Can algorithms track productivity?

Human resources is fast becoming an analytics business, as companies track and quantify work output

When Carol Kraemer joined a USbased business software company as its vice-president, she was promised excellent compensation and fully remote work.

But the first pay cheques seemed low. Her new employer, which used monitoring software on her system, paid only for the minutes when the app detected active work. All offline work — doing math problems on paper, reading printouts, thinking, etc — didn’t register. Worse, she was in charge of overseeing a dozen people, but mentoring them didn’t leave a digital impression. And if she forgot to turn on her time tracker, she had to appeal to be paid at all. When the tracker was on, she said, “you couldn’t choose bathroom or coffee moments — you just had to wing it”.

Since the dawn of modern offices, workers have orchestrated their actions by watching the clock. Now, more and more, the clock is watching them.

In the US, eight of the 10 largest private employers track productivity metrics of workers. Digital monitoring — like having employees subject to trackers, scores, idle buttons or just quiet time, are constantly accumulating records. Pauses can lead to penalties.