Can Tracking Employees Improve Business?

An anonymous reader writes: The rise of wearable technologies and big-data analytics means companies can track their employees' behavior if they think it will improve the bottom line. Now an MIT Media Lab spinout called Humanyze has raised money to expand its technology pilots with big companies. The startup provides sensor badges and analytics software that tracks how and when employees communicate with customers and each other. Pilots with Bank of America and Deloitte have led to significant business improvements, but workplace privacy is a big concern going forward.

Comments

Surely they meant

[royallthefourth]

Dehumanyze

Re:Surely they meant

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the name was weird too. The name they chose basically brings to the forefront the ethical issues.

Re:Surely they meant

[wiredlogic]

You need to read "1984" citizen.

Re:Surely they meant

[Penguinisto]

Dehumanyze

True indeed.

On the one hand, they're paying for the employee's time, so as long as the tracking can be removed/ended as the employee leaves, it's within their legal bounds to do so. On the other hand, given that employees can get creative as hell when it comes to slacking off, I don't see how this is going to be very effective.

It's like when they moved to an open office (as in "you can see everyone's screens") plan at Intel as a pilot "How We Work" program a few years ago. They figured it would increase collegiality, increase productivity, etc etc. Turns out that the area of the building where they ran that pilot was a frigging ghost town, with the assigned occupants hiding somewhere quiet to get some work done. Other alternatives were to come up with sudden justifications for working remotely, and scheduling conference rooms just to go be somewhere quiet for awhile that didn't have as many eyeballs on you and what you were doing. Not even free soda fountains parked right next to the area could lure folks back to their desks.

I'd worked in a similar type of office later on, and honestly, it kind of sucked. Auditing file shares for pr0n/mp3s/illicit files with HR had to be done in a conference room, the noise levels otherwise were louder than usual (headphones were pretty much required if you wanted to work quietly), and it was kind of odd having my manager sitting 3' away from me all day long in between meetings (on the plus side, I only had to elbow him if I needed something.)

All that aside, they've been trying to come up with ways to monitor employees for years: timesheets, RFID badges, workstation monitoring (even down to keyloggers on certain sensitive employees' workstations), email/proxy logs, you-name-it. Most have failed to live up to expectations due to cost or ease of circumvention. Short of hiring a human monitor/proctor for each employee (or small group thereof) to watch and record what they do, you're simply not going to get much more productivity out of your employees than you get now - I daresay you'll end up with less because they'll be spending more time trying to circumvent or cheat all the bullshit you've put into place to track them.

Re:Surely they meant

[rtb61]

Basically this will lead to two distinct classes of employment, the tracked serfs and the untracked freemen. Freeman will quite simply tell their employers to go jolly well fuck themselves and make a point of inclement violence if any attempt is made to force use of the devices. 'UNIONS', looks like there is a real and urgent need for them after all.

As for the cheeto munching gutless serfs, what is it the exploitative 1% say, "slaves are slaves because they want to be slaves" (freeman of course fought for the freedom to obtain and keep it). So choose you children's future, brave of free or gutless serfs.

Re:Surely they meant

[pepty]

Untracked freemen? The most valuable use of tracking will be of c-suite executives. At $1k per hour and up, their time is far too valuable to leave unexamined. And seeing as they are getting so much of their work done while out of the office (on the golf course, over drinks, etc) it would really be best if they were just tracked all the time.

Re:Surely they meant

[Anonymous Coward]

a company i used to work for tried this needless to say they lost half there engineers within the first 6 months. the ones that remained .... well I wish the company luck.

Re:Surely they meant

[BVis]

Why do you hate America?

YES !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Like fish, planton, and protein from the sea, you gotta be seen to be real !!

How about Workplace Moral?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is yet another way to drive it down.

Re: How about Workplace Moral?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this "morale" of which you speak? It sounds like an ancient synonym of job satisfaction but I can't seem to remember either anymore.

Re:How about Workplace Moral?

[khasim]

TFA claims the opposite. But since they're trying to sell something ... of course they would.

When team members had overlapping lunch breaks and talked to each other, their stress was lower (as measured by tone of voice), job turnover was lower, and they completed their calls faster.

So the bank made a management change and tested it over several months -- it gave half the teams breaks at the same time and compared the results. It found the turnover rate fell from 40 percent to 12 percent, and the more cohesive teams completed their calls 23 percent more quickly -- which is "worth tens of millions of dollars" to Bank of America, Waber says.

