" Monzo and the pitfalls of staff surveillance"

UK Monzo Chat
97

Isn’t this the same as an agent sat in the call centre logged into a phone? I’m not defending what Monzo may (or not) be doing but it’s fairly common practice.

Thankfully I don’t work in that space anymore. I’m trusted to do my job and I wouldn’t want a level of monitoring such as mouse clicks etc but I can see why some companies monitor peoples status on teams etc.

Unfortunately for every hard worker there will also be someone who thinks they can play the system and log in, then boot up the Xbox.

1 Like
98

The mouse click checking is just a lazy solution to actually managing staff. Actually checking to see if they are meeting targets set and giving support to them where needed etc

The person who’s going to be booting up the xbox is the same person buying a mouse jiggler.

3 Likes
99

And I’ll say it again - that’s not what the activity statistic measures :person_shrugging:

5 Likes
101

If you have other metrics pulled from software then why bother with it?

1 Like
102

Have you read my post above which clearly explains that?

3 Likes
103

Here’s an incredible thought. Instead of monitoring their computer you could just ask them why they are lagging behind.

I’m sure that although your attendance isn’t monitored every five minutes, you still have targets and if you don’t hit them someone still takes some sort of action.

3 Likes
104

I’m not on about computer monitoring in terms of minute detail. I’m more thinking “Jim, you were offline for three hours yesterday, is everything ok?

1 Like
105

I think there’s still a misunderstanding here of how the metric is used - and I probably didn’t explain that very well.

Activity is measured in 5 minute blocks, which produces a % of how much time you’ve been active, but this isn’t reviewed hourly or even daily. Typically each week your activity stats for the previous week might be reviewed in your F&D with your manager, but it’s more a healthcheck than anything else.

Nobody sits down and says what were you doing between 0900 - 0905, and 1115-1120. It just isn’t used in that way.

There are occasions when somebody’s activity metric might be a major cause for concern - maybe somebody has been working at less than 10% for several weeks and that might indicate that somebody is doing something other than the job they’re supposed to be doing.

7 Likes
106

Again I think we are probably never going to agree but I’ll just repeat that, there’s probably no job where someone can just be absent for three scheduled hours without telling their manager. However only the lowest paid are actually monitored to check that’s happening. Most people are just trusted to communicate when there’s an issue.

What if you are a devops engineer who is needed to monitor critical services? A product manager who needs to be available to answer dev team questions? A HR manager who needs to be available to answer senior managers questions? All these people need to be available at certain hours. But would a company actually check their computer every five minutes to see that they are? Very unlikely

5 Likes
107

Surely their other targets would make it obvious that’s happening?

2 Likes
108

This thread is exceptional, members of staff explaining what happens, and folk point blank ignoring it as it doesn’t fit their view from outside

8 Likes
109

Im not going to lie i appreciate the explanation but it doesn’t sound any better.

Healthcheck :face_with_peeking_eye:

Imo the act of this monitoring isn’t going to be healthy for the mental health of the employee, and i seem to remember you were a mental health first aider?

2 Likes
110

Not necessarily - take fincrime where I work where the two main targets are average handling time and QA.

You could close one task in 20 minutes, and then do nothing for the rest of the shift. That 1 task gets QA’d and you end up with an AHT of 20minutes and a QA score of 100%.

Activity just helps with the overall understanding of somebody’s performance. It’s part of the picture, and as I said previously a relatively small part of it.

It’s also something that we’re moving away from in Fincrime (and I don’t know whether other domains are too) and have been for awhile.

6 Likes
111

Is that mixing up two things? Surely it is the areas with the most staff who should be working on their system would be ‘monitored’? The fact that they are the lowest paid isn’t relevant to that.

112

It’s not the fact that the metric exists that might have a negative impact on somebody’s mental health but how that might be used - myself and multiple other employees have posted in the thread to say that it isn’t used in a punitive or a negative way.

4 Likes
113

I think it probably is mixing up two different things - I mean granted I don’t earn as high a salary as an engineer, but I earn a fairly respectable £32k ish salary.

3 Likes
114

I understand you aren’t saying its used in a punitive or a negative way.

Apart from the sending them “on a performance improvement programme if they repeatedly fail to hit the target.”

1 Like
115

Who are you quoting there, because it certainly isn’t me.

I’m beginning to feel like a broken record, but a performance improvement plan would be put into place based on their whole performance across a period of time and not a single metric.

2 Likes
116

The Telegraph who ran the investigation, requoted in that Raconteur link above.

the fintech company’s ‘BizOps’ system checks customer service staff who work both remotely and in the office every five minutes to see if they are using their computers.

Staff are required to be working on their devices for 85% of the day and sent on a performance improvement programme if they repeatedly fail to hit the target.

1 Like
117

I guess you can decide which source you think is more likely to be reliable (or which fits your own narrative).

8 Likes