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Question: would you work at a job that uses software to automatically track your work habits based on e-mails, phone calls and even video conferences? Someone at Microsoft thinks that's a good enough idea to deserve a patent.
The Microsoft patent filing — discovered by GeekWire— covers a computer system capable of not only monitoring the behavior of employees, but also assigning positive or negative scores to each action. Examples given include flagging someone who repeatedly cuts off colleagues during conversations, or raising the alarm over a supervisor who repeatedly bugs underlings during their lunch break.
Such scoring would presumably rely upon subjective criteria set by the employer regarding what counts as "good" or "bad" work habits. The range of possible monitored behaviors includes word phrases, body gestures, and mannerisms "such as wearing dark glasses in a video conference" or "wearing unacceptable clothing to a business meeting."
(Hopefully the system can be told to ignore the casual fashion of visiting Silicon Valley VIPs such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg or Google's Sergey Brin.)
Read more here.
The Microsoft patent filing — discovered by GeekWire— covers a computer system capable of not only monitoring the behavior of employees, but also assigning positive or negative scores to each action. Examples given include flagging someone who repeatedly cuts off colleagues during conversations, or raising the alarm over a supervisor who repeatedly bugs underlings during their lunch break.
Such scoring would presumably rely upon subjective criteria set by the employer regarding what counts as "good" or "bad" work habits. The range of possible monitored behaviors includes word phrases, body gestures, and mannerisms "such as wearing dark glasses in a video conference" or "wearing unacceptable clothing to a business meeting."
(Hopefully the system can be told to ignore the casual fashion of visiting Silicon Valley VIPs such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg or Google's Sergey Brin.)
Read more here.
