Big boss is watching you: some UK workers constantly scrutinised by artificial intelligence
- Who do you email? Who do you meet and when? What files do you access? Mass harvesting of employee behaviour data is happening at dozens of firms in Britain
- Other AI ideas being developed include mood monitoring at work, recording a worker’s location on wearable devices and the recording of keyboard strokes
Dozens of UK business owners are using artificial intelligence to scrutinise staff behaviour minute-to-minute by harvesting data on who emails whom and when, who accesses and edits files and who meets whom and when.
The actions of 130,000 people in the UK and abroad are being monitored in real-time by the Isaak system, which ranks staff members’ attributes.
Designed by London company Status Today, it is the latest example of a trend for using algorithms to manage people, which many fear creates distrust but the company claims it might reduce the effects of bias.
The system shows bosses how collaborative workers are and whether they are “influencers” or “change-makers”. The computer can also compare activity data with qualitative assessments of workers from personnel files or sales performance figures to give managers a detailed picture of how behaviour affects output.
Users so far include five law firms, a training company called Smarter Not Harder and London estate agency JBrown, according to Status Today, which promises: “real-time insights into each employee and their position within the organisational network”. Workers do not automatically have a right to see the data, which is controlled by the employer.