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https://theconversation.com/3-ways-bossware-surveillance-technology-is-turning-back-the-management-clock-189070>
"If you’re reading this during work hours, there’s a chance your boss knows
about it. The market for “bossware” – digital tools that enable managers to
keep tabs on what workers are up to – is reportedly booming.
News reports recount tales of health-care workers being ranked “idle” for not
typing while counselling drug patients, and hospice chaplains losing
“productivity points” for spending too long with the bereaved or dying.
In the United States 60% of employers with more than 200 workers now use
“employee productivity monitoring technologies”, according to market research
firm Gartner.
Once loaded on your computer, these tools (with names such as Clever Control,
Time Doctor, Staffcop and Work Examiner) can track a dizzying array of data –
key strokes, how often you move your mouse, if you are using messaging apps,
your search queries and the websites you visit.
They can view your screen and record video from your webcam. Work Examiner
boasts it can “record every second of an employee’s screen activity”.
They then turn this into easily digestable data on a dashboard (for your
manager), highlighting your active hours and “idle time”, awarding you a
productivity score, and ranking you against your colleagues.
This demo dashboard from Work Examiner shows the ‘productivity’ of an
individual worker. Work Examiner
This may be happening without you even realising. Even if you are informed,
it’s done without your input. Too few mouse clicks? There may be a very good
reason, but the software doesn’t care.
These technologies are relatively new but the thinking behind them – that
productivity can be reduced to simple measurements, and that workers must be
constantly surveilled and managed for maximum efficiency – is relatively old.
More than a century ago techniques to observe and control workers movements
intensively were developed into a theory of “scientific management” by US
engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor. Tracking mouse clicks remotely is a
high-tech version of the same game.
The promises of bossware – of better performance and more control – are
tempting to management. But they are also profoundly wrong."
Via Cass M, who wrote "I am so glad to be out of the workforce."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
