Page 47 - Clean India Journal Magazine June 2019 Issue

HOUSEKEEPING
to tackle black market working.
In Germany too there are strong
laws and a focus on privacy of the
individual.”
So how has legislation affected
the development of his apps?
“Firstly there must now be an
expiry date on important and
personal documents,” says Tuip.
“This means employees can
have the option to request that
documents be deleted and not
saved in the data.
“With regards to GPS
functionality,” he continues, “ the
employee must be made aware of cleaning company is gathering data
when they are being tracked and on workers via their smartphone
they have the option to switch that and they are being tracked, who
function off. In my experience owns that data? The cleaner could
many people now accept they are be using their own phone. The
being tracked as they go about employer could have information
their work, certainly at team on how fast that cleaner is moving
leader level.” around a building, which areas they
Questions have been raised are going to. What is the employer
about the situation with data that doing with that information, how
has been generated by cleaning long is it stored? Whose property
operatives while they are working. is it?”
Eddy Stam, head of property Stam was unsettled by the fact
services at UNI, said that the employers could be gathering
global trade union, asked: “If a data from various systems, which
means they can effectively vet their
workforce. “So what do they do
with that data? Can they dismiss an
employee on the back of it? What
exactly do they store? Does it go
to the extent of monitoring toilet
visits, how long those visits are,
etc?
“And what if the client on a
cleaning contract wants to see that
employee data? What then? Who
owns it worker, cleaning company
or client?”
Tuip replies: “The cleaning
company that buys the app owns
the data contained within it. That
data can certainly be used to
discipline employees if necessary -
which makes absolute sense for the
employer because this is a real pain
point for cleaning companies –
knowing where staff are, and when
they check in to work.”
This approach is absolutely
justified when the cleaning
company is seeking to improve its
service to the client, he continues.
“Not only that, when the cleaning
company knows exactly what the
cleaner is doing, the supervisor can
maybe help them to be better and
more efficient in their daily tasks.”
Clean India Journal
www.cleanindiajournal.com 47
June 2019