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.
In LOTR the Palantir is used by Sauron to corrupt and subdue Saruman by displaying visions of terror. Coincidentally a Palantir employee in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica were instrumental in the Republicans hard lean into fear-based messaging leading into the 2016 Presidential election.
felt very big brothery but it worked well enough to get bought out.
"The ScanItAll Checkout Vision Suite is a collection of StopLift’s video analytics technologies applied to inventory shrinkage at the checkout. ScanItAll automatically analyzes video from checkouts every moment to detect inventory shrinkage visually, even when it leaves no data trail.
ScanItAll detects Sweethearting, Self-Checkout Loss, Basket-Based Loss, Operational Error, etc.
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.
If you came in mid year they just pro rated the amount you would have gotten if you stayed the whole year.
I remember this helped employees keep an eye on each other as you were essentially stealing from everyone else's shrink check.
These managers or execs are outside of this scrutiny. They’re the slave masters and they don’t see that the greatest wastage is amongst themselves.
This kind of capitalism is highly American and a product of its success through exploitation. America didn’t come to be without the slave trade.
(I just joined, so I "inherited" this)
Software engineering has a phenomenal burnout rate. By the time they're 30 almost everyone I know starts thinking about their exit. I honestly don't believe software engineers can consistently put in more than 4 hours of good work a day on corporate code without being ground down in the long term. The people who stick around tend to be those who sit in meetings all day rather than actually writing code.
All of this is to say that you should prioritize things people have in short supply (happiness, dignity) over things corporations have in spades (money, time). Don't be that person who starts keeping track of how others use their work hours.
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.
You don't need to track those people, you need to replace them.
As for the low quality output, I’ve seen teams improve significantly by implementing good biweekly retros (note that bad retros can make things worse). Fostering the right atmosphere can do wonders to bring out latent talent. Also things like tooling can really help. CI with linting, and a no-judgement ‘you broke the build you fix the build’ rule can also really help.
They wouldn't? Isn't that reality for a lot of workers?
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.
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!
It is almost like Outer Worlds is not a parody, but an instruction manual.
https://www.today.com/health/new-toilet-design-aims-cut-your...
The spin makes me dizzy.
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.
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.
Riiiight.
Seriously, in this day and age, how on earth did this get enough support at the management level to pilot it?
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.
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
They valued maximizing the amount of profit one worker produces over privacy.
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.
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.
With the socialists, you can't leave.
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.
They tried this back in 2017 too
Is this an EU or UK thing? Does anyone know the law implied?
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-... - 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'.
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.
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.
Quietly put it in when the controversy has died down, and disable these notifications:
"and sent warnings to those spending too long on breaks."
