Tracking your technicians legally: consent, purpose, transparency

Confirming arrival at the client by GPS, calculating mileage automatically, seeing who's available closest to an emergency: geolocation transforms dispatch. But your technicians are people, and their movements are personal information under Law 25.

The 4 rules of a defensible deployment

• 1. A clear, legitimate purpose. "Confirming arrivals, calculating mileage and dispatching emergencies" is defensible. "Monitoring employees" is not. Document it in writing.
• 2. Real consent. Present the policy before activation, explain when GPS is active, and collect individually logged consent. Consent by silence doesn't exist.
• 3. Proportionality. Tracking position during the work shift, for the declared purposes: yes. Tracking outside hours, or keeping fine-grained movement history indefinitely: no. A technician's home location should never end up in a report.
• 4. Ongoing transparency. The employee must be able to see that tracking is active and pause it (with clear operational consequences, like manual arrival confirmation instead).

How it's designed in MainteQC

Tracking activates when the technician declares "On my way" — not continuously by default. Consent is logged at activation. The end-of-day report automatically strips the last GPS point (home). And if permission is revoked mid-shift, the system falls back to manual confirmation instead of blocking work.

Well-framed GPS protects everyone: the client gets arrival proof, the employee gets an indisputable timesheet, and you get a defensible file. Plain-language summary, not legal advice.