The clipboard toting, clock-watching, quota-setting productivity expert, peering nosily over your shoulder at work, has been out of fashion in business schools for decades.
Now he’s back, in electronic form — in the home office.
In a budding trend some employment experts say is invasive, companies are stepping up electronic monitoring and oversight of tens of thousands of home-based independent contractors.
They’re taking photos of workers’ computer screens at random, counting keystrokes and mouse clicks and snapping photos of them at their computers.
They’re plying sophisticated technology to instantaneously detect anger, raised voices or children crying in the background on workers’ home-office calls.
Others are using Darwinian routing systems that keep calls coming so fast workers have no time to go to the bathroom.
The technology so far affects mainly freelance information technology workers, writers, graphic design artists and call center agents. But as telecommuting grows amid soaring fuel costs, more people will find themselves on an electronic leash.
The monitoring itself may speed the growth, because it tears down one of the biggest obstacles to working at home — employers’ fear that remote workers will slack off.
Electronic monitoring is built right into freelance transactions at oDesk.com, which links 90,000 computer programmers, network administrators, graphic designers, writers and others with about 10,000 clients world-wide.
The system takes random snapshots of workers’ computer screens six times an hour, records keystrokes and mouse clicks and takes optional Web cam photos of freelancers at work.
Clients can log into the system anytime and see whether contractors are working, what they’re doing and how long it’s taking them; clients’ weekly bills are based largely on the data. A small computer-screen icon pops up at the bottom of workers’ screens each time a screen shot is taken.
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Photo by WSJ.
Kurt Henninger on August 11th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Even more of a reason to be self-employed. Your efforts and work DIRECTLY correlate to your income then.
Angela on August 11th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Does someone really want to do freelance work for someone if they are going to demand random screenshots and webcam shots of them working? Sounds like a pain in the butt. That doesn’t sound like a very good idea. If anything it might irritate the freelancer more than anything.
On the other hand, I can understand from the point of view of the person paying for a task to be done on an hourly basis.
In the end, it sounds like people want the same from their freelancers as they would a regular employee, without giving those benefits an employee would get…
cassy on August 11th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
well..sometimes it can really irratate if somebody is always watching or monitoring your work. But then before you apply this kind of job, you already know their rules and regulations.