Now, to me that that reads more like BoA's PRIMARY communication channels were fucked. So the employees were attempting to share information using the INFORMAL "lunch break" channel.

So BoA, in effect, makes the informal channel MANDATORY.

It isn't about swapping your ham and cheese for Alice's peanut butter and jelly. Or trading "dumbest question this morning".

It's about Alice ... on smoke break with Bob ... learning that X was changed and they weren't told ... and sharing that info with the Chuck at lunch ... who shares it with Danny ...

Re:How about Workplace Moral?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA:

Bank of America, for example, used the Humanyze system in its call centers to try to boost performance and lower its employee turnover rate.

Nothing improves morale and performance like telling your employees you care... about how much time they spend in the bathroom, at the water cooler, or quietly crying in the upstairs broom closet.

Re:How about Workplace Moral?

[TubeSteak]

And most importantly, instead of paying its employees more for their 23% improvement in productivity, the company pockets the savings and gives executives bigger bonuses for making the company more profitable.

That's basically everything wrong with Corporate America for the last ~40 years.

Re:How about Workplace Morale?

[SirGeek]

This is yet another way to drive it down.

They don't care about morale. If you don't have any work options, And keep producing ? Their attitude is screw your morale.

cost analysis

[gurps_npc]

Almost anything you do can 'improve business'. If only because you are paying attention and trying something.

The question is do the benefits out-way the costs. To that I would say a resounding no.

Partly because people are not robots and employers have a long history of eliminating things that are not directly profitable to the company but are key to the morale and mental health of the employees. Restricting bathroom breaks to 10 minutes, etc. Or doing the opposite - forcing them to attend pointless meetings to set the agenda for next week's pointless meeting.

That is exactly the kind of things that you get when you 'track' your employees.

A better approach is to simply ask - and listen - to the employees about things they consider wasted time. They know more about it than any tracking system.

Re:cost analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that when you ask employees about things they consider wasted time, the answers tend to be things management really wants to keep doing.

Re:cost analysis

[pla]

A better approach is to simply ask - and listen - to the employees about things they consider wasted time. They know more about it than any tracking system.

1) People don't typically give honest responses when the CEO asks if they consider his meetings a waste of time.
2) You assume the people wasting others' time actually want to know the truth, rather than using the data they can collect as an excuse to implement whatever new policies they want.

"The data shows that you all become drastically less productive for two hours after our weekly meeting. Clearly, the amount of content I present at those meetings simply overwhelms you all; so to break it up a bit, we will start having slightly shorter daily meetings."

Re:cost analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who implements ERP software my experience is that 9/10s of the employees are just there to do what they are told and cannot be bothered to provide input on better way to do things. Thus stupid bullshit like this gets implemented by the one person who likes all the cool new functions but is completely tone deaf as to how they are implemented will affect people on a day to day basis. And since everybody is quiet when Im asking for suggestions on better way to do things, what gets implemented is shitty.

Re:cost analysis

[chipschap]

A corollary sort of thing happened where I once worked. There had been a major change of upper management, and they "fixed" a bunch of things in the way that executive management sometimes does. A year into it we were asked to provide a memo telling executive management how things had improved, even though things had degraded so much that anyone except out-of-touch executive management couldn't possibly miss it.

When we told them the truth, they replied, "This isn't what we asked for."

Re:cost analysis

[JoeMerchant]

Way better to weigh the costs...

The more enlightened employers also consider morale and mental health, not just as HR tokens, but as actual productivity tools

Re:cost analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

The trick is to get your specs written before those 9/10s of employees are disillusioned by the shitty pay, shitty hours, shitty management, shitty executives, whiny customers, and shitty outside contractors. Good luck with that!

Re:cost analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

In fairness, some places even making a suggestion is "talking back" and borderline insubordination.

Also why are you implementing Erotic Roleplaying software?

Re:cost analysis

[ultranova]

The more enlightened employers also consider morale and mental health, not just as HR tokens, but as actual productivity tools

Most employers aren't enlightened, any more than most absolute monarchs of old were. Any relationship where one party wields power over the other is always going to become a black comedy. But that's okay; the lesson will be repeated as many times as humanity needs to have it pounded home.

Re:cost analysis

[BVis]

9/10s of the employees are just there to do what they are told and cannot be bothered to provide input on better way to do things.

