HR's Big Brother: Coming Soon to a Screen Near You

Students of business history may recall Fredrick W. Taylor, the father of Scientific Management, a theory of management that analyses workflows. Clipboard and stopwatch in hand, Taylor would analyse every second of work in steel mills and manufacturing plants to develop the most efficient means of work. Taylor was especially focused on designing precisely how workers moved their arms and legs.

The main objective of Scientific Management is improving economic efficiency, especially labour productivity. Taylor was focused on the most efficient way to do things, how long a task should take and even how long work breaks should last. At the dawn of the industrial age, Taylor literally reinvented how people worked.

It was an attempt to turn people into machines. The modern-day version of this can be witnessed in every McDonald’s kitchen, where desired processes are documented and put into a manual for staff to follow. But as work increasingly became information-based and automation took hold in manufacturing, work became much harder to analyse and specify – until now.

In the post-pandemic world, it is clear that hybrid work is here to stay. What many employers want to know is the output of workers while they are working, unsupervised, at home. How people work isn’t just being reinvented; it is also being closely monitored to ensure workers are pulling their weight.

While the work-from-anywhere revolution seemed inevitable, the emerging worker surveillance regime may come as a surprise.

The Virtual Clipboard

Corporations are utilising software to monitor how industrious their employees are when working at home. The software measures computer usage and how active people are on their keyboards. Some versions grab screenshots every ten minutes, take photos of the employee while working, and facilitate livestreaming of workers beavering away at their laptop, even without their knowledge.

The purpose is, of course, is to improve productivity – to make sure the person is actually working. The software packages — aptly named Teramind, ActivTrak and Controlio, among others — boast that they can be employed with or without the knowledge of staff members.

This raises an important question about the future of work. Where are the new boundaries between personal life and work life? It turns out that the location of where we worked provided a clear delineation of work-life balance, but as worlds merge, we need to redefine what’s fair.

Billable Hours 2.0

I always felt the concept of billable hours a little draconian. Breaking down the work of a lawyer into six-minute increments seems a tad antiquated these days. This rudimentary measuring stick creates an incentive for the firm to maximise time employed, rather than being outcome-driven. Whenever I hire someone to work for me, I care less about how long it takes, but rather what the project delivers. The price of a car is not determined by how long it took to be built.

This new productivity software reverses the billable hours equation. Remuneration of staff and contractors can now be based solely on when they appeared ‘active’ online. If you happen to need the restroom or be AFK (Away From Keyboard) to innocuously quench your thirst, then your pay could be docked in increments.

The question is “how can we define ‘active’ in a world of hybrid work?” Surely the traditional office is the template. The digital tools we employ are not the only way work is completed for a large majority of information workers. We have meetings, we read things on printouts, we scribble things on paper, we spend time thinking staring into space, we socialise and develop relationship networks. In all but the most rudimentary data input roles, this seems like a step backwards to a new workplace dystopia.

Productivity Monitoring

Since the pandemic, employee productivity monitoring has crept further into work than we might imagine. Australian data is unavailable, but across the Pacific Ocean we can see what may be to come. Eight of the top 10 US employers, on the basis of number of employees, are participating in some form of individual employee productivity surveillance. In many cases, this is happening in real time.

While this started historically in the factory and crept into call centres and warehouses (Amazon being a famous example), it is now leaching into the highly-paid, white-collar arena. Given that so many employees demand flexibility, the COVID crisis created a new form of legitimacy for such monitoring.

Turns out that some employees have taken advantage of hybrid work. Software providers report employee productivity surveillance programs uncovering workers who are not present, playing video games, watching porn, and some even doing two full-time jobs at once. It’s these bad actors who give employers the imprimatur to expand the technology.

Some employers are transparent about it with their employees, by creating a bargain where employees are permitted to work from home, so long as they consent to the corporate overlord monitoring them.

Greater Meritocracy?

While it may seem surprising, some research shows that not every employee is against these emergent systems. Some employees claim that it helps them maintain their focus, enable concentration and make better task choices. They like the feeling of not getting distracted and watching their ‘productivity score’ (which some software providers display in real time), so they can gamify their performance in the same way they might by wearing a Fitbit.

Another upside is that it could potentially create a fairer workplace, especially for women and marginalised demographic cohorts. Who hasn’t been amazed and dismayed by promotions given to peers who are more skilled at schmoozing and talking about the latest football results than getting actual work done. Through measuring work, many say it can create an indisputable measuring tool – rewarding those with the best work ethics, not the best relationships. This could result in a greater meritocracy and egalitarian advancement for all employees.

What is Work?

At the end of all this, the bigger question is…what is work? This question is increasingly more difficult to answer, especially as repetitive tasks are outsourced to automation and AI.

Monitoring tools will never be able to quantify the amount of thinking someone does, the analysis of their industry outside of work hours, the mentoring and the value of their creativity. What all this may do is give management a taste of the hardship suffered by frontline employees and necessarily redefine what we value from our staff. As far as investors are concerned, it may even provide a new financial measurement tool in certain industries so we can know how efficient a company really is and if there is potential for a headcount reduction.