Companies should stay away from using artificial intelligence to create ‘boss-ware’ that monitors workers – that’s the message from Slack’s director of research and Saleforce’s head of ethical AI.
The advice follows news an insurance company worker at IAG was sacked after keystroke monitoring found she averaged just 54 keystrokes per hour over a 49-days monitoring period.
Examples of boss-ware included keystroke monitoring, computer usage time, or biometric data, such as where a worker’s eyes were looking.
Slack director of research Christina Janzer said boss-ware could actually reduce ‘ productivity.
“What we see is because executives are so focused on tracking activity metrics, employees are wasting a third of their time on preformative time, so they are wasting a third of their time trying to appear productive just for the sake of appearing productive.”
That was the finding of Slack’s most recent State of Work report – a survey of 18,000 office workers across 10 countries.
Slack is one of the most used office messaging and organisation apps on the planet.
By “preformative tasks”, think taking time to send good morning emails, to prove they were at their desk, or performing pointless tasks to appear busy.
“I think number of emails sent is a big thing, where the more you’ve sent the more people think ‘this person is working’,” Janzer said.
This had also led to some workers using “mouse jigglers”, which were devices to move a mouse about, so the employee appeared to be at their desk.
Janzer said an emerging theme in the market was employers who were more focused on monitoring staff activity than outcomes, which incentivised preformative behaviour.
Slack just released a range of new AI tools, including tool to auto-summate long threads and generate plans, but Janzer said the company would not be using AI to monitor keystrokes.
Boss-ware brought another pitfall – it made workers feel less trusted, and according to the State of Work report, staff who felt trusted by their employer were twice as productive as those who did not.
That was because if staff felt trusted, they didn’t second-guess themselves or feel the need to check in constantly with bosses, meaning they got more work done.
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Slack director of research Christina Janzer.
“What we see is that one in four employees globally do not feel trusted right now, so if my boss started monitoring me, I wouldn’t feel very trusted, right?”
Salesforce is the world’s largest customer relationship management (CRM) provider, with a 28% marker share of tech used by companies to sell and speak to their customers.
Director of product management at Salesforce Yoav Schlesinger said when boss-ware was used, workers often did not know, or did not know how they were being evaluated.
“Trust is number one, and you lose trust in an instant, so the minute that becomes apparent and the moment your employees realise that’s what’s being used, and they lose trust in you, and they head for the doors, you’re in jeopardy.”
Schlesinger said Salesforce had ruled out creating “unethical” tech that would allow the likes biometric data and eye tracking tech.
“You don’t want to deliver a tool to employers that would supercharge their ability to monitor their employees in negative ways,” he said.
Saleforce had also put a prohibition in their use policies of using biometric identifiers, but Schlesinger said other companies had created such tools.
An IAG spokesperson said like many employers, IAG had the ability to monitor how its employees were using their computers and phones.
“As set out in the relevant employee policy, monitoring is undertaken for reasons including the safety and security of employees and company property,” the spokesperson said.
“Having these measures in place ensures we’re well positioned to protect the interests of IAG and our customers.”
Records may be examined by IAG in certain authorised circumstances.
“IAG notified employees of this policy in their employment contract.”