Only after the first few times they're asked to provide that input. After having their input completely ignored (or, worse, they're reprimanded for making suggestions that upper management disagrees with), the employees learn that it's a waste of time and effort. Management is going to do whatever the fuck they want to do. The employees are there to make the stockholders money, not be happy or productive. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Now even our employers want to watch us

[Anonymous Coward]

Because cameras and GPS in company vehicles wasn't enough.

It's really tempting to venture into self-employment now.

I gave up digital watches for Lent!

[Anonymous Coward]

SAVE US Tyler Durden, you're our only hope!

They don't want workers, they want robots

[Fire_Wraith]

Dear gods no.

This is a terrible, terrible idea. You know what you should track? Task completion. If the job gets done, who cares how many bathroom or coffee breaks someone took, or how much time they spent posting on Slashdot? You hired them to do a job, not to own them 8 hours out of the day. Trying to micromanage your employees and turn them into robots is only going to make them utterly miserable, which will make things worse in the long run.

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? If the job gets done, and you notice your employees are spending more time in the break room chit chatting than at their desk, then obviously their work load is too light, you have too many employees, or both. Simply tracking task completion tells you nothing about how much effort is being put forth by the people you are employing to do a job, or the efficiency it is being done with. If you simply want to track task completion, contract the work out on a per task basis. That way you won't have to worry that the people whose health insurance and 401k you're putting money into every minute are not generating a fair return on the investment you've made in them.

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[vlad30]

OTOH the lecturer/teacher who gets accused of inappropriate behaviour or the contractor who wants to prove the work was done correctly may want video/location evidence to prove their point of view. Used correctly these can help as cameras are already in workplaces checking on productivity and stupidity, this sounds more helpful to workers in environments they don't control

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but that would be reasonable, sensible and ethical.
Dirty communist traitor

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Anonymous Coward]

Your way of thinking is completely skipping the quality of the item produced. Only in very few industries is the quality unimportant. In the vast majority of industries, quality is a specific factor that increases the sales price of the goods produced, thus generating marked return on investment.

As you may well know, quality decreases as production speed increases.

I have a jar of dollar store candy on my desk. As you can imagine, it is of dollar store quality. I would never pay more than $1 for it. I imagine the factory creating it was run by a manager similar to yourself.

My neighbours desk also has a jar of candy. It cost $10. While I personally am not interested in paying $10 for it, I can certainly tell that it has $9 of quality put into it. I bet that factory is run by someone such as myself.

Both factories make solid amounts of money.

It all depends on if you have a brand and if you give a shit about it. Obviously , the brands at the dollar store don't care about reputation (one wonders why they bother branding the goods in the first place). That's the right place for you to work.

The right place for me to work has a strong brand and is not interested in selling their reputation short.

You can both be right, and in this case, neither of you are morally wrong. It's up to the employee to decide which work environment suits them, and up to the employer to properly pick the right employee for the job. I'd dare say your business would do poorly with a highly skilled individual. Their wasted talent will generate friction.

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider you have a group or team of employees that are tasked with a project. While you may not care HOW it got done, it's certainly nice to know if you have four team-members doing all the work while the other six sit on Slashdot and comment all day long :D

In other words, why pay for ten employees if you only need to pay for four ?

Don't need supah-secret badges, or cameras though. Just break the project into pieces and give each employee a part of it. Should become apparent who is working and who isn't pretty quickly.

Lots of ways to push efficiency without resorting to Big Brother bullshit.

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Hognoxious]

Your way of thinking is completely skipping the quality of the item produced.

Well of course it does. If you want managers to judge the quality of the product they'd have to know something about it and how it's produced. People who know those kinds of thing are far too rare to waste in management positions.

And as any fule kno, management is a skill all of its own. If you can manage a company that mixes sugar with water you can manage one that makes computers (to pull an utterly stupid, far-fetched, and ridiculous example out of the air).

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Anonymous Coward]

A fair return on investment is that they get done what is expected of them and you pay them what they expect based on a mutually agreed upon employment contract. It is unethical and illegal to change the contract later to get a more fair to you outcome by changing the contract because you think that squeezing the stone a little harder can produce blood.

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[swb]

I agree with you in principal, but they don't want to just get the job done. They want to get the job done faster so they can get more jobs done overall in as little time as possible. Reducing labor costs is the name of the game.

The problem with positional tracking is it doesn't tell you why X was in some location. Because he needed to be there to do some job or because he was trying to chat up some woman?

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Anonymous Coward]

If the job gets done, and you notice your employees are spending more time in the break room chit chatting than at their desk, then you have enough people to weather a huge upswing in business or an emergency. The worst thing I've seen lately is bosses wanting to pinch the pennies my being 100% efficient, only to later realize that demand for employee time is flexible, but employee time is not.

