13 ms·

Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

198 points by joshuahughes 7y ago

jamestanderson 7y ago
> In a statement, the bank said: "We always intended to listen to colleague feedback as part of this limited pilot which was intended to tackle issues such as individual over-working as well as raise general productivity." Riiiight.
- GordonS 7y ago
  If they intended to listen, or indeed cared an iota about their employees, they wouldn't have rolled this out in the first place. This level of intrusive monitoring would very clearly be hated by those it monitored, and make then feel very uncomfortable. Seriously, in this day and age, how on earth did this get enough support at the management level to pilot it?
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
    Having listened to some of the conversations in my MBA class, I am genuinely not surprised. The current consensus seems to be that cellphones spying on your every move is ok so logically it does make sense to just expand it. This had to be scaled back since people are not sufficiently conditioned yet. Speaking from US perspective, Baxter has some ridiculous user monitoring tools in their call centers.
  - nonbirithm 7y ago
    > Seriously, in this day and age, how on earth did this get enough support at the management level to pilot it? They valued maximizing the amount of profit one worker produces over privacy.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      I rather doubt that miserable, downtrodden employees are more productive than happy, motivated ones are.
      - banannaise 7y ago
        They don't teach that in MBA classes. They just teach that employees who aren't at their desks aren't being productive right now.
  - banannaise 7y ago
    Easy. The people at management level aren't the ones being monitored. There's no cost to them. Easy to trade someone else's happiness for your own profits. "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
"The software, Sapience, claims to create "unprecedented transparency" within companies." The spin makes me dizzy.
- jethro_tell 7y ago
  LOL, is the CEO's office being monitored and played by the water cooler? It's only transparent if it goes all the way around.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Exactly. If it made people mutually accountable, such that line employees could keep the execs in line, I'd at least be willing to listen. But micromanagement isn't transparency.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  I will believe it once the transparency goes both ways. So far it always goes only downward.
- peteradio 7y ago
  It is transparency, it was always wrong to think that transparency is some universal good.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Nah. It's only transparent like a one-way mirror is: it lets the powerful watch the people they can control without being watched in return. True transparency would make everybody visible to everybody, while making it just as clear who is monitoring whom. Often the problem isn't information, it's information asymmetry. In the offline world, we have a whole vocabulary for peeping toms, nosey parkers, eavesdroppers, busybodies, creepy starers, and outright stalkers. That's because observation is in itself generally observable, and can often be countered with social pressure. It's when, as here, that one group can observe without being observed or criticized, things can very quickly get ugly.
  - deleted 7y ago
geddy 7y ago
> unprecedented transparency I think where they can go a step further here is to install Spy cams in all of the bathroom toilets so we know how much bathroom time is actually spent going to the bathroom, and how much is spent on cell phones. It may sound invasive but I'll bet the efficiency will go up and that's all that matters at the end of the day, right? Since efficiency can be broken down into money earned/lost, this should probably start up the top-most level (CEO) since the highest paid positions would yield the most gain/loss depending on efficiency changes. So once the CEOs have spy cams installed in all of their toilets, we can really measure how well efficiency improves! EDIT: I'm coming back to this because I don't think this is quite efficient enough. We should have a team of resident defecation experts who can detect exactly when the CEO should start the wiping processes, and gradually phase them out with AI that learns different pooping patterns. It can also give recommendations to the employee in terms of eating more fiber to speed up the defecating process and result in more solid stools, thus optimizing all bathroom time and shortening the amount of wipes required to as little as possible, again, to save more time and thus, money. Not only that, but eating more fiber can prevent troubles like constipation as well as other health issues, saving even more money for the company when it comes to healthcare. These are just a few more ideas, but I have plenty more. EDIT #2: I feel stupid for not thinking of this earlier, but another good strategy to prevent time away from the desk would be to simply remove all water and refrigerators from the building, and naturally all bathrooms would follow suit. The bathrooms would be replaced with closets filled with amphetamines, which are huge efficiency boosters, and bananas, so the employees don't die of hunger. The amphetamines will keep the heart rate so fast the bananas will be burned off like fuel. Now, I know what you're thinking, "but what about the pumping rooms for breastfeeding moms? What happens to those?" It's a great question, with a simple solution - Barclays doesn't hire parents anymore. This is about efficiency, remember? Barclays will henceforth only hire asexual and sterile men and women to nullify any risk of pregnancy. However, for those parents who need to keep their job, Barclays will also offer a free service called "reverse adoption" where you bring in your kids and the company gives them away. This can save dozens of dollars per day from employees getting distracted by things like "family" and "not working." Between this, the spy cams in CEO toilets, the defecation expert AI, and removing the bathrooms, there will be tons of money saved, a portion of which will go towards financing the amphetamines and bananas. It'll be expensive for all the drugs but the efficiency will be so high it'll be a drop in the bucket!
