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Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

bbc.co.uk

21–30 of 170 posts

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#21

Systems like that are actually great for the employees, because every minute is accounted for and when you stay an hour longer at work you can expect to be paid for it at overtime rate.

In a previous company I worked for, they implemented a clock-in / clock-out system. The system "broke" after a month when employees asked for their overtime sheets. It was never replaced.

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#22

Systems like that are actually great for the employees, because every minute is accounted for and when you stay an hour longer at work you can expect to be paid for it at overtime rate.

Not when everyone is classed as Exempt staff and therefore ineligible for Overtime.

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#23

So, they basically treated people like low-level employees at a call center in the US? This sort of thing isn't actually new. Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft - including theft of company time spent talking to other employees. Are you a call center employee that has to go poop often that day or are 3 minutes late from break? Expect a call from HR for the bathroom br…

A company I talked to (Bought by National Cash Register), was using cameras software analysis to monitor employee theft.

felt very big brothery but it worked well enough to get bought out.

"The ScanItAll Checkout Vision Suite is a collection of StopLift’s video analytics technologies applied to inventory shrinkage at the checkout. ScanItAll automatically analyzes video from checkouts every moment to detect inventory shrinkage visually, even when it leaves no data trail.

ScanItAll detects Sweethearting, Self-Checkout Loss, Basket-Based Loss, Operational Error, etc.

https://www.stoplift.com/solutions/ "

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#24
post #13

> In a statement, the bank said: "We always intended to listen to colleague feedback as part of this limited pilot which was intended to tackle issues such as individual over-working as well as raise general productivity." Riiiight.

If they intended to listen, or indeed cared an iota about their employees, they wouldn't have rolled this out in the first place. This level of intrusive monitoring would very clearly be hated by those it monitored, and make then feel very uncomfortable. Seriously, in this day and age, how on earth did this get enough support at the management level to pilot it?

Having listened to some of the conversations in my MBA class, I am genuinely not surprised.

The current consensus seems to be that cellphones spying on your every move is ok so logically it does make sense to just expand it. This had to be scaled back since people are not sufficiently conditioned yet.

Speaking from US perspective, Baxter has some ridiculous user monitoring tools in their call centers.

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#25

"The software, Sapience, claims to create "unprecedented transparency" within companies." The spin makes me dizzy.

LOL, is the CEO's office being monitored and played by the water cooler? It's only transparent if it goes all the way around.

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#26
post #19

So, they basically treated people like low-level employees at a call center in the US? This sort of thing isn't actually new. Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft - including theft of company time spent talking to other employees. Are you a call center employee that has to go poop often that day or are 3 minutes late from break? Expect a call from HR for the bathroom br…

>Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft In my history, before finding my terminal career, I worked retail management. I worked for a chain that is no longer open, so I'm fairly certain I can say whatever I want about it now. I was fast-tracked for upper-level corporate management (I think it was the combination of not-giving-a-fuck based on depression and low-grade sociop…

What was the cost difference? Did the shrink reduction exceed the $3/hr raise in value but not by enough? Or was the raise not offset at all by the reduction?

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#30
At work, my staff (20ish developers) usually clock in/out sharp bcoz of attendance, but they take 2+ hours lunch break and ~1hr for prayer breaks (2x within work hour), which I don't mind. But what frustrates me is their work is slow and low quality (not everyone), and I do thought about "short term" tracking like this. Thoughts?

(I just joined, so I "inherited" this)

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