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH the lecturer/teacher who gets accused of inappropriate behaviour or the contractor who wants to prove the work was done correctly may want video/location evidence to prove their point of view. Used correctly these can help as cameras are already in workplaces checking on productivity and stupidity, this sounds more helpful to workers in environments they don't control

Define "Used correctly" A politically unbiased technician that sets up such systems would probably have a different definition than a manager or exec that wants to fire someone but doesn't have a legal/policy related justification for doing so.

I deal with this kind of thing all the time and management rarely uses their power correctly in any way (IE ethically, morally or even technically). They have access to footage but most staff do not so security logs/footage only come into play when management wants to put it into play. Footage is never pulled unless it helps makes management's case. If it doesn't help management, they wait until footage is overwritten and THEN they make their move. This way, discovery for courtroom purposes won't find anything damning to management. Funny how well they understand the tech when it serves them.

Examples:
1.) A vendor's contract was canceled because we had footage of an alleged theft. The footage showed nothing more than opaque trash bags being taken out the front door. The vendor's employees were terminated. The item that was allegedly stolen was never on on tape. Said item was found a day later having been misplaced. No call was made to the vendor to explain the mistake - management made a management call and just stayed quite. Perhaps my company wanted to dump the contract and thought this was a way to justify it. (speculation on my part but management knows the details and knows the impact) Perhaps there were other incidents where our management was also speculating without real evidence. I don't know one way or the other but I do know my management was only honest (at best) in the sense of answering questions honestly without offering up other known details that were not to management's benefit.

Regardless the reason, my company's management knew a few people could (and did) get terminated for something they didn't do and didn't do what was in their power to prevent the vendor from unfairly trying to save face. My company, in staying quiet, caused real harm to the vendor's ex-employee's situation then and into the future. That vendor probably still thinks their former employees were thieves and might still indicate such if called about references. The faultless ex-employees now have to explain the situation to potential employers . (ethical and moral fail - yes, these can extend beyond the internal corporate veil into the outside world)

2.) Surfing porn. One employee was caught violating policy and was terminated. Another was caught doing the same thing and was kept on staff - the second employee is a favorite of management and the first was not. (ethical fail)

3.) Super old hardware that can't handle the daylight savings rules changes from years ago. An employee was 'caught' clocking in late because both the time clock and the security cameras were off by an hour and by all appearances looked to be an hour late. I tried to explain the daylight savings time issue but they 'didn't understand'. I showed them the current, hour off time of both systems during the explanation so they could see that, indeed, the time was off. (technical fail and possible ethical fail if they were maintaining the appearance of not understanding to maintain their justification for termination). Funny how management can just 'not get' an easier to grasp concept than file overwrites and capacity limits when that misunderstanding serves them. I was later lectured about this - how can I let this daylight saving issue happen? Wait, I let what happen? You made decisions that indicate you didn't understand what happened. We explained this exa

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Livius]

If your competitor is getting the job done with fewer employees, your business might not survive.

Maybe there's a middle ground between complacency about poor work ethics and counter-productive micro-management.

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't always work because you can't assess people that build or fix systems the same way you assess the people who operate said systems.

Phase III: I OPERATE a system that manufactures a product, I can easily assess productivity directly.

Phase II: I MANUFACTURE a system that manufactures a product, I can not easily assess productivity directly.

Phase I: I DESIGN and CREATE a system that manufactures systems that manufacture a product, I can never assess productivity directly.

If management can't get a number they can put in a spreadsheet when assessing your input, they will insert a 0 for the cell representing your value to the company because work is hard and one of those design/created systems (excel) that manufactures a system (a spreadsheet) that manufactures a product (revenue/cost report) tells management a single number. They insert a 0 because it is the most personally beneficial number to insert and the number is harder at this level of abstraction.

Management then tries to measure the first phase the same as they do with the third phase and they don't realize or refuse to acknowledge that phase I-III are not the same and cannot be meaningfully measured in the same way. There is another level of abstraction and just inserting any number into a report that looks good for their career is seductive on another level as well. It's too hard to manage and it doesn't fit into the very same product they asked for in the first place - the excel driven productivity report. MBAs don't even realize they are doing this at best or at worst they do realize it.

