Posted on 12/28/2017 6:14:05 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
How office snooping boosts the bottom line
I had breakfast the other day at a swanky London brasserie with a man I recently met at a conference.
I sauntered into the office some time after 10am, stuffed with eggs benedict, and switched on my computer. Having checked a few emails and scrolled through Twitter, I headed to the office kitchen for a cup of tea, where I bumped into a colleague who agreed it was good to see that the moody hot water boiler was not on the blink.
Then I started chatting with another colleague about a film we had both seen starring Willem Dafoe, which we thought was brilliant but a bit depressing. Eventually, I sat down to write something.
The Financial Times had no clue about any of this essentially useless office activity. Nor would most large companies. Yet that breakfast has made me wonder how long it will be until they do.
The man I met at the brasserie was Ben Waber, chief executive of a Boston company called Humanyze that claims it can boost a company’s revenues by tracking what its employees actually do all day.
It gathers data from ID badges hung around people’s necks, a bit like the ones employees use to swipe into work, only these have microphones and sensors that know where you are and who you are talking to — though not what you are saying.
I arranged to meet Mr Waber because, although I knew companies had been testing worker-tracking gadgetry for years, I had not heard anyone spell out the financial pluses of such surveillance. If Mr Waber is to be believed, they are significant.
(Excerpt) Read more at todayonline.com ...
Makes me glad I no longer work in grey, boring offices.
I’ll put my badge in a lead box.
It wasn’t essentially useless since FT gets a lot of good publicity.
I worked for a bunch of paranoids. The CEO was half nuts, while the COO was completely crazy. The office was bugged, taped and monitored remotely.
I lasted four months before I quit. Keeping track of performance is one thing. Monitoring for every single casual remark or wisecrack is Winston Smith territory.
Anyone who wants to downsize government should push for this technology in the federal workplace. Many of those people do almost nothing. That’s not just an expression — it’s fact. Many federal employees, even some high in the food chain, are just barely showing up. They’ve got 15 years or so to retirement, and they are in full “coasting” mode.
Get evidence that they are ripping off the taxpayer, and get rid of them. (Federal Employee Unions should be illegal, IMO.)
Companies that let employees relax, come in when they want, and hang out, generate more loyalty. You’re going to have less turnover, and when things get ugly more folks will stay later and get more done. Now obviously you still have to hire the right people, but you’ll KEEP those people. Slave grinding companies have high turnover, and no ability to pull together for the big win. They can’t hire the right people, because the right people hear about that place and stay far away.
Its like the NSA
No corporation will have the manpower or spend the money to actually monitor employees in real-time. Rather, like the NSA, the data will be stored somewhere, and when they want to fire you, they can go back and bring up every coffee-break and comment.
Ah, another Music Man. It might sound appealing to control freak bosses but if and when the job market tilts away from employers - and chances of that have improved greatly - the grapevine will quickly identify those companies with oppressive, even paranoid environments.
"...I worked for a bunch of paranoids..."
They did this because of issues with people showing up, or showing up long enough to hang their coats up in their offices/cubicles then taking off to do something else. What they found was more than 40% of the people they "monitored" would spend entire days not sitting at their desks. Combined with the data from the card readers, they found people walking in, placing their coats, then either swiping out or "tailgating" someone else leaving the office so they didn't have to swipe out.
All this happened because those of us in the U.S. complained vigorously about never being able to reach our counterparts in London and Guernsey and getting stuck with doing their work on top of ours.
Eventually a number of people in London and Guernsey were let go (EU's strict labor laws made that extremely difficult!) and those jobs came back to the U.S.
Well, the "jobs" did, the people to fill those jobs didn't and we're still stuck doing all that work....
I had a lan admin and her boss that were both certifiable.
They would be in orbit with excitement if they had badges that were recording all individual activity.
Absolutely. There is a lot of talk about that. One of the stumbling blocks is culture — Silicon Valley and Washington DC are utterly different in their approach to anything — which is sort of the point. This makes some of the progress slow. But the smart people in Washington realize that they need to do things differently.
That's been the case for a very long time now. Ask any InfoSec professional about the data they're able to collect and correlate on any employee in the company. Browser history, keystrokes on your computer, mouse clicks, application based data, emails, chats, it's ALL captured and has been for a number of years now.
When they want you, they'll get you. Best way to avoid it: don't do anything on your business computer that's not directly related to your job.
Use your smartphone as a hot-spot and get a cheap tablet for any "personal" things you do while at work. Don't EVER use the company's internet for personal business, period.
“”...I worked for a bunch of paranoids...”
Was that your real-life review of working for this company Humanyze that was the topic of this news story? Wow!”
Is your English comprehension lacking?
There is a great difference between FOR A bunch, and FOR THIS bunch.
Bkmrk.
"...Is your English comprehension lacking?..."
Yep,
Worked for the same guys mostly for nearly 15+ years and there have been periods where probably didn’t talk to them for months...rule was get your job done no matter what and we wont bother you.
The long term core group they hired long ago is likely the most devoted and productive group you’d ever meet.
If a manager has to spy then they are not managing the office very well.
I have worked at places that the manager/supervisor had spies who reported back to the boss. Today they would install cameras and microphones.
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