mindcrime 7y ago
It really does boggle the imagination to think that somewhere, out there, somebody actually thought this system was a good idea in the first place.
- Broken_Hippo 7y ago
  They stole the idea from American call centers. This sounds similar to the monitoring in place 20 years ago at a telephone company call center I worked at.
- corobo 7y ago
  Twice They tried this back in 2017 too
indymike 7y ago
If your employees love their jobs and trust their leaders, they will not steal, and will not tolerate other workers who do. In order to be trusted as a leader you must earn the respect of those you lead. Earned respect is hard, but worth it.
chriscatoya 7y ago
These sort of systems for desk workers is the equivalent of measuring productivity by lines of code. Completely misses the point of generating value.
Broken_Hippo 7y ago
So, they basically treated people like low-level employees at a call center in the US? This sort of thing isn't actually new. Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft - including theft of company time spent talking to other employees. Are you a call center employee that has to go poop often that day or are 3 minutes late from break? Expect a call from HR for the bathroom breaks and an attendance issue for the tardiness. I'm guessing if this were in the US and put in place for low-level employees, it would have never been scrapped.
- Loughla 7y ago
  >Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft In my history, before finding my terminal career, I worked retail management. I worked for a chain that is no longer open, so I'm fairly certain I can say whatever I want about it now. I was fast-tracked for upper-level corporate management (I think it was the combination of not-giving-a-fuck based on depression and low-grade sociopathy that did that). During this process we were asked to optimize a store in our region. This optimization process included outlining for store staff the process to remove "internal shrink" read: employees stealing. One of my stores had the highest "internal shrink" and "employee arrests" in the entire chain. My solution was to make a differential pay scale for that store. I increased all wages across the board by $3/hr up to the store manager level. "Shrink" stopped in the first month. Not just "internal shrink" but external as well. The employees were actually NOT stealing and ACTIVELY stopping people from stealing. I was told it wasn't as cost effective as installing cameras in common theft areas and outsourcing security to a third party, and it was scrapped after a year. That was when I decided to leave retail and the corporate world in general.
  - sidlls 7y ago
    What was the cost difference? Did the shrink reduction exceed the $3/hr raise in value but not by enough? Or was the raise not offset at all by the reduction?
    - jschwartzi 7y ago
quelltext 7y ago
> "Managers would never get away with breathing down employee's necks, personally monitoring their screens or logging toilet and water breaks," They wouldn't? Isn't that reality for a lot of workers?
- jandrese 7y ago
  Article author has clearly never worked in a call center.
- uk_programmer 7y ago
  This actually happens a lot in call centres. This is why I am very polite to those on the phones because I know they are likely to be working in a horrid office.
  - crmrc114 7y ago
    At least in the US I know a number of call centers that have been sued into bankruptcy for attempting to use phone agent login status as a timeclock. The worst of these were telling staff that they had to login to their computers and get everything ready on their own time... then they would be paid once they logged in... On another note, I feel that such abuses really need to start to incur jail time for management since abuses like this still seems to be pretty common in US Call centers. To be honest (guessing from the 'UK' part of your username) I figured that the UK would have better call center protections than the US.... from your post it sounds like it may be just as bad as the US.
    - WaitWaitWha 7y ago
      >To be honest (guessing from the 'UK' part of your username) I figured that the UK would have better call center protections than the US.... from your post it sounds like it may be just as bad as the US. Interesting. How will this revelation impact your future comparative thinking?
      - wolco 7y ago
NullPrefix 7y ago
Systems like that are actually great for the employees, because every minute is accounted for and when you stay an hour longer at work you can expect to be paid for it at overtime rate.
- jandrese 7y ago
  I think you forgot the /s at the end.
- IMTDb 7y ago
  In a previous company I worked for, they implemented a clock-in / clock-out system. The system "broke" after a month when employees asked for their overtime sheets. It was never replaced.
- Loughla 7y ago
