Taxonomy of Reliability Problems Associated with Employee Location Monitoring

The author used O*NET, a job description database from the U.S. Department of Labor, and various reliability-related research studies to develop a taxonomy of reliability problems related to monitoring the location of employees.  Employee location monitoring can easily be done through Global Positioning and Radio Frequency Identification Tags. Using various O*NET categories, the author listed 39 unique reliability issues such as sensor error range, sensor movement, physical barriers to sensors, deterioration, inadequate skills of personnel to assess location data, lack of interest in accurately monitoring employees, and strong misinterpretations of the data.  An example of the latter is that an employee is found to be visiting a pregnancy clinic.  A manager might conclude that she is pregnant and therefore would not provide her with a promotion.  This would be a violation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.  This also could be an inaccurate conclusion about her pregnancy if she was just visiting a friend there.

Gundars Kaupins wrote this original abstract/summary of the paper.