# Workforce Monitoring By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2024-07-28 A cat-and-mouse game exists between management and workers. This game is workforce monitoring. The game has been played out throughout all recorded history. The logic of workforce monitoring made more sense when work was collective and slow. In those cases, it would be impossible to determine the product of one person's labor. If the work was not monitored, there is a good chance that the workers would put forward less than their best effort. Perhaps they wouldn't work at all. Placing someone in charge to ensure this does not happen is likely productive. For many, this is no longer the type of work being confronted. Typically, an individual has a definitized task and schedule. An example might be writing a report by the end of the week. In such a case, it is unclear why workforce monitoring (in human or virtual form) is needed. If the report is not produced by the end of the week, or if the report is of low quality, those performance deficits can be addressed. Perhaps the person will be placed on a performance improvement plan. Maybe the person's employment will be terminated. The organization has every right to address performance. The organization has less legitimate concerns about how an individual does the work. If the agreed-upon task is to produce a report by the end of the week, the organization (and its functionaries) should be agnostic as to how that work gets done. Maybe it will be accomplished as a typical 9-to-5 job. Perhaps it will be tinkered on for about an hour a day leading up to the last night with an onslaught of effort to crush it at the zero hour. Maybe it will be completed within five hours on the first day. Regarding the assigned task, it doesn't matter how a given individual decides to execute one's work, provided it is of sufficient quality. And yet, many organizations do care about this. Why? Organizations are insatiable. They always want more. Those in charge shift focus to serve their purpose. When there is defined work, they focus attention on the fact that they are paying someone to do that work. When there is no defined work, they focus attention on the fact that they are paying one by the hour to do whatever work is assigned or available. The worker is caught between shifting paradigms of work that always tilt to the organization's advantage. Workforce monitoring is archaic. Its persistence conveys a lack of trust. It suggests that those in charge have little idea what they want their workforce to do and how long it should take. It is unnecessary and essentially nonexistent in professional settings. This shift in focus between assigned work and time is one of the ways the capitalist class extracts surplus value from the working class. Addressing concerns like these effectively calls for greater solidarity in the working class. #### Related Items [[Management]] [[Work]] [[Organization]] [[Capitalism]] [[Busy]] [[Performance]] [[Games]]