security policies are used consistently across all
employee groups, said Land O'Lakes' Taussig. While safety and tracking
protocols might vary from region to region, they should apply to all employees
in that region.
"If I'm going to provide
a service to an expat, I'd better provide it to everyone working there,"
he said. "From a duty-of-care perspective, you have to treat everyone the
same way, no matter their nationality."