  Not when everyone is classed as Exempt staff and therefore ineligible for Overtime.
  - crmrc114 7y ago
    Except in the US exempt position are subject to pretty harsh restrictions. Just because a technical position is OT Exempt in the US that does not translate to the employer being allowed to request they work "OT" for free (Like asking you to +5/10 every week). In fact many large companies had been slapped by the DOL and forced to move those technical positions and even managerial in some cases to hourly due to systemic abuses. Dont ever let anyone tell you that you are defenseless as an OT exempt salary employee in a technical position. Contact a Lawyer if you feel you are being abused and your management refuses to fix the issues.
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    It's weird that exempt employees can be required to clock in and out. My current employer does this but claims it for tracking capital vs operational expenses and has nothing to do with productivity or policy enforcement. I'm rather skeptical. One thing is for sure, the definition of what constitutes an exempt employee has expanded far beyond its original intent.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I am pretty sure this will come back just slightly modified. And other companies will do the same. It will be really hard to stop the trend toward total surveillance. It gets cheaper and cheaper every year and more capable.
- Mangalor 7y ago
  What should be the response of workers?
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    individually it’s very hard to do something. Unions or laws would help setting up a framework for acceptable workplace conditions. But neither of them are especially liked in the US.
    - jb775 7y ago
      I could see unions making a big comeback in the US. They are still alive and well in the healthcare world (for nursing at least - my wife is a nurse at a large hospital in the US and has been a member of multiple nursing unions). If you compare profit margins to wage increases there's an obvious (and expected via capitalism) disconnect. It's hard to galvanize this type of activity though. And new unions would definitely need a constitutional overhaul, probably based around transparency and making sure power and decision making is distributed.
  - dflock 7y ago
    Unionize and refuse to work under those conditions.
  - scottmcf 7y ago
    Down tools.
wiradikusuma 7y ago
At work, my staff (20ish developers) usually clock in/out sharp bcoz of attendance, but they take 2+ hours lunch break and ~1hr for prayer breaks (2x within work hour), which I don't mind. But what frustrates me is their work is slow and low quality (not everyone), and I do thought about "short term" tracking like this. Thoughts? (I just joined, so I "inherited" this)
- jb775 7y ago
  Micromanaging will just piss people off, and cause them to look for work elsewhere. Challenge them and let your quality expectations be known. If the work is slow and low quality, you should analyze the decision making processes behind how work is assigned. At my previous job (as a developer), tickets were assigned based on who was interested, rather than who would best complete it (i.e. the dev who recently built something similar). Also, I'd recommend figuring out a way for your developers to share codebase knowledge effectively. It's much more efficient to spend an hour pair-programming with someone than debugging an issue for 2 days.
- factsaresacred 7y ago
  '2 hours lunch break and 1hr for prayer breaks' and the work is low quality. You don't need to track those people, you need to replace them.
  - speedgoose 7y ago
    A 2 hours lunch break is the standard in France.
    - fennecfoxen 7y ago
      "You can't fire these people" is also the standard in France. Also standard: a stagnant economy (~0.25% GDP growth on 0.18% population growth) and sky-high youth unemployment (20-25%).
      - speedgoose 7y ago
riazrizvi 7y ago
> Campaign group Privacy International said: "Data protection rules are very clear, strict and do not allow employers to carry out such monitoring unless they are able to prove that this is strictly necessary and proportionate and it does not severely impact employees' rights. Is this an EU or UK thing? Does anyone know the law implied?
- OJFord 7y ago
  They'll mean the 'Data Protection' Act: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/12/contents/enacted https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/12/contents/enacte... But I'm not familiar to cite a specific section on needing to 'prove that this is strictly necessary and proportionate'. See also: https://www.gov.uk/personal-data-my-employer-can-keep-about-me https://www.gov.uk/personal-data-my-employer-can-keep-about-... - the implication might be that the burden is on the employer to prove that it's not 'sensitive' data or it has permission, and that 'time away from computer' has implications for health & habits and is therefore 'sensitive'.
quadrifoliate 7y ago
Stuff like this is common in the US. And newspapers are still amazed at why the socialist candidate is leading in the polls for one of the presidential election nominations. Honestly, there is no fix for this sort of thing except through the political system. Corporations will keep pushing the boundaries on maximizing worker productivity because their CEOs get massive bonuses for squeezing 1% more work out of terrified employees like this. Even if the initiatives fail, they can always blame it on economic factors and get their golden parachute.
- kbutler 7y ago
  With the corporations, you can go elsewhere. With the socialists, you can't leave.
