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.