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New Office Sensors Know When You Leave Your Desk (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: About a year ago, in a widely reported story, journalists at British newspaper the Telegraph found little black boxes installed under their desks. The devices, which had "OccupEye" emblazoned on them, detected if employees were at their workstations. Not shockingly, writers and editors were suspicious, worried that bosses were monitoring their moves, even their bathroom breaks. The National Union of Journalists complained to management about Big Brother-style surveillance. The company insisted the boxes were intended to reduce energy costs, ensuring that empty cubicles weren't overheated or over-air-conditioned, but the damage was done, and the devices were removed. Sensors that keep tabs on more than temperature are already all over offices -- they're just less conspicuous and don't have names that suggest Bond villains. "Most people, when they walk into buildings, don't even notice them," says Joe Costello, chief executive officer of Enlighted, whose sensors, he says, are collecting data at more than 350 companies, including 15 percent of the Fortune 500. They're hidden in lights, ID badges, and elsewhere, tracking things such as conference room usage, employee whereabouts, and "latency" -- how long someone goes without speaking to another co-worker. Proponents claim the goal is efficiency: Some sensors generate heat maps that show how people move through an office, to help maximize space; others, such as OccupEye, tap into HVAC systems.
>how long someone goes without speaking to another co-worker.
The length of time I go without talking to a co-worker is directly proportional to my productivity.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
No, they want to micromanage people in the name of profit.
Employers aren't using this for anything other than trying to squeeze as much productivity out of people as possible by treating them like robots or animals. This isn't a new trend, as employers have been using monitoring software on computer workstations that determine when people aren't at their desk typing/etc, and keeps track of when they use the bathroom or take a coffee break. It's a terribly short-sighted thing, as people don't function like machines. I'm just glad I work at a job where my output is what's important - that I do the work I'm supposed to, whether I do it quickly or slowly, whether I take breaks or not, and whether I take 30 or 60 minutes for lunch, or whether I waste time posting to Slashdot or not.
Proponents claim the goal is efficiency
Yes, but what kind of efficiency? You're making a ton of assumptions that being at a desk, in a meeting room, or elsewhere leads to work being done, which leads eventually to profit. Work rarely is so attached to anything of the like that attempting to measure an individual's output for anything other than CO2 production is a waste of time, money, and thought.
Work, as we all know it, has been as industrialized as it possibly can be. And not everything that could be put into some sort of process needs it. Part of work is knowing where things can lead, it's following your instincts since you're supposed to be familiar with what you're doing.
And then there's the whole being valued by what work you do. That whole thing where your personal worth and wealth is directly tied to how "good" you're viewed as. Wealth as a virtue signaling! How sickening is that? How messed up as a society to you have to become to think that way?
Fight this sort of bullshit. Fight it hard.
If we only had more unions BS like this would not even make it to the install part unless there is a big list of things needed to fire someone / rules in place to make so that the boss needs to show that to use this to fire some takes a lot of paper work.
It's like alot of the BS metrics that just end up making people cheat the system / hurt things in areas that are not tacked.
The company insisted the boxes were intended to reduce energy costs, ensuring that empty cubicles weren't overheated or over-air-conditioned
What a load of bullshit. A cubicle by its very nature is a division of a larger room. It has no ceiling to hold heat in or meaningful insulation, and it's certainly not climate controlled on an individual level.
A more believable excuse would be that the device shut down the computer and desk lights when the employee was not in to save energy, but most businesses leave machines on to facilitate after-hours backups/maintenance and with modern high-efficiency lighting, there would be no net cost benefit to controlling lighting with them.
No, they want to micromanage people in the name of profit.
No, profit doesn't have a factor in it, at least in what I've seen. It's just metrics for the metric god. The management bureaucracy wants to see numbers which they can then pretend to read like tea leaves. From that point they issue some nonsensical decree ("There are too many commits to the repository! Why can't you guys get your software right the first time! I want to see less commits!") and go pat themselves on the back for being effective managers. In the meantime, the employees who have to deal with that BS expend mental energy trying to make sure whatever they're doing results in good metrics, possibly at the cost of productivity and efficiency.