Privacy in the workplace examples Flashcards
What solution is Ben Waber offering?
MIT Human dynamics laboratory
Sociometric Solutions is already working with 20 companies in the banking, technology, pharmaceutical and health care industries, involving thousands of employees. The workers must opt in to have their data collected. Mr. Waber’s company signs a contract with each one guaranteeing that no individual data is given to the employer (only aggregate statistics) and that no conversations are recorded.
The pay-off for well-designed workplace monitoring, Mr. Waber said, can be significant. The underlying theme of human dynamics research is that people are social learners, so arranging work to increase productive face-to-face communication yields measurable benefits.
Mr. Waber’s company also provided the data-guided insight to help the pharmaceutical company increase sales with its new cafe area. At a tech company, his company found, workers who sat at larger tables in the cafeteria, thus communicating more, were more productive than workers who sat at smaller tables.
What is the rebuttle to this type of scientific design of workplaces?
LOHR 2014
Skeptics warn of a digital-age rerun of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s “scientific management” from a century ago.
Taylor’s instrument of measurement was the stopwatch, used to time and monitor a worker’s every movement. His time-and-motion studies determined the best way to do work.
How can it be used in restuarants to make places more efficient?
LOHR 2014
The researchers studied the data on all transactions and patterns suggesting theft, before and after the software was installed, at 392 restaurants, in 39 states. The savings from the theft alerts themselves were modest, at $108 a week per restaurant. More startling, revenue increased an average of $2,982 a week at each restaurant, about 7 percent, a sizable gain in the low-margin restaurant industry.
Servers, knowing they were being monitored, pushed customers to have that dessert or a second beer, which resulted in the increased revenue for the restaurant and tips for themselves.
