Imagine working in a company where a robot looks at everything you do on your computer. You then get paid only for the âactive workâ that the robot sees. So doing some quick math on a piece of paper or thinking doesnât get paid as the robot doesnât see it.
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That kind of stuff already exists (1). And as community member Guy Martin (2) says:
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âThis âproductivity monitoringâ tech is demoralising, dehumanising. And in the long-term, itâs ironically counter-productive.â
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It is like those hotlines that measure the number of calls per hour a support staff handles. Such numbers push employees to get to the next customer as quickly as possible. And that makes customers feel like cogs in a machine.
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Guy summarises this brilliantly. âJust because you can measure something doesnât mean you should or that it even provides any insight.â
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So let me ask you this:
Which of your metrics stress employees or lower the customer experience?
Footnotes
(1) Jodi Kantor and Arya Sundaram (2022). The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score. The New York Times. Available at https://extra.swissinnovation.academy/nTmY accessed 20 October 2022.
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(2) Thanks to Guy Martin, who made me aware of the story that inspired this Service Design Principle in one of his Linkedin posts.
Go further
This principle comes from the book "Service Design Principles 201-300".