By Te-Ping Chen
Some people start their day with coffee and a round of meetings.
Brian Dauer kicks off his by checking which websites his colleagues
have browsed.
Mr. Dauer works at Ship Sticks, a West Palm Beach, Fla., company
that ships sports gear and other luggage, which last year installed
software to monitor its workers. It tracks the websites employees
visit minute-by-minute, and has the ability to take remote
screenshots of workers' computers.
"We're not the Big Brother type," says Mr. Dauer, the director
of operations. But as Ship Sticks has expanded rapidly -- growing
to about 80 employees since 2011 -- the software, ActivTrak, has
been invaluable in helping boost productivity, he says.
As workplaces arm themselves with new, more aggressive types of
technology to monitor and understand employees, one of the busiest
niches is measuring worker productivity.
Hospitals are installing sensors to detect nurses' handwashing
practices and their location on the floor at all times. At
AdventHealth Celebration in Florida, for example, more than 200
nurses' whereabouts are tracked to gain a better idea of how to
improve productivity and workflow.
"It's just like a GPS where they can see where everyone is at
any time," says Patty Jo Toor, vice president of nursing and
hospital operations. She says the technology can help coach nurses
and isn't used for punitive purposes.
Restaurants are using software to observe each of their
waitstaff's sales in real time. Drivers who work for United Parcel
Service Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. have their speed patterns
tracked to boost efficiency and safety.
"It's kind of creepy," says Hans Schelke, 56 years old, who
drove for Uber for four years in the San Francisco area before
retiring in January. "But I was always a gentle driver," he said,
adding that tracking such metrics could improve driver performance.
Uber told drivers such data wouldn't affect their ratings, he
says.
"Uber remains committed to investing in technology that aims to
help keep riders and drivers safe," a spokeswoman says.
UPS confirmed it uses advanced analytics to sift through data in
ways that help it better serve customers and drive efficiency.
"Data that doesn't yield insight is just trivia," a spokesman
says.
Experts say new ways to mine workplace data help companies
better understand their workforce and increase productivity, safety
and security. Critics are raising privacy concerns.
"You can really tap into sources of growth and improve
productivity," says Ellyn Shook, chief leadership and
human-resources officer at Accenture. "But it can also be a
minefield," if not used responsibly, she says.
Of companies based in the U.S., Europe and Canada, 22% of
employers surveyed say they collect employee-movement data, 17%
collect work-computer usage data, 13% collect employee fitness data
and 7% keep tabs on the text in employee emails, according to a
2018 Gartner survey.
While many companies have worked to fine-tune their customer
analytics, when it comes to employee data and how it should be
used, the applications remain rudimentary, says Brian Kropp, chief
of human-resources research for Gartner.
"We have all this technology to collect information -- reams and
gobs of data -- but we're only just starting to turn that data into
actionable insights," he says.
Mr. Kropp thinks that so-called "nudge" technology, using data
to gauge things such as time spent on tasks and encouraging workers
to take breaks, can help boost productivity. But reliable
conclusions can be hard to derive from the data, he says. For
example, if office sensors detect that someone isn't sitting in
their desk chair, the takeaway might not be so clear: perhaps they
have a standing desk, or are engaging with colleagues.
In West Palm Beach, Ship Sticks says its use of monitoring
software ActivTrak paid dividends. Since installing the software,
baseline productivity levels -- measured as the amount of time
employees spend on websites and apps classified as "productive" --
have risen from about 60% to north of 85%.
"If someone's browsing ESPN.com for five minutes, we'll see
that," Mr. Dauer says. "It tracks every little thing that happens
on the computer from the time it's fired up."
The company rarely uses the tool to discipline workers, Mr.
Dauer says. Instead, it lets managers spot patterns and praise
employees who go above and beyond by detecting, for example,
workers who take their laptops home and work after hours. The
software has also helped identify bottlenecks in the workflow with
Ship Sticks' customer support team and better manage their
staffing, he says, including helping them identify good candidates
for promotion and learn more about how workloads tend to ebb and
flow during the day.
When Sagar Gupta, executive vice president at Dallas-based
Biorev, a 3D-visualization company, introduced the ActivTrak
monitoring software in 2016, he was fed up with low work output.
The software quickly revealed employees typically worked just three
hours out of each eight-hour day. Since employees became aware
their activities were being tracked, he says, statistics have
dramatically improved.
But some employees were offended. Seven out of about 150 quit,
he says.
The firm now uses ActivTrak to track scores of employees in the
U.S. and India. To encourage productivity, employees can log on to
see their own productivity levels as well as that of their
coworkers, he says. Early on, he says, he took screenshots of
workers' activity and pasted them to their computers to show them
how much time they were spending on Facebook and Twitter a day.
More recently, he's set up alarms that pop up notices when workers
go to sites like YouTube.
"They were embarrassed," he says. "I was like, 'Don't be
embarrassed. I'm not firing you.'"
In the New Delhi office, screens display the names of the top 10
performers based on ActivTrak metrics. Knowing their statistics, he
says, boosts employee efficiency.
"I did not like the concept of spying on my employees," Mr.
Gupta says. "But I wanted to show employees how they're spending
their day."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 19, 2019 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.