How would you feel about this?

[LionsandBears]

Just been talking to a friend who's still working in a multinational I used to work in. I left about 4-5 years ago. Anyway, she mentions that the company has recently started rolling out installs of a timer on all company computers. The timer tracks productivity and if there hasn't been a certain amount of activity for a period of time, it registers you as on a break.

I can understand that call centres operate one way, but this is throughout sales support and is probably going to go further. It doesn't take into account being in meetings, phone calls or anything. People are now just randomly pressing keys to look productive. Morale has been affected and people are leaving.

I see it as another way to mess up the way people work. If you can't trust your workers, get rid of them. If you can't trust you managers to manage people, get rid of them. Yes, people are working fom home more. But if they're doing the job they're paid to do and meeting deadlines, then who cares how they spend on the computer? These are salaried employees, who usually work the hours required for the job. The amount of times I spent working late on end of month sales or last minute tenders or whatever. For no extra pay, because that was the job.

If you are a salaried employee, how would you feel with a timer attached to your computer? Assuming you don't bill by the minute.

[Bumperstump Cummerbund]

I feel that it's distrustful as well. Most companies lock out social networking and webmail anyway. If you haven't had a problem with a staff member's productivity, what is the need for a timer? And if you ARE having trouble with staff, I don't think this is the way to go about it.

So, does the program tie into the payroll software WRT the breaks? Or can you explain if questioned that you were at a meeting, on the frickin' toilet or something?

[LionsandBears]

I don't know. I imagine there will be reports sent to managers, who will then have discussion with employees, and it will be noted in the system. It will impact performance reviews and all sorts of things.

It's a problem with business. Because you manage what you measure, you don't see the stuff you can't measure. Like motivation, effort, loyalty.... Instead of number of key strokes. So don't miss it.

[Little Chicken]

My SIL works for a government department that has something similar except in automatically logs you out every fe hours to make you go on a break.

[Cassius2]

holy flirkin' snirt batman.

how very Orwellian.

[Muppity]

I suppose that it depends what they are actually using the data for. It could be that they are thinking of introducing hot desking or similar and want to know what percentage of people are actively using IT resources at the same time?

Sounds like it is a poorly thought out and poorly explained thing - no matter what they are doing it for.

[LionsandBears]

They already use hot desking. They're a big IT company. My friend works from home 100% and resources are all over the country/world so I imagine they thought it up to see if they need X resources for the amount of work. I can see why they'd do that but the drop in morale is a poorly thought out factor in measuring productivity.

[lady_neon]

I wouldn't work somewhere like that. If you dont trust me, don't hire me. As long as the work gets done within required timeframes I'm not sure why employers would have a problem?

[Astrid]

I would be offended if something like that was ever implemented where I worked. Not all work is done on computers all the time. I know at me work, there are peaks and troughs in work load, hard to make what we do consistent.

I could understand tracking the initial log on and logging of at the end of the day, similar to a time clock system. As that would be handy with payroll and for OH&S. Don't see a need for tracking every moment through the day.

I agree trust your employees and managers, or find another business to handle.

[Rowellen]

I would be very upset. In fact I would probably be searching for a new job straight away. I'm going through something similar where I work at the moment. Not to that extent though. One day I came in & couldn't access my computer. Why? Because my boss had changed my password. In fact, he changed all the passwords for all the computers & all the websites we regularly use. It bugs me that he can just change my passord without me knowing and I can't change it myself. It has also been rumoured that he installed a key-tracking program on an employees computer. Major invasion of privacy IMO. He has blocked access to FB on some employee's computers too. Not on mine yet but if he did I'd be mighty peeved as I can't get much FBing done at home. If I want to use my breaks on FB, why not? I get my work done so not a problem IMO. I've been at my job for over 5 freakin years. If you can't trust me after that long, fire me Since he became my boss, my desire to work productively has dropped through the floor. And yes, I am looking elsewhere

[RhiChiChi]

I would be offended if something like that was ever implemented where I worked. Not all work is done on computers all the time. I know at me work, there are peaks and troughs in work load, hard to make what we do consistent.

I could understand tracking the initial log on and logging of at the end of the day, similar to a time clock system. As that would be handy with payroll and for OH&S. Don't see a need for tracking every moment through the day.

I agree trust your employees and managers, or find another business to handle.

I agree with Astrid. I do alot of manual work, having discussions, meetings etc... that could impact the time spent on my PC. I also do alot of work from home, so not sure how that would be monitored?? I do my work efficiently and I would be peeved if I was impacted b/c I didn't work XZ amount of hours. I can see how employees would 'rort' the system to do be seen as doing more work. I'd look for another job if my work bought something like that in

[fionas]

I used to work in internal communications/organisational development in a highly unionised workforce. That would have gone down like a lead balloon - not just with the unions but with me as an advisor to senior management on what would affect staff morale. Senior management, however, would have wet their pants over it because they like to measure.

We actually did a lot of measuring but it was all fully discussed with the unions and related to tangible outcomes rather than this seemingly random and trivial measure of how many keystrokes are done on the computer. So backward. As examples, we worked out how long it typically took to process an invoice or write a communications plan and from there worked out benchmark output standards ie. how many invoices could be processed in a day, how many communications plans could be written in a week etc. So we measured real outputs rather than trivial stuff like this. We also factored in thinking time for positions where a lot of conceptualisation was required.

There are so much more sophisticated and useful ways of measuring performance and ones that staff will support once they see the benefit.

[Teeki]

I'd be looking for a new job. I already need to report to my manager every week how many people I'm seeing, what type of people (existing or new customers, stakeholders, lawmakers etc), keep track of the work I've got on the go, compare my projections to what actually happened.

This would just make me resentful really, it's already hard enough to do my actual job around all the meetings and reports. And like Astrid said, a lot of my work is not done on the computer. There are plenty of meetings, lots of filing and lots of handwriting/calculating. Last week I spent over half a day out with customers - I got three new deals from it, but according to that program I'd have been on a massive break!

So yeah, not a fan, I completely understand why morale has dropped!