In response to "A day at the office in 2013" D. K. Hernandez writes:

Dehumanizing systems can be proved to be ultimately self-destructive. It will take decisions by both management and worker to determine whether our business future will be a unified system of people helping people, or divided in conflict between parasites, victims, and parasite-fighters.

Many companies have implemented invasive employee monitoring. The wife of a coworker was employed at the world's largest insurance company back in the early 1990s, and she ran into just such a Draconian system.

Suffering from a chronic, un-treatable, and extremely painful urinary tract condition, she had to use the bathroom frequently and urgently. Her condition was known to her coworkers and supervisor, and was well-documented in her medical records. Despite her medical condition, she was one of the top performers in her department. Nevertheless, she had to go to court to keep her job (by claiming the condition was a legally-defined "disability") because her badge tracked the number of times she visited the bathroom and flagged her for termination.

The system, it seemed, was programmed to never make exceptions and corporate policy was that HR was to terminate anyone flagged by the system. By a short-sighted executive decision, people had lost discretionary power to run the business in a manner that was most efficient (to support a quality employee who had a condition not anticipated by the designer of the metrics).

Another example of this might be a brilliant programmer who is perpetually late in the mornings because he or she codes most efficiently late at night. Every time I have worked with software developers, there has been at least one individual of this type in the group. And each time, a huge controversy about that person's attendance was generated by a weak manager or jealous co-worker, resulting in threats of firing, disruption of teams, and destruction of project productivity -- until someone stepped up and made the business case about how their performance was mission critical and therefore too valuable to lose over mere tardiness.

Statistics are prone to abuse
Metrics are statistics, and statistics have no meaning by themselves. Statistics, without proper context, are prone to abuse.

So much stress, so much churn, so much time, productivity, and money are lost to serving unthinking metrics and then lost again to overturn the dominion of unthinking metrics and those who would seek to manipulate others by their misuse. So why are such metrics popular? Because they eliminate the risks associated with taking personal responsibility for making decisions. It's easy to validate management decisions when there are numbers -- even when the numbers do not give an accurate reflection of reality, as they often don't. In the absence of common sense, metrics become the staff of the weak, insecure manager, the tool of the manipulative or jealous employee, and the rod of the abusive, greedy employer.

Surveillance impacts performance
Another case that desperately needs to be made is the effect of such surveillance on performance. Severely stressed people tend to perform poorly and make more mistakes, are more likely to be sick often, and are at high risk of burnout, personal problems that affect work, and physical or psychological collapse. They are also more likely to invent their own means of retaliation -- from stealing paper clips to going postal.

What happens when people lose control over their working conditions?

Japan was the first to institute computerized metrics for measuring employee performance, and the first to start seeing the effects of severe stress on employees. They even have a word -- Karoshi -- for "death from overwork."

The former Soviet Union provides a model of the economics of a state in which the balance of power became so skewed that individuals were completely disempowered. Creativity ground to a halt, resources were destroyed, unrelieved fear and stress meant alcoholism ran rampant, and corruption became the only means to make a reasonable living. Eventually, all resources and individual potential exhausted, their economy collapsed. It will take several generations to restore vitality to what can be seen as a giant case of burnout.

Possible solutions
People aren't machines, and should not be governed by them. But I keep seeing people, particularly online, who type "freedom" but still wear their badges to work like good little drones.

The problem is that we individually are so isolated, we cannot stand up to our corporate masters without risking financial ruin. Wasn't that why unions were formed? Without getting into the problems unions generated once they became big, powerful, and corrupt, they remain an example of one way that workers can address the issues that contribute to an increasing imbalance of power between employer and employee. The solution can be simple, if not quick: just say no. If enough people find the intestinal fortitude to say no to dehumanized working conditions, and follow up by moving themselves and their skills to more humane workplaces as quickly as they can, the talent drain eventually will make it unprofitable to be a Big Brother.

CEOs: Are you founding fathers/mothers or slave owners? Will you look beyond the next fiscal year's bottom line and your bonus check? Do you have the right stuff to view the results of your decisions over the years and choose to leave a sustainable legacy? Will you allow your company to be dominated by unthinking metrics, choosing a strategy that can be demonstrated to guarantee consistent, but slowly declining results due to progressive weakening of management and loss of talent to more humane competitors, knowing that you can time it so that the fallout won't occur on your watch? Or do you have the guts to run an organization in which everyone -- yourself included -- is responsible for making their own decisions and taking the risks necessary to ensure that your most valuable asset -- your people -- are free?

What a free employee means
Free employees are empowered to perform to their best potential, free to create and sometimes work outside of the box, free from time-wasting, energy-draining activities designed to protect their managers, free from unnecessary stress, and free to determine their own futures by the actual quality of their work.

Free employees perform better, create more useful innovations, and form more effective teams. Free employees are happier, are sick less often, have more supportive structures in their personal lives, and get along better with co-workers and clients. Free employees devote more time and effort to work they enjoy, and make more efficient use of that time. Free employees re-invent themselves as needs and interests change, improve their skills, and add increasing value to their organization. Free employees share knowledge more openly and effectively, and transfer it more willingly to well-designed automated systems.

Freedom entails three 'Rs'-- risk, responsibility and realism. If we really want to be free to determine our own working conditions, we all must actively participate in all 3 Rs. We all have to put our money where our mouth is. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions (and inactions) -- now and years from now when the consequences have all come home to roost. We all have to be smart, and make good decisions based on the fullest possible understanding of all of the realities surrounding our work. Particularly in these days of politically-inspired paranoia, we must be diligent in recognizing the incursions on our freedom, responsible for opposing these incursions, and willing to take the risks necessary to remain free.

--D. K. Hernandez
(submitted via TalkBack)