Imagine an office work planner
embedded within the **Sociometric Badge of an employee. The work planner gives
you instruction on when to start which task. Tells you to relax and alarms you
to drink water at frequent intervals.
** A sociometric badge (commonly known as a
"sociometer") is a wearable electronic device capable of
automatically measuring the amount of face-to-face interaction, conversational
time, physical proximity to other people, and physical activity levels using social
signals derived from vocal features, body motion, and relative location
This (Workplace Planner +
Sociometric Badge) linked to every meeting room in your organization. You can
actually rate a meeting from your Badge itself at your convenience.
Your badge tells you to prepone
the meeting as you have movie booked during that time and also tells you the
meeting schedule of your counterpart so both of you can fix meeting at best
available time, saving you from multiple from and to mail communication. The
Sociometric Badge also informs everybody in your workplace about your health,
so that everybody can plan their work accordingly.
Yes, I am talking about Internet
of Things in Human Capital. The word is very old but till now the use
is very limited. Be it the Chinese surveillance System where street cameras
uses face detection technology to monitor each and every individual or
manufacturing utility using sensors to detect the repair and overhaul needs of
machinery.
Till now, only a few organizations
have experimented IoT in Human Capital. Internet of things essentially means
different devices, Software linked together to achieve one common purpose i.e.
better business outcome. Take a break and now think what will be the better
business outcome in case of Human Capital. It should be ‘Efficiency’ or ‘Job
Satisfaction’ as satisfaction is directly linked to Efficiency and efficiency
to business outcome.
Deloitte Case Study
Measuring
humans at work
With
more than 250,000 professionals serving clients all over the world, Deloitte
has many opportunities to experiment and use these tools. Consider how
sociometric badges helped Deloitte Canada redesign its work environment.
Increasingly,
business and HR leaders see the work environment as a major driver of
productivity and engagement and are moving to align research findings with
actual workspaces. For instance, research shows that many people work best in
small teams, so companies are knocking down walls, adding coffee bars, and
creating open offices all over the world. (Of course, this isn’t
universal: Some studies show that these moves actually reduce productivity for
introverts)
Deloitte
Canada recruited a set of volunteers to wear sociometric badges—measuring
location, voice, and movement—to assess which aspects of work were positive and
negative. The devices could hear voice tones and deduce when people were under
stress; the data-based system correlated factors such as “who is in the
meeting,” “how much time are we spending together,” and even “who is pushing
back in his chair” with employee stress levels and other measures of
productivity.
The
results of the project gave Deloitte Canada the following insights:
è
Cross-disciplinary
teams are higher-performing and more engaging than when service lines work
alone (on many accounts, Deloitte often has consulting, audit, and tax professionals
working independently).
è
Offices
with more windows and more light promote more “happy people” than spaces that
are more closed-in and private.
è
Large
conference rooms are more conducive to positive meetings than small conference
rooms.
è
People
tend to prefer to work in smaller groups, and working physically closer to
others increases enjoyment and productivity. (MIT management professor Thomas
Allen established this in the late 1970s, codified in the so-called Allen
curve.)
è
Deloitte
Canada used these findings, and others, to redesign all of its major offices
and teams.
From above study, Deloitte has
considered “QUALITY” as an aspect while studying results instead of “QUANTITY”.
Offices with more windows, Large Conference rooms, and Small teams all are
examples of “Quality”. Here we are connecting to Humans and not machinery. You
can’t place a camera on some human and tell him to work.
If you start dealing ‘HUMANS’ like
Machines they will start measuring their performance by numbers and not
quality. In a study published at large insurance firm, two groups were formed.
One group is monitored while performing their work and other is not. During
Self-appraisal, first group identified ‘Production quantity’ as the most
significant factor while the other identified ‘Production quality’.
Few Ideas:-
è
Like in case of Machines, IoT measure the suitable temperature for
machines to work similarly when we are talking about Humans, it should be air
quality index, lightening and noise which impacts his/her efficiency levels.
è
Another factor is ‘Temporary State of Mind’ or in short ‘Mood’.
The IoT should find out the factors which makes employee happy and can personalize
the employee desktop as per his Mood. The input can come from social media
pages.
è
IoT can be used to provide latest information to employee in
connection to his work.
è
All the organizations can be interlinked, so that while hiring for
one specific position, employer can check the full track record of employee
online, his major projects and team members involved.
Some Concerns:
è
Employee should agree to share his private data and being
monitored continuously by employer
è
The practice adopted by employer should takes into consideration
the data privacy laws
è
Employer should use carefully the data gathered as there is ample
scope of misinterpretation of data that leads to bad decisions
All purpose of all these technology and ideas is to increase
business outcome which is the ultimate guiding factor for any organization.
Comments
Post a Comment