  - quadrifoliate 7y ago
    > With the corporations, you can go elsewhere. Typical quote from the 60s. This may be the reality for in-demand jobseekers in the current bubble, but it's typically not an option in the modern labor force.
    - kbutler 7y ago
      Show me the machine guns. It may be difficult to leave - mostly because of what you give up, and the disruption in your life - but nobody is going to shoot you if you try. Socialist regimes larger than a kibbutz have always been established and maintained by force. Our current economic system is not perfect, but the results over decades are infinitely better than other systems - particularly socialism. https://fee.org/articles/extreme-poverty-rates-plummet-under-capitalism/ https://fee.org/articles/extreme-poverty-rates-plummet-under... https://reason.com/2019/01/31/global-poverty-decline-denialism/ https://reason.com/2019/01/31/global-poverty-decline-deniali... Contrast with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_... 10s to 100s of millions killed under socialist governments, both direct and also as a result of failures of the central planning. This includes mass killings in Castro's Cuba, USSR, and Nicaragua, whose governments were each endorsed in the 80s by Bernie Sanders. Mischaracterizing non-socialist economies like Denmark is probably a better strategy.
freepor 7y ago
Employee panopticons only work if you want your employees to perform a precisely defined task with no improvisation. As soon as you watch someone their creativity drops to ~0.
abhijat 7y ago
Does anyone here know if HSBC is still using this sapience software? I know they bought into this a couple of years ago.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
grawprog 7y ago
This makes me wonder if there's ever been any studies done showing worker happiness over time at comparable jobs compared against the increasing rise of workplace surveillance over time. It would be interesting to see if there's any correlation between the two. I know personally i've always been happier and more productive at jobs when I don't have employers breathing down my neck and counting every second of work I do. Humans need a level of autonomy and a small amount of freedom to 'fuck around' as it were. Not to the point where productivity starts to fall, but there's a balance between oppression and total freedom I feel creates the ideal working environment.
stewofkc 7y ago
These employee monitoring/surveillance systems suck. They breed a toxic work environment. This article (https://medium.com/@stewofkc/why-big-brother-surveillance-systems-fail-870171bb0fc6 https://medium.com/@stewofkc/why-big-brother-surveillance-sy...) dives into the impact that employee surveillance has on businesses.
scotty79 7y ago
I briefly worked for Barclays as a subcontractor and they would improve their efficiency much more if they monitored in such detail how slow are the (virtual?) machines they provision remotely to their contractors and employees.
awinder 7y ago
I’m amazed that someone would think that the investment banking division would be an appropriate trial. I don’t know about long breaks but that seems like a crew that definitely puts in over 8 hours a day.
m463 7y ago
"Barclays said axing the tracking system was a response to "colleague feedback", but would not say if it was permanent." Quietly put it in when the controversy has died down, and disable these notifications: "and sent warnings to those spending too long on breaks."
11thEarlOfMar 7y ago
What problem are they trying to solve really? Seems to me that their management skills, training, hiring is the issue. If there is a perception among managers that workers are slacking or over-working, they should be able to solve the issue without invasive tracking. Moreover, if they are genuinely interested in improving productivity and reducing work-related stress, they'd communicate all of that in advance and resolve employee concerns before installing it. Sounds like management does not have an open, healthy dialog with employees in general.
- lainga 7y ago
  Whatever physical or social friction stands in the way between me, an upper-mid-level manager, getting mad because (?? someone cut me off in traffic? indigestion?) and being able to express it by summoning a giant fist and crushing one of my neo-slaves to death with a comical "splat" noise. They're not genuinely interested in anything that doesn't relate to their own prestige or comfort or ability to discharge discomfort.
loriverkutya 7y ago
This reminds me of one of the big telco company I was working for: Big announcement came one day that youtube and other "non work releated" websites were blocked to "encourage" people to work "harder". After two days, blocking is gone without futher announcement since some C-level started to complain to IT, that they use it.
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  I used to work for a company that turned on corporate blocking for a lot of sites. I learned a lot about DNS to trying to get around all of that stuff :). The system was also really stupid because it broke DNS for localhost when using the corporate VPN.
- mint2 7y ago
  Lucky they didn’t selectively unblock the c level
- nitwit005 7y ago
  I was briefly at Dell (acquired company I worked for), and they sent out an email to some of the management that mentioned they were spending several million a year on internet services, but half of it was being consumed by YouTube. I'm sure they'd have blocked it if they could, but the CEO was busy posting videos there and sharing using Salesforce's social network feature (Chatter).