You assume management understands enough (or is willing to admit to understanding enough) to make a decision that is informed, educated and aware enough to be relevant let alone accurate. You also assume management will act based on fact rather than their own self-interest. You assume management has the capacity to understand, the capacity to realize their own level of understanding and a pure company centric rather than personal motive for their own actions. I have yet to see a spreadsheet that can account for these varied, non-technical influences brought by those who use them to make decisions based on incomplete understanding and unknown motives.

These things have always been true of course. The only difference is that management stopped blaming workers for their own mistakes. Now, they just blame the tech that is automating the work. This of course doesn't change anything - management is just blaming a different worker because they still have to run around in circles trying to avoid their own reflection.

As they try to find a magic product that will fix this problem, they turn to Sisyphus while still clinging to Narcissus. Without the Narcissus, the true curse of Sisyphus - to experience the pain in that moment of failure seem like a fresh revelation each time because you keep thinking more of the same wrong crap will someday work out... to continue to do the same failed thing while expecting a different outcome... Einstein said that behavior was the definition of insanity.

Come on people, these issues are hardly new.

It seems to me that the only lesson to be learned from history is this: History repeats itself when people falsely believe they have learned from history.

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Drethon]

I've worked jobs where each minute of the day has to be associated with a project and deadlines are set to the minimum time required for an expert with nothing going wrong. I've also worked jobs where the job gets done when it gets done. I've found the latter to be far less stressful and lead to better results over the long run. The former works good for brief sprints when things need to get done.

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[BVis]

It is unethical and illegal to change the contract later to get a more fair to you outcome by changing the contract because you think that squeezing the stone a little harder can produce blood.

Unethical? This implies that the company's leadership gives a fuck about ethics past the point at which not having them costs them money, which is pretty much never. Illegal? At least in the USA, most job descriptions are suggestions, and not in any way binding. Your employer can assign you any task they see fit, on pain of termination. In the USA, "at-will" employment means you can be fired at any time for any reason, or for no stated reason. If you want to keep eating (and being able to see the doctor at a reasonable cost) you will do what they say. If you're classified as "exempt", they can even make you work 24/7 with no extra pay (as you are not required to pay them overtime).

You'll produce that blood when squeezed or you'll be replaced. Or, they'll just fire you and give all your work to one of the other employees (who is probably already doing at least 3 jobs.)

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Time a million.

Know what other people are tracked everywhere they go? Convicts in a prison. Or small children. Also, animals in a zoo. Humans don't want to be treated like any of these things, and to amplify what Fire_Wraith said: Making people miserable doesn't improve their productivity in the least. It makes them resentful, it makes them feel trapped, and these things inevitably lead to not only a worse bottom-line for a company, it leads to employees with serious health problems, both mental and physical, due to an overall low quality-of-life.

MEMO TO BOSSES EVERYWHERE: Give your employees their tasks, and leave them alone to do it. The worthwhile employees will get their work done without any micromanaging. These you keep and reward lavishly. The worthless layabouts won't get it done and will make excuses. These you give a talking-to about it once or twice, and if they don't improve, you get rid of them. It's as simple as that.

Re:They don't want workers, they want robots

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Steve Jobs, is that you?

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. As soon as Wally gets a hold of the hack that makes it look like he's there all the time. Boom! Instant productivity increase, since the PHB assumes "there"=="productive".

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true, and if they refuse to work, they can be tortured.

Law of unforseen consequences...

[mlts]

The problem is that this employee data, which would be innocuous in the hands of a company, can easily leave the premises. e-Discovery and fishing expeditions are common, and that info can wind up in the hands of someone completely irrelevant.

Of course, there are always the criminal organizations who would love that info. They find that Joe Ducato is out on a long haul... grab his address, sell the info to a local gang, and they clean his home out. This hasn't been the case yet, but as time progresses and if the economy sours further, it wouldn't be surprising to have your local gangbangers swing deals with overseas organizations to buy dumps of potential victims and when their places will be empty. Right now, crime is relatively low, but that can easily swing up due to economic factors.

My philosophy is to use the least amount of data needed, and if has to be obtained, it be decentralized (for example, the AD servers are separate from the HID badge locks, which are separate from Exchange, which is separate from the CCTV room). If the data isn't present, it can't be slurped off overseas and sold.

well if machines can do it better why pay humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2837810/automation-arrives-at-restaurants-but-dont-blame-rising-minimum-wages.html

http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/22/technology/innovation/fast-food-robot/

  I need my phone to order my food while I text my friends and update my facesbooks and get an electronic dating site to email me this week's options.
Who has time to drive. I'll have my car do that for me.

