Don’t Cheat Reporting Your Hours for Payroll! You Might Just Get Caught
20 Nov 2012A New Zealand city employee recently lost his job after a GPS tracking device reported a mismatch between the hours worked and the hours he reported.
Robert Stuart, an employee of a New Zealand-based street cleaning company, was found falsifying information on his daily time sheets. The discrepancy was originally proven by a GPS tracking device installed on his truck, but manager Mike O’Donnell had his suspicions early on.
O’Donnell claimed he would attempt to get a hold of Stuart toward the end of the work day, but Stuart was typically unavailable. According to the GPS tracking data, Stuart was taking long lunches and leaving work early, which explained why he was always hard to find. Not only was Stuart leaving work early, but he was also claiming 10-hour working days from 6:00am to 5:00pm — which granted him overtime pay.
The GPS data was collected from June 2010 to December 2010, which included the time and address of each stop, idle time at every stop, the average speed of each trip, and the distance between stops.
Data was available in real time, offering O’Donnell accurate readings detailing to how long his employees actually worked — and gave him the opportunity to compare the data to their time sheets. Robert Stuart was the only employee to be questioned in regards to the mismatch.
O’Donnell originally had the GPS fleet tracking devices installed on the street cleaning trucks to improve productivity and fuel efficiency, so catching a dishonest employee was merely an unintended benefit. Employees were aware of the GPS tracking devices on their trucks, but this didn’t stop Stuart from falsifying his hours worked.
Stuart was confronted — to which he defended himself by saying he was leaving work early to watch news coverage of the Pike River disaster in which one of his friends was affected. He also claimed he had been taking that extra time to maintain his equipment and clean his truck. Stuart offered to make up the time he falsified, but his employer declined. Stuart was soon fired from his street cleaning job, but the story doesn’t end there.
After being terminated from his job, Robert Stuart attempted to sue his previous employer over wrongful termination, claiming it was too harsh a punishment. Stuart was trying to get $12,000 from the company and went on to say he should get less punishment since he was an employee there for 6 years.
After reviewing the GPS logs and finding out Stuart had falsified a total of 63 hours; 17 hours for long lunch breaks and 46 hours for leaving work early, the Employment Regulations Authority dismissed Stuart’s lawsuit.
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