Employers are arming themselves with new, more aggressive technology to measure how workers spend their time
Three Hours of Work a Day? You’re Not Fooling Anyone.
Employers are arming themselves with new, more aggressive
technology to measure how workers spend their time
By Te-Ping Chen July 19, 2019 5:30 am ET
Some people start their day with coffee and a round of
meetings. Brian Dauer kicks off his by checking which websites his colleagues
have browsed.
Mr. Dauer works at Ship Sticks, a West Palm Beach, Fla.,
company that ships sports gear and other luggage, which last year installed
software to monitor its workers. It tracks the websites employees visit
minute-by-minute, and has the ability to take remote screenshots of workers’
computers.
“We’re not the Big Brother type,” says Mr. Dauer, the
director of operations. But as Ship Sticks has expanded rapidly—growing to
about 80 employees since 2011—the software, ActivTrak, has been invaluable in
helping boost productivity, he says.
As workplaces arm themselves with new, more aggressive
types of technology to monitor and understand employees, one of the busiest
niches is measuring worker productivity.
Hospitals are installing sensors to detect nurses’
handwashing practices and their location on the floor at all times. At
AdventHealth Celebration in Florida, for example, more than 200 nurses’
whereabouts are tracked to gain a better idea of how to improve productivity
and workflow.
“It’s just like a GPS where they can see where everyone
is at any time,” says Patty Jo Toor, vice president of nursing and hospital operations.
She says the technology can help coach nurses and isn’t used for punitive
purposes.
Restaurants are using software to observe each of their
waitstaff’s sales in real time. Drivers who work for United Parcel Service Inc.
and Uber Technologies Inc. have their speed patterns tracked to boost
efficiency and safety.
“It’s kind of creepy,” says Hans Schelke, 56 years old,
who drove for Uber for four years in the San Francisco area before retiring in
January. “But I was always a gentle driver,” he said, adding that tracking such
metrics could improve driver performance. Uber told drivers such data wouldn’t
affect their ratings, he says.
“Uber remains committed to investing in technology that
aims to help keep riders and drivers safe,” a spokeswoman says.
UPS confirmed it uses advanced analytics to sift through
data in ways that help it better serve customers and drive efficiency. “Data
that doesn’t yield insight is just trivia,” a spokesman says.
Experts say new ways to mine workplace data help
companies better understand their workforce and increase productivity, safety
and security. Critics are raising privacy concerns.
“You can really tap into sources of growth and improve
productivity,” says Ellyn Shook, chief leadership and human-resources officer
at Accenture. “But it can also be a minefield,” if not used responsibly, she
says.
Of companies based in the U.S., Europe and Canada, 22% of
employers surveyed say they collect employee-movement data, 17% collect
work-computer usage data, 13% collect employee fitness data and 7% keep tabs on
the text in employee emails, according to a 2018 Gartner survey.
While many companies have worked to fine-tune their
customer analytics, when it comes to employee data and how it should be used,
the applications remain rudimentary, says Brian Kropp, chief of human-resources
research for Gartner.
“We have all this technology to collect information—reams
and gobs of data—but we’re only just starting to turn that data into actionable
insights,” he says.
Mr. Kropp thinks that so-called “nudge” technology, using
data to gauge things such as time spent on tasks and encouraging workers to
take breaks, can help boost productivity. But reliable conclusions can be hard
to derive from the data, he says. For example, if office sensors detect that
someone isn’t sitting in their desk chair, the takeaway might not be so clear:
perhaps they have a standing desk, or are engaging with colleagues.
In West Palm Beach, Ship Sticks says its use of
monitoring software ActivTrak paid dividends. Since installing the software,
baseline productivity levels—measured as the amount of time employees spend on
websites and apps classified as “productive”—have risen from about 60% to north
of 85%.
“If someone’s browsing ESPN.com for five minutes, we’ll
see that,” Mr. Dauer says. “It tracks every little thing that happens on the
computer from the time it’s fired up.”
The company rarely uses the tool to discipline workers,
Mr. Dauer says. Instead, it lets managers spot patterns and praise employees
who go above and beyond by detecting, for example, workers who take their
laptops home and work after hours. The software has also helped identify
bottlenecks in the workflow with Ship Sticks’ customer support team and better
manage their staffing, he says, including helping them identify good candidates
for promotion and learn more about how workloads tend to ebb and flow during
the day.
When Sagar Gupta, executive vice president at
Dallas-based Biorev, a 3D-visualization company, introduced the ActivTrak
monitoring software in 2016, he was fed up with low work output. The software
quickly revealed employees typically worked just three hours out of each
eight-hour day. Since employees became aware their activities were being
tracked, he says, statistics have dramatically improved.
But some employees were offended. Seven out of about 150
quit, he says.
The firm now uses ActivTrak to track scores of employees
in the U.S. and India. To encourage productivity, employees can log on to see
their own productivity levels as well as that of their coworkers, he says.
Early on, he says, he took screenshots of workers’ activity and pasted them to
their computers to show them how much time they were spending on Facebook and
Twitter a day. More recently, he’s set up alarms that pop up notices when
workers go to sites like YouTube.
“They were embarrassed,” he says. “I was like, ‘Don’t be
embarrassed. I’m not firing you.’”
In the New Delhi office, screens display the names of the
top 10 performers based on ActivTrak metrics. Knowing their statistics, he
says, boosts employee efficiency.
“I did not like the concept of spying on my employees,”
Mr. Gupta says. “But I wanted to show employees how they’re spending their
day.”
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