Should have seen it coming. With Bill Gates out of picture (nearly anyway) at Microsoft, the company is set to change the way things are handled. For one, it is going in for a stricter regime. The Times has come across a patent application that MS has filed in the US for a “unique monitoring system.”
OK that was a lot sinister than I intended it to sound. But Microsoft has filed patent for a system that would allow it to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their body temperatures, metabolisms, heart rates, blood pressures and other bodily indicators.Such systems do exist for NASA astronauts, pilots and fire
fighters but MS is the first mainstream company that has proposed such a
system. The company proposes computers to measure employees’ indicators via
wireless sensors.
The system would also measure frustration and stress of the
employees, match them with his psychological profile and indicate if help is
needed. So it might not be as bad as I thought. And yet labor unions already
seem to be against any such system. Its observations might be twisted to fire
employees. Law experts comment that this system is an invasion into the privacy
of employees.
Better performance seems to be the motivating force for MS
to propose such a system. But employee resistance seems to be guaranteed. I only have one objection against the system and that is if I bitch about my manager, would it register? If not then I give a big thumbs up to MS’s solution.Image
