The Second Word is “Off”

Seriously?

Employers across Britain and North America are fitting their staff with wearable tracker devices to monitor their fitness, productivity and stress levels 24 hours a day.

At least four companies – including a major bank and part of the NHS – are using ‘sociometric badges’ to measure the conditions of their staff.

The credit card-sized devices created by Humanyze include a microphone that analyses the tone, speed and volume, but not the content, of a person’s voice, scan for proximity to others and measure physical activity and sleep patterns.

‘It’s looking at the amount of time you talk, who you talk to, your tone of voice, activity levels, dynamics like how often you interrupt,’ Humanyze CEO Ben Waber told The Times of the devices, which are worn on lanyards around employees’ necks.

‘By mining that data, you can actually get very detailed information on how people are communicating, how physiologically aroused people are, and can make predictions about how productive and happy they are at work.’

Clearly the people who agree to this monitoring don’t find this creepy. I certainly do. There is no way on this planet that I would agree to such vile, intrusive monitoring. What happens outside the workplace is no concern of the employer and people need to make this point very clear to any employers that try to cross that line. Also, things such as happiness is outside the employer’s remit. They pay money for time and expertise. That’s it. No more. Yet still we have people prepared to submit to this stuff.

Okay, you could argue that is up to them and it is – if they want to be treated as property, let them. Except that they create a precedent; a new norm.

Chris Brauer, director of innovation at Goldsmiths, University of London, said that the next development could be ‘biometric CVs’, which would require job applicants to reveal breakdowns of the data collected on their monitor.

‘The basic premise we’re working from is the augmented human being,’ he told The Times. ‘That will be the optimal productivity unit in the workforce.’

You will be assimilated, resistance is futile. Christ almighty, have these people no concept of morality at all? None? We are just units to be exploited at the whim of these arseholes. Fuck that. Never, never, never.

Just as well I’m self-employed, I suppose.

8 Comments

  1. The nerve to call your company “Humanyze” when it’s about the exact opposite.

    Except that they create a precedent; a new norm.

    Yep, I imagine that’s why they’re starting with the likes of the NHS. Slowly make it standard practice for state organisations, then encourage larger government contractors to adopt them, and before we know it if you want a good job you’re going to be monitored 24 hours a day.

    Christ almighty, have these people no concept of morality at all? None? We are just units to be exploited at the whim of these arseholes. Fuck that. Never, never, never.

    +1

    • The nerve to call your company “Humanyze” when it’s about the exact opposite.

      George Orwell had that one covered. It seems that Humanyze believe 1984 is an instruction manual

  2. … the augmented human being,’… ‘That will be the optimal productivity unit in the workforce.’

    ‘Optimal Productivity Unit’

    Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Something to aspire to. “Hey guys, guess what? I’ve made ‘Optimal Productivity Unit’ status! Isn’t that great? If I keep this up, I’ll get a free frontal lobotomy and get hooked up to a machine! And a bonus! Five litres of top grade machine oil every month!”

    As already pondered upon; what sort of people would even consider agreeing to that sort of intrusion into their private life? It beggars belief.

  3. Could be some interesting readings if the employee wore their monitor all the time. God help the wearer who had really good sex one evening, only for an intrusive middle manager to grill him or her what he/she was doing last night to send their blood pressure so high….

    The fun, it would never start.

  4. I would love to have been offered one years ago:- it would have promptly been affixed to the dog’s collar or the cat’s collar, and let the bastards sort that out.

    I agree with the offence taken at the (mis)use of English – for years prior to retirement, I railed against and would not use or respond to missives from “Human Resources” on the grounds that:-
    1) it was another pointless Americanism replacing the perfectly satisfactory “Personnel”;
    2) I am an individual who happens to be an employee, not a resource;
    3) It was little more than an Orwellian dehumanising of the staff, and little more than the introduction of “Newspeak”.

    As one of my colleagues so succinctly put it, “Bollocks to the lot of ’em”.

  5. I’d wager Schlumberger are somewhere in this… their prod nosing of employees is the stuff of legend.

    The NHS managers would be Common Purpose acolytes I’m guessing…

    One thing I can absolutely guarantee – nobody who orders this shite will be subjected to it.

    One wonders at what level of seniority the intrusion is deemed unnecessary?

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