198 points by joshuahughes 7y ago

> In a statement, the bank said: "We always intended to listen to colleague feedback as part of this limited pilot which was intended to tackle issues such as individual over-working as well as raise general productivity." Riiiight.

GordonS 7y ago
If they intended to listen, or indeed cared an iota about their employees, they wouldn't have rolled this out in the first place. This level of intrusive monitoring would very clearly be hated by those it monitored, and make then feel very uncomfortable. Seriously, in this day and age, how on earth did this get enough support at the management level to pilot it?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  Having listened to some of the conversations in my MBA class, I am genuinely not surprised. The current consensus seems to be that cellphones spying on your every move is ok so logically it does make sense to just expand it. This had to be scaled back since people are not sufficiently conditioned yet. Speaking from US perspective, Baxter has some ridiculous user monitoring tools in their call centers.
- nonbirithm 7y ago
  > Seriously, in this day and age, how on earth did this get enough support at the management level to pilot it? They valued maximizing the amount of profit one worker produces over privacy.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    I rather doubt that miserable, downtrodden employees are more productive than happy, motivated ones are.
    - banannaise 7y ago
      They don't teach that in MBA classes. They just teach that employees who aren't at their desks aren't being productive right now.
- banannaise 7y ago
  Easy. The people at management level aren't the ones being monitored. There's no cost to them. Easy to trade someone else's happiness for your own profits. "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago

"The software, Sapience, claims to create "unprecedented transparency" within companies." The spin makes me dizzy.

jethro_tell 7y ago
LOL, is the CEO's office being monitored and played by the water cooler? It's only transparent if it goes all the way around.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Exactly. If it made people mutually accountable, such that line employees could keep the execs in line, I'd at least be willing to listen. But micromanagement isn't transparency.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I will believe it once the transparency goes both ways. So far it always goes only downward.
peteradio 7y ago
It is transparency, it was always wrong to think that transparency is some universal good.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Nah. It's only transparent like a one-way mirror is: it lets the powerful watch the people they can control without being watched in return. True transparency would make everybody visible to everybody, while making it just as clear who is monitoring whom. Often the problem isn't information, it's information asymmetry. In the offline world, we have a whole vocabulary for peeping toms, nosey parkers, eavesdroppers, busybodies, creepy starers, and outright stalkers. That's because observation is in itself generally observable, and can often be countered with social pressure. It's when, as here, that one group can observe without being observed or criticized, things can very quickly get ugly.
- deleted 7y ago

geddy 7y ago

> unprecedented transparency I think where they can go a step further here is to install Spy cams in all of the bathroom toilets so we know how much bathroom time is actually spent going to the bathroom, and how much is spent on cell phones. It may sound invasive but I'll bet the efficiency will go up and that's all that matters at the end of the day, right? Since efficiency can be broken down into money earned/lost, this should probably start up the top-most level (CEO) since the highest paid positions would yield the most gain/loss depending on efficiency changes. So once the CEOs have spy cams installed in all of their toilets, we can really measure how well efficiency improves! EDIT: I'm coming back to this because I don't think this is quite efficient enough. We should have a team of resident defecation experts who can detect exactly when the CEO should start the wiping processes, and gradually phase them out with AI that learns different pooping patterns. It can also give recommendations to the employee in terms of eating more fiber to speed up the defecating process and result in more solid stools, thus optimizing all bathroom time and shortening the amount of wipes required to as little as possible, again, to save more time and thus, money. Not only that, but eating more fiber can prevent troubles like constipation as well as other health issues, saving even more money for the company when it comes to healthcare. These are just a few more ideas, but I have plenty more. EDIT #2: I feel stupid for not thinking of this earlier, but another good strategy to prevent time away from the desk would be to simply remove all water and refrigerators from the building, and naturally all bathrooms would follow suit. The bathrooms would be replaced with closets filled with amphetamines, which are huge efficiency boosters, and bananas, so the employees don't die of hunger. The amphetamines will keep the heart rate so fast the bananas will be burned off like fuel. Now, I know what you're thinking, "but what about the pumping rooms for breastfeeding moms? What happens to those?" It's a great question, with a simple solution - Barclays doesn't hire parents anymore. This is about efficiency, remember? Barclays will henceforth only hire asexual and sterile men and women to nullify any risk of pregnancy. However, for those parents who need to keep their job, Barclays will also offer a free service called "reverse adoption" where you bring in your kids and the company gives them away. This can save dozens of dollars per day from employees getting distracted by things like "family" and "not working." Between this, the spy cams in CEO toilets, the defecation expert AI, and removing the bathrooms, there will be tons of money saved, a portion of which will go towards financing the amphetamines and bananas. It'll be expensive for all the drugs but the efficiency will be so high it'll be a drop in the bucket!

mindcrime 7y ago

It really does boggle the imagination to think that somewhere, out there, somebody actually thought this system was a good idea in the first place.

