AI and Performance Monitoring in the Workplace
Artificial Intelligence has become ubiquitous in the work environment
From remote workers to delivery vans, AI is now being utilized by a wide swath of businesses to surveil, correct, and determine workforce activities at increasingly comprehensive levels on a daily basis. The notion of monitoring production in the company environment certainly is far from new and has undergone countless permutations over the years. However, it’s only been a fairly short amount of time that organizations have access to devices and software that can incorporate massive amounts of disparate data and generate real-time reports and recommendations that encompass a host of variables – many of which have been deemed intrusive at best and inherently insidious at numerous levels at worst.
The pandemic and remote work brought about an increase in demand for AI tools
As a large percentage of the workforce shifted to home-based production there was a corresponding desire for many companies and managers to have access to means and methods of monitoring various undertakings and job-related quantifiers as they define them. This certainly was not overly surprising, particularly given the inherent cultural identities established by many corporate leaders. The primary notion to examine, of course, is what type of effect does this practice have on an organization and individual employees.
What is being tracked and various capabilities via AI products
These are a cross section of items that have been monitored by many for some time, but now these are enhanced by artificial intelligence capabilities:
• Webcam and microphone activation. Video, still pictures, and audio
• Screenshots and active, real-time screen monitoring
• Mouse tracking
• Keystroke logging
• Chats
• Email
• Websites that are visited and time spent on them
• Position via GPS
• Web searches
• Social media usage
• Instant message and collaboration software monitoring
• Keyboard idle time
• Remote master control of devices
• Facial recognition and time spent at a work location
• Biometric data
• Employee interaction and collaboration
• Time length of task completion and productivity scores
Impact
A recent survey conducted by Microsoft showed that managers are concerned about worker productivity and how best to ensure they are performing at optimal levels, particularly if working remotely. Conversely, those tending to their respective duties away from the office feel that they are as productive if not more so than ever before. The message relayed publicly by the CEO is that surveilling employees only leads to suspicion, a lack of trust on both sides, frustration, and an actual potential loss of work-related activity due to exasperation and resentment. Granted, our friends at MS have been pushing for a 50%+ return to the office this year for all on the staff ledger, but credit given for recognizing the fact that outcomes should be defined and measured rather than utilizing spying and spurring to dictate policies and labor.
The range of potential difficulties and subsequent fallout due to the deployment of AI tracking options will undoubtedly continue to shape the current and future work environment in a plethora of ways that may have wide reaching consequences regarding a wide range of crucial job-related factors including:
• Position security
• Performance assessment and definition
• Trust
• Morale
• Mental and physical well being
• Power balance between management and workers
• Bias due to algorithm construction and deployment
• Regulatory and legal issues
AI workplace monitoring is likely now permanently entrenched
A perusal of news items related to these implementations shows a clear and pronounced increase in demand for employee monitoring services and solutions, particularly since Covid made its initial appearance. Many of these offerings provide what boils down to a simple productivity score for an individual employee based on various and often highly questionable input and output factors predetermined to measure this singular tally mark. Advocates and manufacturers maintain that these options are necessary to make certain that accountability is properly measured, reported, and enforced. Indeed, many of them feel that they often aren’t allowed to reach far enough into all mechanisms and surveillance touch points despite having the capability to do so.
Artificial intelligence and job monitoring on a full-time basis are a combination that clearly is here to stay and will be implemented by numerous companies and organizations in ever increasing levels and granularities. Even so, there is clear evidence that the implementation of this approach is not only errant at best as a means of steering company productivity, but it also falls well short during the executive search process – Recruitment Bias – Cambridge University Finds AI Highly Flawed.
Despite this, there will continue to be entities that trust their workers to tend to essential duties sans continuous and pervasive tracking and scoring. The primary consideration is how employees will respond and what type of shifts it may bring across the landscape as we emerge from the pandemic and work location policies become more solidified.
– Additional insight regarding current remote work trends
