Posted on 12/28/2017 6:14:05 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
How office snooping boosts the bottom line
I had breakfast the other day at a swanky London brasserie with a man I recently met at a conference.
I sauntered into the office some time after 10am, stuffed with eggs benedict, and switched on my computer. Having checked a few emails and scrolled through Twitter, I headed to the office kitchen for a cup of tea, where I bumped into a colleague who agreed it was good to see that the moody hot water boiler was not on the blink.
Then I started chatting with another colleague about a film we had both seen starring Willem Dafoe, which we thought was brilliant but a bit depressing. Eventually, I sat down to write something.
The Financial Times had no clue about any of this essentially useless office activity. Nor would most large companies. Yet that breakfast has made me wonder how long it will be until they do.
The man I met at the brasserie was Ben Waber, chief executive of a Boston company called Humanyze that claims it can boost a company’s revenues by tracking what its employees actually do all day.
It gathers data from ID badges hung around people’s necks, a bit like the ones employees use to swipe into work, only these have microphones and sensors that know where you are and who you are talking to — though not what you are saying.
I arranged to meet Mr Waber because, although I knew companies had been testing worker-tracking gadgetry for years, I had not heard anyone spell out the financial pluses of such surveillance. If Mr Waber is to be believed, they are significant.
(Excerpt) Read more at todayonline.com ...
I worked for Ivan Tors, the animal filmmaker. He’d go through garbage at night to find out how much paper and pink telephone messages had been discarded “needlessly”. It was presented to you in the morning with a nasty insult, lol.
I worked in a place like that. When I left, bomb threats were common. I was very happy to leave.
You were lucky, you could have been fed to the animals for to many pink pink copies.
He tried it but I fought him off.
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