Broken_Hippo 7y ago
They stole the idea from American call centers. This sounds similar to the monitoring in place 20 years ago at a telephone company call center I worked at.
corobo 7y ago
Twice They tried this back in 2017 too

indymike 7y ago

If your employees love their jobs and trust their leaders, they will not steal, and will not tolerate other workers who do. In order to be trusted as a leader you must earn the respect of those you lead. Earned respect is hard, but worth it.

chriscatoya 7y ago

These sort of systems for desk workers is the equivalent of measuring productivity by lines of code. Completely misses the point of generating value.

Broken_Hippo 7y ago

So, they basically treated people like low-level employees at a call center in the US? This sort of thing isn't actually new. Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft - including theft of company time spent talking to other employees. Are you a call center employee that has to go poop often that day or are 3 minutes late from break? Expect a call from HR for the bathroom breaks and an attendance issue for the tardiness. I'm guessing if this were in the US and put in place for low-level employees, it would have never been scrapped.

Loughla 7y ago
>Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft In my history, before finding my terminal career, I worked retail management. I worked for a chain that is no longer open, so I'm fairly certain I can say whatever I want about it now. I was fast-tracked for upper-level corporate management (I think it was the combination of not-giving-a-fuck based on depression and low-grade sociopathy that did that). During this process we were asked to optimize a store in our region. This optimization process included outlining for store staff the process to remove "internal shrink" read: employees stealing. One of my stores had the highest "internal shrink" and "employee arrests" in the entire chain. My solution was to make a differential pay scale for that store. I increased all wages across the board by $3/hr up to the store manager level. "Shrink" stopped in the first month. Not just "internal shrink" but external as well. The employees were actually NOT stealing and ACTIVELY stopping people from stealing. I was told it wasn't as cost effective as installing cameras in common theft areas and outsourcing security to a third party, and it was scrapped after a year. That was when I decided to leave retail and the corporate world in general.
- sidlls 7y ago
  What was the cost difference? Did the shrink reduction exceed the $3/hr raise in value but not by enough? Or was the raise not offset at all by the reduction?
  - jschwartzi 7y ago

quelltext 7y ago

> "Managers would never get away with breathing down employee's necks, personally monitoring their screens or logging toilet and water breaks," They wouldn't? Isn't that reality for a lot of workers?

jandrese 7y ago
Article author has clearly never worked in a call center.
uk_programmer 7y ago
This actually happens a lot in call centres. This is why I am very polite to those on the phones because I know they are likely to be working in a horrid office.
- crmrc114 7y ago
  At least in the US I know a number of call centers that have been sued into bankruptcy for attempting to use phone agent login status as a timeclock. The worst of these were telling staff that they had to login to their computers and get everything ready on their own time... then they would be paid once they logged in... On another note, I feel that such abuses really need to start to incur jail time for management since abuses like this still seems to be pretty common in US Call centers. To be honest (guessing from the 'UK' part of your username) I figured that the UK would have better call center protections than the US.... from your post it sounds like it may be just as bad as the US.
  - WaitWaitWha 7y ago
    >To be honest (guessing from the 'UK' part of your username) I figured that the UK would have better call center protections than the US.... from your post it sounds like it may be just as bad as the US. Interesting. How will this revelation impact your future comparative thinking?
    - wolco 7y ago

NullPrefix 7y ago

Systems like that are actually great for the employees, because every minute is accounted for and when you stay an hour longer at work you can expect to be paid for it at overtime rate.