Sadly yes

[blue9steel]

For low paid employees with quantifiable job outcomes this will likely be a net win even though it's horrible and dehumanizing. For knowledge workers and the like it will be a net loss since job outcomes are less quantifiable and more subject to things like employee morale. Of course that won't stop them from deploying it anyways.

You put a microphone up where?

[Tablizer]

Whippings also improve business. Ask Roman ship operators.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that people in orange jumpsuits are the best workers.

har

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya, if only other companies don't do this. I know for a fact that this technology exists. I can't remember who used to use it. Lockheed? But they would automatically clock you out when you entered the cafeteria and clock in when you left.

So, good luck with this upstart!

Spend dollars to save cents

[Anonymous Coward]

In the productivity market, companies try and sell you on spending dollars to save cents. Its like anything, you can sell it if you know how. Tracking people is pretty much done already with smartphones, and other instant update apps that can easily track you effectively enough for most businesses. The back fire that's already starting to this productivity obsession is that we keep eliminating hours and jobs and reducing the overall money into the economy. As one economists once said, a company producing overtime workers is workers spending more in the economy. Resulting in more overtime producing products. The trouble with obsessions with automation, robots replacing humans and a general reduction of human labor is going to kill even a recovering economy. Robots don't buy things like computers, cell phones, food, and all the other products that make up a lot of a economy. Yes, you could track robots too and they probably would not care. But I think this obsession with tracking people because we can does more harm then good.

Fitting

[epyT-R]

Fitting that the company is called 'humanyze'. Kinda like calling the big brother act 'patriot'.

Posing vs. Working

[Tablizer]

A manager's time is typically very limited. They have to deal with technical issues (the domain), office politics, and administrative stuff like budgets, vacation requests, procurement approvals, etc.

Is it better they spend a slot of time snooping on an employee, or discussing known issues with them face to face?

And those not familiar with the tasks at hand for a group will judge employees on superficial things typically, meaning the employee will spend more effort on acting and posing for a domain-ignorant monitor.

Thus, those who do know the details of the job are probably better served with direct old-fashioned communication, and those who don't know are ill-suited to make a good judgement.

Re:Posing vs. Working

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you from experience a big corporation, say Target, "Managers" in stores office roles have been significantly reduced over the last 20 years to just about 30-60 minutes worth of office/computer/paper work a day. The rest, as told from district managers, should be more about being involved in what goes on in the store. I suggested a tracking system 10 years ago to be worn ONLY by managers. The district manager/HR would be the only one to receive the data. The trackers would only note zones. Offices, checkout lanes, sales floor, backroom. After about a month, you would see how much time a manager actually spends on the floor, working and observing, and how much time they sit on their ass in the offices.

I support these devices as a check and balance against "management". There are already multitudes of ways to measure and demean your typical worker being used, but hardly any used for the top of the pyramid. Yes, I worked my way up from the lowliest of low jobs to management and still support it.

When do they add the electric shock collar?

[Required Snark]

At Wallmart, Target, McDonalds, etc.

Re:When do they add the electric shock collar?

[Livius]

Just subtly remind them of the unemployment rate. Same effect but saves the cost of the collar.

Re:When do they add the electric shock collar?

[Anonymous Coward]

We (meaning humanity) have already implemented something close to that.

If Best Buy sells an expensive product, like a new video game system, there may be an expectation that a replacement system is moved from the back room to the store front within a certain amount of time. You thought those RFID tags were just for checking if the device left the front door without getting paid for? Well, it also makes sure that the device passes through the main room's back door within a timely manner. If the job isn't performed soon enough, then an alert gets generated. A manager may be called; you can bet that the company keeps track of which stores have high amounts of alerts.

So technology is already demanding that people are moving to certain locations within certain timeframes.

Preparation for big comeback of slavery in USA

[Anonymous Coward]

All these attempts are nothing else than preparation for comeback of slavery in USA. People in USA are just walking piece of meat with printed numbers on them. Any corporation has more rights than 99% of Americans.
American oligarchs dehumanized and destroyed this country.

Re:Preparation for big comeback of slavery in USA

[Justpin]

http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/oe... TL:DR Workers in China have more rights than US workers.

Tracking Badges?

[captain_nifty]

I predict that these tracking badges will show that the employees remain at their desk hard at work throughout the workday, while the employees will continue to take breaks, visit others in the cube-farm, and take long lunches.

Re:Tracking Badges?

