I have been selling GPS tracking solutions for over 10 years now, and trust me I have seen them all; from bottom tier priced “Dude where’s my truck” and dots on a map, to the top of the line ELD systems with integrated cameras (For top of the line, beyond compliance system you should really check out GPS Insight’s ELD System, it is a thing of beauty).  One common trend that we constantly hear in the industry when a perspective customer is thinking about starting a GPS service in their company is “I trust my guys (or gals), and I don’t want them to think that we are spying on them”. 

Friends I am here to tell you that you can still hold people accountable without damaging trust.  As Thomas Paine once said, “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not be trusted by anybody”.  In addition to what Mr. Paine said, if used properly and demonstrated correctly, adding a GPS system to your company can not only lower costs, lower your environmental impact and risks it can INCREASE company profits, morale and culture!

When someone decides to make the leap to utilizing a system that tracks the trucks and the rolling assets in their company, they have shown to their customers and their employees that everyone is accountable for their actions and risks and performance of their company is taken seriously.  Also, as a business owner or a decision maker, you should utilize a tracking system to set up a reward system in your company to help boost your company’s culture and even the core values of your company. At Nuvo Solutions, we believe if you are purchasing a GPS system just to catch wrongdoers in the act, then you are buying it for the wrong reasons and you ultimately will destroy a positive culture and the morale in your company.

But how can a tracking system that shows every driver behavior, nuance, location and history help increase company performance without destroying the fabric of a positive mindset in the workplace? Especially those that are being tracked? The answer is quite simple. Give rewards and incentives to the employees that perform higher based on your company’s desires of what they want to achieve and the “whys” that you set in the beginning.

There have been countless studies that prove that implementing a GPS system will save your company money and increase profits, that’s not what this is about.  This is about taking a portion of that profit saved and allocating it to the top performing drivers in the field to encourage them to further understand your core beliefs, your “whys” and empowering them to be part of the solution.

For instance, we have a customer that had a metric that they wanted to do better with as they are very environmentally responsible, it is one of the 5 core beliefs. This customer is also big about their employees upholding their core beliefs and had become worried about their carbon footprint. With that in mind, we helped them implement a reward system that will benefit drivers that reduce that CO2 footprint.  We started by running a report at the beginning of the year for one week to see (without notifying their drivers yet) where they were as a fleet to get an accurate baseline. That report came back with an astonishing score of 3.027 Tons of CO2 per average work week.  To insure a better baseline, we suggested running one more week, and the following week gave us a score of 3.706 Tons of CO2! That means that on average they were going to be emitting 3.36 Tons of CO2 per week.  We worked to set a goal of getting this below 1 Ton of CO2 per week by implementing a few tweaks on their reporting.  We developed a scoring system on the two largest culprits of CO2 emissions idling, and speeding. Controlling speeding alone can drastically save fuel. Some studies have shown that just simply driving the speed limit could save 10% in fuel.  Whoever idled the least amount and whoever kept their speeding below the set thresholds would be rewarded with a $150.00 bonus and would be recognized publicly at their monthly employee meeting.  They decided to reward the top 3 drivers with this incentive, a total of a $450.00 investment.

Once this plan was announced to the employees, and once it was clearly communicated WHY they wanted everyone to understand their commitment to the environment, and why it is important to uphold core beliefs (and of course mentioning the bonus). Not only did the idling and speeding reduce dramatically, the obvious side effect also happened. The savings weekly of fuel skyrocketed.  By the time the next month had rolled by, the company had reduced their CO2 emission to an average 0.541 Tons a week and had saved an estimated and an astonishing 650 Gallons of Fuel!

That is somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,184.00 in fuel savings in just one month for those of you keeping score at home! Also, California gas is expensive.

By engaging the employees to help the company achieve one of their core values, and clearly communicating those goals with some incentives, the GPS system was never looked at as a tool being wielded by management because of mistrust of the employees. Simply because it was never intended to do that in the first place! It was looked at as an incentive-based process that was in place to help further the belief systems and culture inside of the organization.

If you empower your employees to help you drive revenue, save costs and all the while meshing that with the beliefs that you have in place, there should never be a discussion about trust in the workplace or lack thereof.   You can hold people accountable and reward the good behavior that you want to see repeated without damaging the culture of your organization.  GPS in your vehicles can increase revenue, efficiency, employee productivity, and even your employees pay!