jandrese 7y ago
I think you forgot the /s at the end.
IMTDb 7y ago
In a previous company I worked for, they implemented a clock-in / clock-out system. The system "broke" after a month when employees asked for their overtime sheets. It was never replaced.
Loughla 7y ago
Not when everyone is classed as Exempt staff and therefore ineligible for Overtime.
- crmrc114 7y ago
  Except in the US exempt position are subject to pretty harsh restrictions. Just because a technical position is OT Exempt in the US that does not translate to the employer being allowed to request they work "OT" for free (Like asking you to +5/10 every week). In fact many large companies had been slapped by the DOL and forced to move those technical positions and even managerial in some cases to hourly due to systemic abuses. Dont ever let anyone tell you that you are defenseless as an OT exempt salary employee in a technical position. Contact a Lawyer if you feel you are being abused and your management refuses to fix the issues.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  It's weird that exempt employees can be required to clock in and out. My current employer does this but claims it for tracking capital vs operational expenses and has nothing to do with productivity or policy enforcement. I'm rather skeptical. One thing is for sure, the definition of what constitutes an exempt employee has expanded far beyond its original intent.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I am pretty sure this will come back just slightly modified. And other companies will do the same. It will be really hard to stop the trend toward total surveillance. It gets cheaper and cheaper every year and more capable.

Mangalor 7y ago
What should be the response of workers?
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  individually it’s very hard to do something. Unions or laws would help setting up a framework for acceptable workplace conditions. But neither of them are especially liked in the US.
  - jb775 7y ago
    I could see unions making a big comeback in the US. They are still alive and well in the healthcare world (for nursing at least - my wife is a nurse at a large hospital in the US and has been a member of multiple nursing unions). If you compare profit margins to wage increases there's an obvious (and expected via capitalism) disconnect. It's hard to galvanize this type of activity though. And new unions would definitely need a constitutional overhaul, probably based around transparency and making sure power and decision making is distributed.
- dflock 7y ago
  Unionize and refuse to work under those conditions.
- scottmcf 7y ago
  Down tools.

wiradikusuma 7y ago

At work, my staff (20ish developers) usually clock in/out sharp bcoz of attendance, but they take 2+ hours lunch break and ~1hr for prayer breaks (2x within work hour), which I don't mind. But what frustrates me is their work is slow and low quality (not everyone), and I do thought about "short term" tracking like this. Thoughts? (I just joined, so I "inherited" this)

jb775 7y ago
Micromanaging will just piss people off, and cause them to look for work elsewhere. Challenge them and let your quality expectations be known. If the work is slow and low quality, you should analyze the decision making processes behind how work is assigned. At my previous job (as a developer), tickets were assigned based on who was interested, rather than who would best complete it (i.e. the dev who recently built something similar). Also, I'd recommend figuring out a way for your developers to share codebase knowledge effectively. It's much more efficient to spend an hour pair-programming with someone than debugging an issue for 2 days.
factsaresacred 7y ago
'2 hours lunch break and 1hr for prayer breaks' and the work is low quality. You don't need to track those people, you need to replace them.
- speedgoose 7y ago
  A 2 hours lunch break is the standard in France.
  - fennecfoxen 7y ago
    "You can't fire these people" is also the standard in France. Also standard: a stagnant economy (~0.25% GDP growth on 0.18% population growth) and sky-high youth unemployment (20-25%).
    - speedgoose 7y ago

riazrizvi 7y ago

> Campaign group Privacy International said: "Data protection rules are very clear, strict and do not allow employers to carry out such monitoring unless they are able to prove that this is strictly necessary and proportionate and it does not severely impact employees' rights. Is this an EU or UK thing? Does anyone know the law implied?

OJFord 7y ago
They'll mean the 'Data Protection' Act: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/12/contents/enacted https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/12/contents/enacte... But I'm not familiar to cite a specific section on needing to 'prove that this is strictly necessary and proportionate'. See also: https://www.gov.uk/personal-data-my-employer-can-keep-about-me https://www.gov.uk/personal-data-my-employer-can-keep-about-... - the implication might be that the burden is on the employer to prove that it's not 'sensitive' data or it has permission, and that 'time away from computer' has implications for health & habits and is therefore 'sensitive'.

quadrifoliate 7y ago

Stuff like this is common in the US. And newspapers are still amazed at why the socialist candidate is leading in the polls for one of the presidential election nominations. Honestly, there is no fix for this sort of thing except through the political system. Corporations will keep pushing the boundaries on maximizing worker productivity because their CEOs get massive bonuses for squeezing 1% more work out of terrified employees like this. Even if the initiatives fail, they can always blame it on economic factors and get their golden parachute.

