This may be justifiable, but then again, Monzo response times are several hours, so monitoring every five minutes doesn’t really seem necessary for that either. What would it really matter if someone started 15 minutes late and worked a a bit after their shift to make it up?
No, but it does matter if someone disappears from 11:22 to 11:56 for no reason.
Does it? I’m pretty sure some of my CS Team probably do this sometimes. As our SLA is 2 hours for most queries it doesn’t make a difference. They organise between themselves who is going to watch the phones etc. If they are meeting their actual performance targets I don’t need to know where they are every minute of the day
5 Likes
Perhaps I misread then in the context of this thread - and possibly a few skipped messages. The thread started on the theme of activity monitoring, so hadn’t caught the switch to the security POV. My comment pertains to productivity monitoring not so much from a security standpoint.
3 Likes
I agree that’s probably how it happened but I also think that’s just a sign of inexperienced management. Yes it’s inevitable in any line of management that some people won’t pull their weight. Tracking their attendance every five minutes and setting that as a performance target, that’s just not a solution to me.
Then again I don’t want to go too far into the good/bad management handbook, so I’ll just repeat it doesn’t sound like the kind of team I would want to work for as either a manager or a managee.
2 Likes
It doesn’t matter thats the point.
Why does it matter?
Where were you between 11:22 to 11:56?
It was a tricky poo, sir.
4 Likes
You think it doesn’t matter. I think it does.
We’re never going to agree.
1 Like
I wasn’t expecting you to switch opinions in any of our conversations, i fully respect that we think differently on many a topic.
More to give a reasoning to understand why it matters that time is known to you.
It obviously matters to some and not to others.
It’s not about knowing where you are every single minute of the day. I’d detest that.
09:12 - Outlook active - Replying to email
09:15 - Teams active - Teams call
09:26 - Word active - Typing up notes from call
Etc etc. GTFO.
But I think me being ‘active’ throughout the day is what’s expected of me at the minimum is very different.
09:00 - 12:02 - Active
12:02 - 13:02 - Inactive (Lunch)
13:02 - 17:00 - Active
I think that sort of thing is perfectly acceptable. Obvious there are nuances maybe you go and stretch your legs or maybe you go to make a cup of tea and you take 6 minutes, from what Dan said and from it just it being incredibly obvious, you’re not getting attacked for being away for 6 mins every now and again.
My point was more that
09:01 - 10:42 - Active
10:43 - 11:01 - Inactive
11:02 - 11:27 - Active
11:28 - 11:59 - Inactive
12:00 - 13:56 - Active
13:57 - 14:19 - Inactive
etc etc
Is not acceptable. Maybe you think it is. In which case, I’d love to work for you.
Life happens, people are not robots. One or two of those are explainable, but not consistently. Maybe the dog threw up and you had to clean it up, maybe a salesman knocked on the door that you were actually interested in what they were selling, maybe you got stuck talking to the woman fixing the boiler, any number of things can happen to mean you’re not at your desk for a >5 period, but when that’s a lot of the day you’re not at your desk, you should have questions to answer.
5 Likes
Fair play on the answer.
I mean to me if a particular day of yours was:
09:00-10:00 - Active
10:01-17:00 - Inactive
I wouldn’t mind one jot as long as the critical tasks that needed to be done that day were done.
I have managed dev teams in my career and its fairly quick to see who’s taking the ■■■■ and who lied on their resume. These were teams of five-ten however where its easy to form close bonds and you know people actively want to be involved and have a passion for the job. Essentially getting paid for a hobby.
Having a happier team with that trust and flexibility is far better than checking a mouse is wiggling at a set or random interval.
2 Likes
I was replying to Revels understanding based on his experience and opinion with the “what’s expected of me”.
I dont think that needs pointing out again though, we’ve already established a few times in this thread that the type of job requires different levels of being present sitting behind that keyboard and that some paid to be continually present in a service role needs to obviously do that vs task based.
I dont know who would argue against that.
What we’re hopefully converging on in this thread is that checking a mouse wiggle every five minutes doesn’t equal productivity and that it actually takes engagement from team leaders and looking at stats like tickets resolved and seeing customer feedback to see if a person is doing their job they are paid to do.
And i might add it shouldn’t be used in conjunction with other monitoring methods that doesn’t make it ok.
The five minute checking and overhanging will be put on a “on a performance improvement programme” I can’t believe any decent person would get behind.
It’s anti mental health and you would expect anti-monzo.
3 Likes
Throwing my developer hat in here 
Non-customer-facing roles are not monitored through any time tracking software (AFIK) we are all left to hit our targets in our own ways. We can have days when life happens and my day could be 2 hours in the morning, then coming back in at 6 PM and working the rest of my shift at night, which is allowed (& encouraged).
I feel like the extent that people are suggesting that the tracking works at Monzo has been blown out of proportion in this thread. (notice I’ve not been a COp in almost 2 years but AFIK nothing has changed) You are measured on your activity over the entire day, not on a 5-minute period so in my COp days I would work the first half of my shift with no breaks, have my lunch and then in the second half I could take a 30-minute mini-break when I was more tired after working most of a shift.
This was never raised as an issue as my activity for the shift was over our targets. As @Dan5 mentioned in my opinion QA/QC was weighed a lot higher in my performance meetings than activity, some weeks I’d be down, and some I’d be up.
In my day (as that’s all I can comment on honestly) activity wasn’t used to crack a whip against you, it was there so you can use it to excuse other stats potentially being low.
7 Likes
We have 1500ish employees in operations - so it’s not particularly feasible to just assume everybody will just organise themselves.
7 Likes
We have more than seven million customers and thousands of thousands getting in touch daily, we have staff working 24 hours a day in a huge number of roles - including some which are not customer facing.
For example in fincrime there are around 400 employees who very rarely interact with customers.
7 Likes
So it is the customers own fault that service can be bad at times? Got it!
4 Likes
Sorry Rob - that wasn’t was I was trying to imply. I was just trying to explain why we had so many employees in operations!
6 Likes
I know Dan, I’m just teasing 
And I agree with your earlier post that there are too many people to just organise themselves - recipe for disaster.
5 Likes
I assume you haven’t got 1500 with one poor sod managing them all.
But you would expect mangers to be organising them
Like you might have 75 teams of twenty.
And 15 managers looking after 5 teams each.
3 Likes
Even if all of the above were true (and I don’t work for Monzo so I don’t know) some form of monitoring is probably needed not so much from a surveillance perspective but from a performance and coaching one.
If you have 10 agents and 2 are consistently lagging behind in terms of cases worked, avoidance of detail etc then you’de want to have insight about that so it could be dealt with.
I know that sounds harsh but it’s fairly standard practice for any contact centre/operational environment.
3 Likes
The quote needs updating but yes you would expect the stats and reports to come from the software they are using. Those will show the useful data.
Having something check the mouse is wiggling not so much.
1 Like