Late last year, Golf Digest published a story about a “HERO” golfer who used an empty cheesy-puff bag to block the signal on his company’s tracking device to log 140 rounds of golf on his company’s dime. While it’s easy to see the levity in a story like this, it’s also easy to forget that many of the companies that track employees – including a very large number of our customers – are small, independently owned businesses, not big, faceless corporations.
When an employee chooses to hit the links rather than perform his or her job duties, that individual is stealing from their company. It’s all fun and games until you think about what that might be costing a business owner.
How much is it really costing the employer?
Imagine individual’s employer is a sole proprietor of a small electrical company. The employer has a wife, kids, and even grandkids that he wants to help put through college someday. If assume that the electrician in the Golf Digest story is making $35 per hour, here’s what he’s costing this unassuming business owner:
- $21,000 in wages – Assuming a round of golf takes 5 hours when factoring in warmup and travel time, this employee stole $21K in base salary alone!
- $35,000 in lost revenue – If we assume that, factoring in travel time, this worker’s services would have brought in $50 worth of revenue per hour, the employee has cost his company another $35 grand!
That adds up to $56K in losses for the employer, which could be 2-3 years worth of college tuition for his granddaughter. I think it’s safe to say this employee is hardly a “persecuted genius” and is actually more akin to a criminal.
At Rhino Fleet Tracking, in additional to providing the option for both plug-in and wired tracking devices, we provide business owners with alerts any time a device is disconnected from power. Our software dashboard also shows you which devices have failed to provide a location in a given amount of time, again alerting managers to possible abuse.
