They’ve Got Your Number(s)

The New York Times writes about the increasing importance work metrics. It tells the story of Jim Sullivan, a waiter in Dallas whose really good numbers got him a management position. That’s what we think about when we think about work metrics. That and the whip. This was the part area of the article that I found interesting, though:

Through these new means, companies have found, for example, that workers are more productive if they have more social interaction. So a bank’s call center introduced a shared 15-minute coffee break, and a pharmaceutical company replaced coffee makers used by a few marketing workers with a larger cafe area. The result? Increased sales and less turnover. {…}

For example, the company studied workers in Bank of America call centers and observed that those in tightknit communications groups were more productive and less likely to quit. To increase social communication, the shared 15-minute coffee break was introduced to the daily routine. Afterward, call-handling productivity increased more than 10 percent, and turnover declined nearly 70 percent, Mr. Waber said.

This reminds me of Falstaff, where I worked in Deseret when I started this site. We got a new HR person who basically thought his job was squeeze us for increased performance and professionality. Among the first things he did was look at us all hanging out in the breakroom during our break time. He said that he was utterly embarrassed to walk down into the break room and see the entire programming staff down there chatting away and having a good old time. Was it between 10 and 10:15 and/or 3-3:15? Well, then, our boss explained, that’s our company-mandated break time.

So we got two new rules. First, we needed to spread our breaks out. No more collective beak time. The status quo had been a mixed bag. On the one hand, it was a good time for socialization. On the other, it meant that when you were on break you had immediate access to the soda fountain and such. We didn’t complain about the staggered breaks. We complained about the other part. What we complained about was that we were banned from taking our break in the break room. We needed to stay at our desk.

The next complaint was that when the HR guy would walk by our stations, he would see us quite blatantly surfing the Internet. since we didn’t have a specific time for our collective break anymore, all our boss could say when he was confronted about it was that maybe we were on break. So, no more surfing the Internet while on break. One guy brought a book. You can guess how well that went over. Finally our boss went to the HR guy and asked what, precisely, we were supposed to do on our break. His answer was, vaguely, “try to look busy.”

At that point, I checked out of the whole discussion. I already had my answer. I had, up to that point, declined to smoke on company property or around coworkers. I knew it was a Mormon employer and my coworkers were Mormon and I figured the fewer of them who knew I smoked the better. By then, though, I didn’t care. There was another company downstairs and they had a smoking area. So I would go, hang out with them, and smoke.

The HR guy didn’t last long. Probably too embarrassed to work there.

In retrospect, the most silly thing about the whole thing was that the social aspect of the job was one of the things that kept us engaged. Whenever I considered leaving, it was leaving behind the friendships that gave me pause. Despite the fact it’s been a long time, I keep in closer touch with the people who worked there than anywhere else. And that was what they had tried to kill.