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Tech that allows bosses to track employees' work

By | Friday, 12 March 2010, 02:52 Hrs | 7 Comments

Tech that allows bosses to track employees' work

Bangalore: Japanese phone giant KDDI has developed an application that tracks even the tiniest movement of the user and beams the information back to HQ. Researchers say that activities such as walking, climbing stairs or even cleaning can be identified.

The company plans to sell the service to clients such as managers, foremen and employment agencies. Talking to BBC, Philip Sugai, Director of the Mobile Consumer Lab at the International University of Japan said, "Technically, I think this is an incredibly important innovation." says Philip Sugai.

According to KDDI, the main aim of the system is to enable employees to work more efficiently and managers to easily evaluate their employees' performance while away from the office. Hiroyuki Yokoyama, Head of Web Data Research at KKDI's Research Labs in Tokyo said, "It's part of our research into a total ubiquitous technology society, and activity recognition is an important part of that. We are now at a stage where we can offer managers a chance to analyze more closely the behaviour of staff."

He also said that there are privacy issues and any employers should really enter into an agreement with employees before using such a system. "But this is not about curtailing employees' rights to privacy. We'd rather like to think our creation more of a caring, mothering system rather than a Big Brother approach to watching over citizens," added Yokoyama.

It is not the first time that remote spying technology has been enlisted by employers to keep an eye on their workforce in Japan or elsewhere. Lorry drivers are regularly monitored through mobile phones in Japan, while salespeople have been regularly tracked by their employers using GPS since it was introduced to Japanese mobiles in 2002.

The company is also in talks with a Japanese employment agency that specializes in contract cleaners and security and is interested in deploying the new technology.

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Reader's comments(7)

1: This type of system only ruins the relationship between both employee and employers and as in any work culture deadlines and targets should be the right way of measuring the intangible work. Always 'SMART WORK IS BETTER THAN HARD WORK'.

Posted by:Ron - 14 Mar, 2010

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2: How it is going to be work ?
Plz first explaint that

Posted by:Aleem - 13 Mar, 2010

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3: This is really nice product we would like to buy the same to monitor our staff

Posted by:GOD KNOWS - 12 Mar, 2010

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4: What a worst application is KDDI thinks employee are slaves. Totally bad application

Posted by:Srinivasa Rao N - 12 Mar, 2010

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5: such software should be completely banned. japan may not have good work culture.. i think such product can be invented only in ASIA known for horrible work culture.. i codemn the ceo of this company for inventing such waste product which wll eventually ruin the eco system for employees in a company

Posted by:yash - 12 Mar, 2010

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6: i think this will create a breach of privacy issue

Posted by:sagarika - 12 Mar, 2010

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Not only that. Overall employee efficiency will actually decrease as now people are more engaged in trying to beat the system, rather than perform work.

In the history of technology, there have been several such failures and I am sure this is one of them.

Vinny Shalamov Replied to: sagarika - 12 Mar, 2010

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