[tt] (Business Insider) Companies Are Putting Sensors On Employees To Track Their Every Move
Tomasz Rola
rtomek at ceti.pl
Sun Mar 17 20:50:12 PDT 2013
[
http://www.businessinsider.com/tracking-employees-with-productivity-sensors-2013-3
]
(... links deleted ...)
Companies Are Putting Sensors On Employees To Track Their Every Move
[101]Vivian Giang | Mar. 14, 2013, 6:23 PM | 16,986 | [102]56
team work group
[111]joelabell via Instagram
The idea of having employees walk around with electronic sensors to
track their every move is unsettling. There are privacy and legal
issues, and who wants to feel like they are just a cog in a system?
But [112]data companies say that the resulting reams of information
will improve life for companies and employees.
[113]Sociometric Solutions has created tracking devices for [114]Bank
of America, Steelcase, and Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc., and is in
talks with General Motors. It was started by a team of Ph.D students
from MIT who decided to study the chemistry behind what makes certain
workspaces like [115]Google great at building teams. They came up with
sensors placed in employee identification badges that gather real-time
information to help companies measure productivity. The sensors
identify a person's tone of voice, movement and even their posture
when communicating with others.
"Google really cares about creating a community because the social
conversations -- the ones at the water cooler, coffee maker -- those
are the ones that have the biggest impact," says Ben Waber, president
of Sociometrics and one of the company's founders. "In the U.S.,
there's this notion that your most productive time is when you're
sitting at your desk staring at the computer," and that's not
necessarily true.
The sensors are intended to measure when and how employees are truly
productive. While individual information is collected, it's anonymized
to provide metadata and hedge against privacy concerns. The
information is then used to suggest how employees, and the company as
a whole, can work more efficiently.
"The legality behind this," says Arena, "that's the biggest unanswered
question. Privacy online is sort of open and privacy issues are going
to be the stumbling block for a long time. And that's a big, big
question."
The tracking sensors
Waber's team places electronic sensors in employees' badges, which
includes a Bluetooth, a microphone (it doesn't record what people say,
but rather the tone of their voice, speaking speed, and volume), a
motion sensor to measure movement, and an infrared beam.
tracking device sensor
Sociometric Solutions
A sociometric sensor device.
The idea is that these analytic tools can help determine the nature of
the conversations people are having. For example, the microphone can
measure speaking tone, and the higher someone's tone or the faster
they speak can indicate how excited or passionate they are at any
given time.
The infrared can also sense if another badge is in sight, which gives
researchers an idea of how people stand when speaking to others. For
example, people who usually have others facing them when speaking are
more dominant personalities. On the other hand, when two people are
engaged in an interesting conversation, they will likely mirror one
another, which signals more equality.
"We've been able to foretell, for example, which teams will win a
business plan contest, solely on the basis of data collected from team
members wearing badges at a cocktail reception," [116]Alex Pentland, a
professor at MIT and also an advisor to Waber's group, wrote [117]for
the Harvard Business Review.
Since privacy is the biggest concern over the devices, after
behavioral/productivity reports are sent to individuals, their
identities are removed from the system so the names associated with
individual sensors are never revealed to employers.
The testing grounds
Bank of America got on board with the sensors a few years ago when it
wanted to study how group dynamics impacted performance. It tested
them out on 90 call center employees. Arena says that the company
discovered how important it was to allow employees to take breaks
together. During that time, employees would often troubleshoot their
workplace problems. While sensors didn't monitor conversation, they
did report "a cohesiveness was shared between the coworkers," says
Arena, and the company eventually experienced a 10 percent improvement
in productivity by making some workplace culture changes after the
study.
Although Bank of America tested its call center employees, Arena said
he thinks the data "has bigger ramifications in professional jobs than
anywhere else," because you will inevitably be able to "understand how
one person steps into the room and influences others."
"It has greater ramifications in leadership than hourly workers, but
it's in the early stages." Arena is now the head of global talent at
General Motors, and told us the company is considering "doing very
similar things."
[118]Steelcase, which makes office furniture, works with Sociometric
to develop sensory products for its own merchandise. For example, its
[119]new chair, Gesture, is "[120]designed to [121]support our
interactions with today's technologies" and was "inspired by the
movement of the human body." The new chair can actually tell employers
how it's being used by employees, which will give employers a better
idea of what size tables and chairs to buy in order to promote better
communication and, inevitably, a more productive team.
"What we hoped to learn was how things influence interactions and how
spaces affect those interactions," Dave Lathrop, director of workspace
futures and strategy at the company, told us.
Lathrop says most of us don't know how we interact with others. For
example, if you have a dominating personality, you could be "forcing
people to shut down" and make them distrust you without even knowing
it.
"[122]Yahoo and [123]Best Buy are asking people to come back to the
office, which does suggest that there's a general belief that when
people get physically together, it's valuable," he says. "We're at
this magical moment where we can do things that we couldn't do before
... having the analytics that we do. ... As a researcher, I'm
incredibly hopeful that this will give us good data on the quality of
interactions between people."
But at the end of the day, employees need to feel comfortable with the
idea of being tracked, even if it's anonymously -- and that may take a
while.
SEE ALSO: [124]There's An Algorithm That Reveals How Long Workers
Will Stay At A Job
SEE ALSO: [125]A Revolution Is Happening In Offices Everywhere [SLIDE
DECK]
(... links deleted ...)
References
111. http://instagram.com/p/SuW4kFzQ5X/
112. http://www.businessinsider.com/big-data-more-distributive-nervous-system-2012-8
113. http://www.sociometricsolutions.com/method.html
114. http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/bank-of-america
115. http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/google
116. http://www.media.mit.edu/people/sandy
117. http://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams/ar/1
118. http://www.steelcase.com/en/Pages/Homepage.aspx
119. http://www.steelcase.com/en/products/category/seating/task/gesture/pages/overview.aspx
120. http://www.steelcase.com/en/products/category/seating/task/gesture/pages/overview.aspx
121. http://www.steelcase.com/en/products/category/seating/task/gesture/pages/overview.aspx
122. http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/yahoo
123. http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/best-buy
124. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-long-workers-will-stay-at-a-job-evolve-wharton-2012-11
125. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-the-workplace-slide-deck-2013-2
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