Companies Track Employees' Every Move

I've had bosses like this, but never this bad.

At yesterday's Los Angeles Times, "Tracking workers' every move can boost productivity — and stress":

Employers count keystrokes, read emails and monitor personal social media accounts. They time bathroom breaks. The cost of efficiency may be worker satisfaction.

Phil Richards used to like his job driving a forklift in a produce and meat warehouse. He took pride in steering a case of beef with precision.

Now, he says, he has to speed through the warehouse to meet quotas, tracked by bosses each step of the way. Through a headset, a voice tells him what to do and how much time he has to do it.

It makes the Unified Grocers warehouse in Santa Fe Springs operate smoothly with fewer employees, but it also makes Richards' work stressful.

"We're just like human machines," said Richards, 52. "But with machines, they don't care whether you feel good, or if you're having a bad day."

Technology has eliminated many onerous work tasks, but it's now one of the factors contributing to a harsher work environment.

Employers are using technology to read emails and monitor keystrokes, measure which employees spend the most time on social networking websites and track their movements inside and outside the office. They can see who works fastest and who talks the most on the phone. They can monitor how much time people spend talking to co-workers — and how much time they spend in the bathroom.

It's all part of an effort to drive down costs and squeeze as much production as possible out of each employee.

Continue reading.

And Part I is here, from Sunday's paper, "As employers push efficiency, the daily grind wears down workers."