Dive Brief:
- In the age of the app, many employers are looking for streamlined ways to encourage – and track – the use of white-collar work time. New technology has come to the forefront to serve these needs, according to the New York Times.
- Employers of all types are concerned that their employees are working long hours or are “constantly tethered to the office” via email with little productivity gains. Technology from companies like BetterWorks and WorkDay use various innovations to make workers feel more connected and open about their how they use their work time.
- Some controversy has come out of some of these tools, including litigation over a tracking app. Open feedback tools, including one used by Amazon, have also been criticized for being manipulative in the Times' recent Amazon expose.
Dive Insight:
Many of these new technologies focus on transparency, spontaneous evaluations and time tracking – sometimes seen as a little “Big Brother”-ish. But many interviewed by Times praised the increased efficiency allowed by these programs. One company, InfoBeans, used the technology to discover why their engineers would work 1,500 hours on a project that was only supposed to take 1,000, for example.
The timesheet programs offered by Workday and Timesheets.com seem to be considered fair by the employees interviewed in the Times article, and important to employers in keeping track of when their employees are actually working – important for compliance reasons. HR would be wise to use data to save company dollar, particularly now that it’s so easy to find.
Besides, using the timesheets programs to eliminate distractions actually allowed people to go home earlier, the InfoBeans co-founder told the Times.