[__aaclcg7560]

Unless you work in a hospital and equipped with a Vocera Badge. Anyone can ask for the position of a user and the device will tell them where in the building. If you told your supervisor you were walking over to user's station, and the communicator said you were in the lunch room, you got busted.

Re:Tracking Badges?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple, take it off and leave it at your desk and just claim you were there.

Problem solved.

Our productivity is falling, monitor employees!

[__aaclcg7560]

I went through this at one company where software was installed to allow the managers to monitor the Windows desktop of any employee. My manager came running over to remind me that I shouldn't be looking at Amazon on company's time. And then he saw that I had a breakfast burrito from the roach coach in my hand, which meant I was on my break and could damn well look at Amazon. I told him to bugger off.

This was easily defeated because the company next door had an opened wireless access point. We just browsed the Internet on our PDA's (this was ten years ago). Needless to say, with management like this, the company went bankrupt.

You spent 10.4 minutes in the bathroom

[msobkow]

You spent 10.4 minutes in the bathroom this morning.

The staff in your department average 5.6 minutes.

The doors in your office will therefore remain locked until 5:04 today to ensure you make up the time.

Unforeseen consequences

[digitalPhant0m]

In the eyes of management and the bean counters, you are nothing more than a resource. You are a meat robot getting paid X to do 100% of Y. Simple.

In reality you happen to be a human that eats, poops, get's sick, has feelings, family etc and realize that nobody is 100% effect.

Labor will start to comply and do the best they can to track their time; however shortly after this management get's upset and chastises labor for only getting 75-80% of time tracked.

Shortly after the berating labor miraculously manages to track 100% of their time. The formula for labor becomes 8/Tasks = Time per task.

Management becomes happy.

(This scenario has been realized at every position I've been at in the last 10 years). ... I wonder what the management and the bean counters think when their overlords ask for the same thing?

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

They already have this in India. It works.

corporal punishment improves productivity too

[arit]

Not everything that improves productivity is worth pursuing ...

Re:corporal punishment improves productivity too

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but the people in power have already decided that your opinon means nothing. They have the money. They have the resources. They have the power to FORCE APON YOU THEIR WILL THROUGH OTHERS. (Others who are just as lustful for power as them but lack the means to obtain it, or to better themselves at the expence of everyone.)

Basicly long story short, bend over and moan nicely, buccko. Because until such a time comes when They have gone too far with their tyranny such that revolt is unavoidable, you should expect that your objections shall fall on deaf ears, your complaints met with hostility, and your living conditions to further worsen, so that They may take futher pride in their own self-worth.

Go ahead and track us

[Anonymous Coward]

Track all those lunch hours spent at strip clubs and written off as an expense.

You really want to be a slave that badly?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Waaaahh I have to submit to this because I need a job!"

Sure, you can't just say "FUCK YOU" to this, organize amongst yourselves to fight these people or worst of all find some other way to live instead of chasing chits of paper around all your one and only life. That's too hard. Right? You have to bend over and spread for whatever they give you. Right?

"Waaaahh I need a job I need a job"

Whatever. Have fun being a plantation field hand. When you're rotting away in the old folks home I'm sure you'll look back on a life well lived.

Note to self..

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not work for Bank of America or Deloitte.

On a serious note, this trend more or less amounts to the 'robotitization' (not a word, I know) of the human workforce. I can see it now:

"Has your job not been taken over by robots? Not to worry! It will eventually, but in the mean time your employer can't wait to transform you into a hybrid where they will be able to track every butt scratch (that'll be a warning, mister) and minute staring off into blank space. No more 'Peter Gibbons' style of slacking. Oh and that thing you said about your boss? That was recorded and will be brought up at your next performance review."

Or it's something much, much simpler

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

"The Hawthorne effect (also referred to as the observer effect) is a type of reactivity in which individuals improve an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed."

Plenty of people make fun of psychologists for not being "real scientists", but at least they understand experiments well enough to call BS on technology pilots like this one.

What about ear tags?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

You know there is this well proven technology, that has been used for more than 200 years by the ranchers. Just punch a hole through the ear lobe and slip in a string and a token. We can modernize it by making the token RFID.

Why don't we ask the question, "Does putting RFID ear tags on the employees improve Business?

Looks like the Business will not rest till it turns every fiscal conservative who still believes in the free markets into foaming in the mouth rabid raving lunatic communist.

Pure Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really time for more unions or maybe name them something else... because people seem to think all unions are corrupt.

