I know this sounds creepy. And it makes employees feel like they aren't trusted to do their work.

But we are living in different times. Employers may have a legitimate reason to track employees (though some go too far), but they must gather this information without infringing on privacy and upsetting their team.

Why companies may need to track employee whereabouts

We're talking more about employee tracking as COVID-19 has turned 60% of America's workforce into remote employees—many of whom may cross tax and legal jurisdictions without anyone knowing. Whether home is just outside the city limits or people are taking advantage of their new "work from anywhere" flexibility, it may affect where and how much tax is owed both by you and your company.

For example, if you live and work in Denver but went home to San Francisco to live with your parents during the pandemic, your company may be legally required to withhold California taxes from your paycheck amongst other potential employer obligations. If you stay 183 days or more in the United Kingdom, you are required to file for taxes as a resident. More surprisingly, if your company employs several people in France, permanent establishment laws mean that your company might have a French entity, whether it wanted one or not.

State governments need to enforce their tax laws, and both employees and employers are eager to avoid overpaying taxes or suffering penalties.

But tracking applications that could expose personal details that have no place in the business world—the doctor's appointment you attended or the interview you took with a competing company—those aren't the kinds of details employers should or need to track.

The upside to employee tracking tools

When I used to travel worldwide as a consultant, I suffered the painful annual process of manually completing a tax calendar at the end of the year. I spent hours going through my calendar, my travel history and my emails to try to figure out exactly where I was each day. Road warriors like me were the first employees to welcome location tracking through our phones and laptops—anything to spare us from the jigsaw puzzle that was our travel history and the long hours completing the report.

For the overwhelming majority of workers, however, any kind of tracking is new and unnerving – particularly if you never travel for work.

How to use employee tracking the right way

People who used to work in Manhattan are now working from home in New Jersey and Connecticut. Remote employees have temporarily relocated to vacation rentals, their childhood home to care for ailing parents, or are taking their lives on the road in an RV and working wherever the WiFi signal is strong.

This has created a headache for employers who need to know where their employees are for tax purposes.

If you need to start tracking employees, approach this conversation with tact. Here are my tips:

• Let employees manually track their location if they prefer. They deserve the option to manually document their location if they prefer not to be located through a smartphone or computer app. In some cases, it may make sense to use travel and expense data that has already been submitted by employees. Employees should also have the ability to review their location data before it is used for any compliance reasons. Further, they should be able to deactivate these applications when they travel for personal reasons.
• Be transparent with employees about the data you are collecting. HR leaders should explain that the company needs to know which jurisdictions employees have spent time in so it can pay taxes or avoid penalties. HR should not collect or see any data on the specific addresses that an employee has visited. Employers only need low-resolution data on their whereabouts at a jurisdiction level—this information should not be any more detailed than what you would tell someone on a Zoom conference when they ask, "Where are you calling in from today?"
• Tell employees how you will use the data. Where will it be stored—in the U.S., Europe, or elsewhere? Who will have access to the data? Who owns this data? How long will it be retained? Answer these questions and subject your location tracking program to third-party audits. This transparency will help employees to feel comfortable with who has access to their location information.

Privacy in the era of COVID-19

Working from anywhere is here to stay. It is appropriate to ask your employees for permission to record their whereabouts, but you must do so in a way that protects their privacy and personal information. Ensure that they understand it's not about trusting them to do their work, it's about ensuring the legal implications of this new normal are being taken into consideration.

Steve Black is co-founder and chief strategy officer at Topia.

Read more: 

• How to strike balance between cybersecurity and employee privacy
• Remote workers face new and emerging risks
• 10 questions companies should address for a remote-work environment