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posted by janrinok on Monday September 12 2016, @06:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-could-go-wrong? dept.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/09/07/this-employee-badge-knows-not-only-where-you-are-but-whether-you-are-talking-to-your-co-workers/

Do you hog office conversations? Or not talk enough? Does your voice squeal Do you sit very still at your desk all day? Or do you fidget under stress? Where do you go in the office? How much time do you spend there? To whom do you talk?

An employee badge can now measure all this and more, all with the goal of giving employers better information to evaluate performance. Think of it as biometrics meets the boss.

A Boston company has taken technology developed at MIT and turned it into special badges that hang around your neck on a lanyard. Each has two microphones doing real-time voice analysis, and each comes with sensors that follow where you are in the office, with motion detectors to record how much you move. The beacons tracking your movements are omitted from bathroom locations, to give you some privacy.

[...] Those concerned about their privacy might be alarmed by the arrival of such badges. But Humanyze says it doesn't record the content of what people say, just how they say it. And the boss doesn't get to look at individuals' personal data. It is also up to the employee to decide whether they want to participate.

"Those are things we hammer home," Waber said. "If you don't give people choice, if you don't aggregate instead of showing individual data, any benefit would be dwarfed by the negative reaction people will have of you coming in with this very sophisticated sensor."

[...] Waber said the company is careful not to divulge personal data to the employer, preferring instead to stick with broad analytics. Employees get to see their own data, but managers do not get to identify the employee with the specific data.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday September 12 2016, @01:41PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday September 12 2016, @01:41PM (#400689) Journal

    > never consent to it if someone else held the keys

    It can be awfully hard, as in lose-your-job-and-income hard, to say no. It's sad how hostile work environments have become, with every measure of productivity warped into dirt that can be used to justify a firing. Imbalance in power, and knowledge is power, is an ongoing problem in the workplace that so easily leads to abusive conditions. Several times I've had bosses encourage me to "show commitment" and be a "team player", and remarked to me that my car is pretty old, as if I didn't know that, by which they really meant I should reduce my freedom to leave, handing them more power over me by getting myself into a financial bind so that if I lose the job I get to experience being kicked out of my home and having my car repossessed because I can't pay the mortgage and car payment any more. Like you say, might as well hand them the keys to my home and car as do that. I have always refused to even pretend to go along with such schemes, and have ended up labeled as too independent and troublesome.

    This badge is a horrible, naive idea that totally fails to account for the effects of transferring even more power from employees to bosses. The information it collects could be useful rather than harmful, if the bright-eyes who came up with the whole scheme devoted some time to alleviating this problem.

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