But that's what we need, organization to fight crap like this.

It's one thing to get data, it's another to track your employees all day long.

Then again.. maybe it isn't.

Cost is not the biggest failure

[s.petry]

The failure is in attrition and a lack of competent employees. The culture that remains in these environments are a bunch of back stabbing adolescents that run the company further into the ground. I have left places that turned into this, and know plenty of other people that did the same thing. You can read the horror stories as easily as I can find them, no need to extrapolate further.

One of the biggest issues I hinted at, which is a culture of back stabbing. Management wanting to shit-can someone can easily do so by extracting proxy logs. How many sites do you visit every time you go to CNN at Lunch? Worse, how about a site like Reddit where banned is sure to exist. Even if the site is banned, you obviously tried to go there right? Logs say so, and can not differentiate what a user types from what a site links.

The answer to TFA's question is "ABSOLUTELY NOT!". What makes a work place better is management that allows people to actually work. Sometimes, that means they are not typing on a computer for a few hours or checking texts and emails constantly. I draft up tons of stuff on paper and whiteboard before writing anything on a computer. My production is something my management can measure, but not in the same way as parts/hour like an assembly line. The latter is easy, and frankly the managers that want this type of measurement are idiots that have no business working in IT.

If you can't trust the employees you hire to perform well, then it's time to start canning managers and hire competent executives who can.

Re:Cost is not the biggest failure

[paiute]

If you can't trust the employees you hire to perform well...

Then your hiring process sucks, too.

Betteridge says

[Livius]

no.

Improvements?

[symbolic]

> Pilots with Bank of America and Deloitte have led to significant business improvements

Such as? Were they tweaks to processes that further objectify employees? Or did they improve the environment, thus inspiring employees to higher levels of achievement?

Like what?

[borknado]

"Pilots with Bank of America and Deloitte have led to significant business improvements"

I do not believe that anything they found out required this elaborate effort at Big Data. I'm sure employees have recommended every single thing, they just didn't listen because they didn't pay tens of millions and get it out of this magical god of big data technology.

Cattle prods

[Anonymous Coward]

Sonn cattle prods will increase productivity, wielded by robots, who are monitoring you via the brain implant. This will speed up your metabolism and sense of corporate obedience, and decrease bathroom breaks. This leads to even greater business productivity and profits and is what will make America the great corporatocracy that we all know it can be.

Great Idea

[JimSadler]

Both with fellow employees and with the public there are numerous employees who slowly murder the companies they work for. Some have anger issues while others might include the personality of a cocky female who wants it known that she is tough to deal with. There are also employees who complain constantly to other employees. I have noticed that companies who struggle and simply can not give appropriate salaries and raises get really bitter clusters of employees who scheme and plot to avoid a smooth work output. Often there is great suspicion that the top management is taking all the money and secrecy about salaries and perks makes it all worse. I do approve of ferreting out negative employees and inviting them to leave the company and I do not like to have individuals issuing their opinions of other workers as those opinions are often biased. In many companies one can find a worker who works way to hard with a huge output being considered an enemy by other employees as they fear being measured as compared to that happy employee who is in high function.

Re:Great Idea

[frank_adrian314159]

Well, yeah, but why don't you talk about anywhere outside the CxO suites?

History repeating itself

[RackinFrackin]

These people would do well to read up on Taylorism/Scientific Management, and how well it worked 100 years ago before they delve too deeply.

Boycott

[Justpin]

The thing is a lot of people don't realise is that THEY have the power. Simply boycott such companies. If companies are viewed as bad people stop going to them. Tesco is a good example, they had scandal after scandal using workfare free labour, tainted food, bribery and tax evasion but seemed untouchable to the extent they could do whatever they wanted and had the government in their pocket. They always got planning permission and nobody ever investigated them. This happened from 2001-2011 then people got tired of them and a small number of consumers went elsewhere pushing most of their stores into unprofitably. As a result they fired more staff and whipped them harder which made even more people hate them. People went elsewhere and they are in serious trouble now. For instance I don't like ZHC (at will in the US) so I don't patronise any companies or organisations that use this sort of labour. I also don't like Ford cars as I bought a brand new one and it fell apart before my eyes. They will never get a penny off me again. Or shitty tactics like turbo tax thing. Never get any money again from me. But you complain.... yet still buy again from them are they going to take your complaints seriously? Unless of course there is a total monopoly on a product.

Employees = Criminals

[Anonymous Coward]

Treat employees like criminals, and you end up with criminals.