The Boss That Never Blinks

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So you think your boss is inhuman? A real automaton who never lets up, never forgets the slightest error you make? Then just wait until a computer takes over as manager.

For many U.S. workers, that day has arrived. In nearly any job in which computer terminals are a tool for workers, and that is a lot of jobs in today's economy, the machines now have the capability of monitoring an employee's performance. Result: millions of computer users are toiling under the relentless gaze of electronic supervision. In thousands of U.S. offices, stores and factories, workers who once could get away with goofing around can be seen hustling through their tasks as though the bosses were watching them every minute.

Of course, that is exactly the idea. Major corporations ranging from United Airlines to Equitable Life have installed monitoring systems for some employees in the hope of boosting productivity. More than 13 million Americans use computer terminals in their jobs, and about one-third of these people are being scrutinized as they work. Since the number of terminal users is expected to triple by the end of the decade, computer monitoring may be on its way to becoming the next big management buzz word.

The exact technique depends on the job to be supervised, but monitoring requires only the installation of specially written software into the central computer that handles the work of many individual terminal users. Thus equipped, the master computer then will not only process information from each employee's terminal but also measure, record and tabulate dozens of details about how efficiently the worker is putting information into the machine.

Airline-reservation computers, for example, closely measure how long individual clerks take to handle each customer and the amount of time the employee spends between calls. The computer takes note of any idle moment and measures lunch hours, coffee breaks and even trips to the bathroom. At grocery stores, optical scanners not only ring up prices but also tell a central computer how many items per minute the clerk is handling, as well as other information. Even in factories where employees operate complex electronic machine tools rather than keyboards, computers can monitor the equipment and alert management about slow or absent workers.

Instead of supervising the old way, by peering over an employee's shoulder from time to time and trying to guess from observation how well the subordinate performs, a manager can now simply look into a worker's computer dossier and immediately see, for instance, an exact record of how many letters a week a secretary has been handling on her word processor. The manager can compare one worker objectively with all the others, then reward the speedy ones and warn the laggards. Not all employees find the surveillance oppressive. In fact many, particularly the hardest workers, prefer the new evaluative technique because they see it as a matter-of-fact measurement of their output as opposed to a boss's personal opinion. Says R. Douglas MacIntyre, a senior vice president of Management Science America, which develops monitoring programs: "We are letting management make better, quicker decisions based on facts, not emotions."