kbutler 7y ago
With the corporations, you can go elsewhere. With the socialists, you can't leave.
- quadrifoliate 7y ago
  > With the corporations, you can go elsewhere. Typical quote from the 60s. This may be the reality for in-demand jobseekers in the current bubble, but it's typically not an option in the modern labor force.
  - kbutler 7y ago
    Show me the machine guns. It may be difficult to leave - mostly because of what you give up, and the disruption in your life - but nobody is going to shoot you if you try. Socialist regimes larger than a kibbutz have always been established and maintained by force. Our current economic system is not perfect, but the results over decades are infinitely better than other systems - particularly socialism. https://fee.org/articles/extreme-poverty-rates-plummet-under-capitalism/ https://fee.org/articles/extreme-poverty-rates-plummet-under... https://reason.com/2019/01/31/global-poverty-decline-denialism/ https://reason.com/2019/01/31/global-poverty-decline-deniali... Contrast with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_... 10s to 100s of millions killed under socialist governments, both direct and also as a result of failures of the central planning. This includes mass killings in Castro's Cuba, USSR, and Nicaragua, whose governments were each endorsed in the 80s by Bernie Sanders. Mischaracterizing non-socialist economies like Denmark is probably a better strategy.

freepor 7y ago

Employee panopticons only work if you want your employees to perform a precisely defined task with no improvisation. As soon as you watch someone their creativity drops to ~0.

abhijat 7y ago

Does anyone here know if HSBC is still using this sapience software? I know they bought into this a couple of years ago.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

grawprog 7y ago

This makes me wonder if there's ever been any studies done showing worker happiness over time at comparable jobs compared against the increasing rise of workplace surveillance over time. It would be interesting to see if there's any correlation between the two. I know personally i've always been happier and more productive at jobs when I don't have employers breathing down my neck and counting every second of work I do. Humans need a level of autonomy and a small amount of freedom to 'fuck around' as it were. Not to the point where productivity starts to fall, but there's a balance between oppression and total freedom I feel creates the ideal working environment.

stewofkc 7y ago

These employee monitoring/surveillance systems suck. They breed a toxic work environment. This article (https://medium.com/@stewofkc/why-big-brother-surveillance-systems-fail-870171bb0fc6 https://medium.com/@stewofkc/why-big-brother-surveillance-sy...) dives into the impact that employee surveillance has on businesses.

scotty79 7y ago

I briefly worked for Barclays as a subcontractor and they would improve their efficiency much more if they monitored in such detail how slow are the (virtual?) machines they provision remotely to their contractors and employees.

awinder 7y ago

I’m amazed that someone would think that the investment banking division would be an appropriate trial. I don’t know about long breaks but that seems like a crew that definitely puts in over 8 hours a day.

m463 7y ago

"Barclays said axing the tracking system was a response to "colleague feedback", but would not say if it was permanent." Quietly put it in when the controversy has died down, and disable these notifications: "and sent warnings to those spending too long on breaks."

11thEarlOfMar 7y ago

What problem are they trying to solve really? Seems to me that their management skills, training, hiring is the issue. If there is a perception among managers that workers are slacking or over-working, they should be able to solve the issue without invasive tracking. Moreover, if they are genuinely interested in improving productivity and reducing work-related stress, they'd communicate all of that in advance and resolve employee concerns before installing it. Sounds like management does not have an open, healthy dialog with employees in general.

lainga 7y ago
Whatever physical or social friction stands in the way between me, an upper-mid-level manager, getting mad because (?? someone cut me off in traffic? indigestion?) and being able to express it by summoning a giant fist and crushing one of my neo-slaves to death with a comical "splat" noise. They're not genuinely interested in anything that doesn't relate to their own prestige or comfort or ability to discharge discomfort.

loriverkutya 7y ago

This reminds me of one of the big telco company I was working for: Big announcement came one day that youtube and other "non work releated" websites were blocked to "encourage" people to work "harder". After two days, blocking is gone without futher announcement since some C-level started to complain to IT, that they use it.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago
I used to work for a company that turned on corporate blocking for a lot of sites. I learned a lot about DNS to trying to get around all of that stuff :). The system was also really stupid because it broke DNS for localhost when using the corporate VPN.
mint2 7y ago
Lucky they didn’t selectively unblock the c level
nitwit005 7y ago
I was briefly at Dell (acquired company I worked for), and they sent out an email to some of the management that mentioned they were spending several million a year on internet services, but half of it was being consumed by YouTube. I'm sure they'd have blocked it if they could, but the CEO was busy posting videos there and sharing using Salesforce's social network feature (Chatter).