6 April 2016
Are you being Stalked?
Just in case you didn’t know it, your employers are now collecting information about your phone calls, e-mails and performance. It’s an interesting juxtaposition that just when we are all thinking that we are being given more autonomy and less micro-management, we are all under more surveillance than ever before both inside and outside work. ‘Workforce analytics’, to give these technological tools their proper name, offer the possibility of finding out what makes people effective, or ineffective, at work and help to recruit the best people and keep them. According to Deloitte, currently only 14% employers are actively analysing all this data but there is no doubt that interest is growing.
In our knowledge based economy, there is some really useful information to be obtained. Intrascope Analytics is using telephone and e-mail usage to find out who are the best connected people in an organisation. The implications are obvious if these well-connected networking people leave, but they are also vital in times of major change or restructure in selling the benefits. The data can also be used to track people at risk of burn-out or stress – a practical virus check of the workforce as it were.
Another potential use is to offer sentiment analysis which could reveal whether people’s conversations are angry or friendly and this could help highlight problems with poor management or bullying. Workplace-based social network Yammer allows employers to look at the tone of employee chat (but not individuals). Yammer’s tool can also identify rising stars by those who ask tough and perceptive questions. Indian start-up 3GS Wellness offers voice analysis to tell, through phone conversations, how ‘stressed’ someone is. Sociometric Solutions badges, worn voluntarily, capture data on how long conversations go on for, the gestures, the tone of voice, the ration of talking to listening, and how much empathy and extroversion is demonstrated. Bank of America discovered through these badges that its more productive call centre workers were able to take breaks together and share tips about handling customers. When the data was collated and applied, performance rose by 23% and stress in voice fell by 19%. San Francisco based company Entelo uses algorithms to scour social networks for finding unhappy programmers who might be pleased to receive a call from a recruiter.
With all the tools available to Human Resources, they can be used for good or evil. Many of these innovations can make people happier and more productive but Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recently said: “At first we thought technology would give us less restriction, but with digital technology, nothing is private any more – not even our e-mail”.
So where is the line between useful data collection and spying? When does all this surveillance become too intrusive? More grist to the mill of Employment Lawyers perhaps? HR Practitioners will certainly need to get to grips with all aspects of surveillance space before they find the technology has put them out of a job.
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