Do you have SMART targets? Are they being achieved? Basically, is your work getting done well and on time? Then what does it matter how long you spent on the sofa, or how long you spent thinking about the problem you are working on vs ‘doing’ something with your mouse or keyboard?
Not just unhealthy, it indicates an incompetent management culture. You can’t manage your employees unless you’re watching what they’re doing 24/7? You can’t manage.
Speak to business analysts - there are many who know how to track efficiency based on work tasks accomplished over time etc. Surely anyone can see that if you regularly (weekly? whatever schedule the set tasks allow) meet or check in with an employee to discuss progress, together with actually seeing deliverables being, well, delivered, you can have your efficiency stats without monitoring mouse clicks.
Monzo (rightly so!) has had a lot of complaints about service levels, so they need to monitor it.
If your target/KPI is 10 customers per shift, maybe you get 10 that ask how to open a pot, or how to deposit cash or a cheque, easy and simple to solve. Should you then get the rest of the shift off? You might have 3 complex ones, but you’d still show as working, so maybe this helps some people.
Would you be happy waiting longer for support because someone already did their 10 and took the afternoon off?
To me it can vary if you’re paid to work a set amount of time, or if you’re paid to work to a set amount of work/targets. Both have their ups and downs.
Paid to work set hours? Why bother taking more calls than you need to? BUT you might be free to take your time with each call and really provide excellent customer service.
Paid to work set target/calls? Why bother taking more calls than you need to? BUT you might feel pressured to provide less customer service and just get the calls done quickly.
I get monitoring, but only to an extent. I am monitored in my job - totally fine - but monitored to top level targets that would flag easily if not being met. Having to despatch an appropriate unit to a call within X amount of time is totally fine, and locally having a supervisor checking times overall, and if these are not being met consistently then this is flagged up. It allows recognition that things do happen outside of any target and personally I appreciate the trust level given to me that I am doing my job (as they hired and trained me for) and if once or twice the target is not met then it’s due to circumstances that fall outside the norm. Regular missing would, rightly, suggest I am not doing my job or require training.
That being said - every company and situation is different. None of us can say really if this is the right way. We’ve got a lot of people who aren’t ever in this situation (specifically working at Monzo), we’ve had former staff state it’s pretty demoralising (paraphrasing), and current staff saying it’s fine.
Having to move a mouse every 5 minutes seems extreme, I have to say.
I don’t think it is really. If you do it once because you go for a huge poo or go to make a cup of tea and drop the sugar, then I highly doubt you get Tom banging on the window to find out why you aren’t working.
But if you’re away for 30mins, 20mins, 40mins at various points across a working week, that aren’t your breaks, then I think questions should be asked.
As said though, this is easy to fool, so other metrics will be checked. This isn’t the only thing that is monitored.
This won’t be exclusive to Monzo either, anywhere with any sort of call centre will do this, most businesses monitor their staff.
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phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
30
I dont have any stats to challenge how many businesses monitor staff to know if its most or a small percentage, but you could say because a business is acting like an ■■■■ doesn’t make it the right thing to copy.
As i said up top this is what you would expect from a legacy bank not giving a ■■■■ about their staff.
This goes against the positive mental health, inclusivity and happy working conditions etc that Monzo likes to portray.
Wouldn’t you say that is quite a sweeping statement? Different areas of the business need to be monitored in different ways - for example creatives which were discussed in previous posts.
It is surprising that this is a shock to anyone. Do you really think people who work for other banks are not monitored - especially in any call centre.
Work as a waiter in a restaurant? You are viewable to see if you are skiving. Work in a supermarket? Whilst still viewable, your items scanned per minute at the checkout will be monitored (not to make it a race (in most places) - but to see it doesn’t drop too low), or how many cages you can work will be monitored. Drive a train? As well as on-time performance, you can expect your manager to download your data from the train for spot-checks.
Work for me remotely? Damn right I will monitor you. If you are not working as you should be then you are stealing from my future. That is not to say there is any automation but I will expect people to reply within 5 minutes on Slack (unless they have told me they won’t be there, for example an appointment). If they don’t manage that regularly then they will be in a Slack Huddle with me all working day so I know they are working.
The thing is, I am actually incredibly good to work for. Both in terms of pay and flexibility. I don’t care when the work gets done as long as it gets done. Want the afternoon off because it is going to be nice and sunny? That is fine, just tell me the day before. Need a mental health day? Go for it. I’m not even counting how many. I honestly don’t mind. But it works both ways. Be fair with me and I will be fair with you. When I am paying someone to work, and they have not told me otherwise, I expect them to be working.
So that would be the point then. If you have someone who has a task to do, or a set number of calls to take per shift, pull them up if these are not done or not done in time. You don’t need to check them every 5 minutes.
To be clear, I DID NOT say I check on people every five minutes. Direct that frustration at companies that do that and not me. I said if you are working, I expect to get a reply from a message within five minutes. Huge difference.
I also said if they don’t, regularly, there will be action. 100% reasonable. It in no way compares to automated mouse checking unless I was asking people every five minutes. Crazy comparison.
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phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
41
No buts its the expectation set that they’ll always be there sat in the office chair ready to respond.
I work in a design agency, if you dont get a reply within 2hrs then you might get a where were you if you hadn’t given a heads up before you needed to do something and something that day was critical.
Im in the as long as you get the work done that was assigned to a decent level then it doesn’t matter if that took you 2hrs to do the work or the whole day.
That depends on the industry. I would consider design as a creative industry? And I already said many posts ago that would be different. And if it was me who owned it, there would be much more flexibility such as the 2 hours you mention.
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phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
43
Totally
And down to job role as mentioned above.
I wouldn’t choose to work in a role that was service based, but if i did i wouldn’t like the idea that im being checked every five minutes to make sure i was clicking something.
Thats not check productivity and to me is impacting more on the staff mental health than the benefit of making sure people are sitting there in the chair.
Having happy staff that dont feel pressured is better than making them feel like a cog. If you have good staff then theres that trust established where you know they aren’t going to be taking the piss.
To see Monzo implemented this five minute checking is kind of depressing especially when they used to portray an ethical and staff wellbeing, over profits and box ticking that you would expect from a legacy bank.
And that’s the crux of the issue. Unless it’s changed (which it may well have) the system tracks how much time you spend typing and that’s a tracked metric.
So let’s say the target is 15 conversations in an hour. You could hit or surpass the target, and still be penalized because you weren’t “active” for the determined number of minutes. You could have been reading the conversation to try and understand it. You could have been researching similar issues in a web tab. You could be someone that works better in quick bursts with gaps in between. You could have been on Slack because there was a conversation happening elsewhere that you could have been helpful in and knew something about.
If the work is getting done, that should be the only thing that matters.
A lot of people on here have talked in the last few years about the quality of the support going down. Guess when that started? When people started getting micromanaged by tracking software to reply quickly and move on to the next conversation.
I kinda think the casual loop is the wrong way round here. Employer puts in place onerous conditions and is surprised that their stringent monitoring isn’t improving performance.
I’ve said it before, but the problems with support are (in my view) a management issue, not an individual COps one. This whole conversation serves to divert attention from those that we should be holding accountable for that situation.
When Monzo gained millions and millions of customers?
The issue isn’t that support is bad, it’s that it takes forever to talk to someone at times. Not sure how that is anything other than customer enquiries exceeding what staff can handle.
If people were being “micromanaged to move on to the next customer” then the first contact wouldn’t be so slow.
