Accountancy firm PwC has
launched a biometric-based “traffic light system” in its offices, enabling managers to digitally track employees’ attendance. Such measures – known as ‘boss-tech’ – are part of a rising tide of in-house biometric deployment by institutions within the UK
financial services industry.
But here’s the contention: Is boss-tech merely a means to modernise the age-old clock-punch process, or does it herald something more draconian for the already-dampened UK labour market?
In this instalment of Finextra’s Explainer series, we take a closer look at the rise of boss-tech in the UK financial services sector; the antithesis of equally loud workforce-led calls for a
four-day work week and greater employment flexibility.
How is boss-tech used?
PwC’s boss-tech scheme is managed via a dashboard that can only be viewed by the firm’s seniority – which,
reports The Observer, tracks the time staff spend in-office. The raw data includes swipes of work passes and connections to the Wi-Fi.
Under PwC’s traffic light system, an office attendance of less than 60% is considered
amber, while less than 40% is red. The implication, its critics claim, is that disciplinary measures follow a
red attendance.
The technologies that enable boss-tech systems such as this are
biometrics; automating the
recognition of individuals based on their
unique biological and behavioural characteristics. Examples of biometrics include fingerprint, facial, iris, voice, and gait recognition, as well as mouse movement and other behavioural patterns.
Facial recognition, for instance, relies on artificial intelligence (AI) to pull visual information from a photograph or video of a person. It does this by making a map of the face – including data on eye size, feature positioning, scars, mouth shape, skin
colour, and so on – before comparing it against an owned database of faces. If a match is found, an identity is confirmed.
As it stands, biometrics of this kind are deployed only by specific areas of the financial services industry, and mainly for the purposes of security and fighting increasingly sophisticated payments fraud. NatWest, Standard Bank, and MasterCard, for example,
have all deployed biometric technology to
keep customers safe online, improve
identity verification, and offer a
premium user experience, respectively.
But the use of biometrics to track employee behaviour is a relatively new frontier. At the time of writing, British boss-tech is brandished by only a trifling portion of businesses.
Who uses boss-tech?
According to an Observer
report, organisations which, like PwC, have (albeit publicly) turned to boss-tech include two of Britain’s big four: HSBC and Barclays.
HSBC, for its part, is the largest bank not only in the UK, but in Europe – with a market capitalisation of over
$175 billion. It recently beefed up its boss-tech programme,
allegedly planning a “fourfold increase in the number of cameras at its new building in [the city of London] and doubling the number of biometric readers required to access its trading floors.” The bank claims this is a necessary reaction to increasing
“theft incidents.”
Barclays, meanwhile – which is among the four largest banks in the UK, operating in 38 countries –
turned to OccupEye (now owned by FM: Systems) this year to install “under-desk heat and motion sensors”, in order to monitor the time staff spend away from their seats. Some employees protested by physically removing the offending devices.
Like a weather sock for the direction of the UK’s financial services culture, Britain’s big four banks often herald deeper trends. It is likely there are many more financial institutions that also use biometric technology to track staff.
Digitised clock punching or trust erosion?
The sympathetic view on boss-tech is that it was a by-product of the pandemic-induced working-from-home paradigm – and introduced by UK managers looking to simply reassure their superiors that the workforce is, indeed, working. Put differently: it has utility,
especially during times of operational stress.
The concern, though, is whether the objective of British boss-tech is now broadening, from checking
if employees are working, to where and how employees are working.
The more cynical interpretation of the British boss-tech rise is that bank leaders are exploiting a moment of weak labour bargaining power – seeking to drive out working-from-home demands and, in doing so, supercharge productivity.
While productivity is a legitimate concern for the UK economy – having nigh-on
flatlined since the 2008 financial crisis – few commentators would place the blame on organisations’ inability to track employees. Former Waitrose boss turned big company adviser, Mark Price, argues that UK productivity would be boosted by handing
more freedom to employees, not less – and driving job satisfaction. He notes that the UK has some of the
lowest levels of career happiness in the G20 – as well as the worst rate of productivity. This correlation cannot be ignored.
Amid Britain’s burgeoning boss-tech beef-up, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – which handles complaints around work surveillance – has increased its enforcement, warning against the use of algorithmic affect management (AAM) to track workers’
emotional states via facial imaging and keystroke dynamics. Indeed, this too is increasingly bleeping on the ICO’s radar, despite the technology’s crudeness and flaw-pitted delivery.
In the battle between Pro-Flexible Work and The Boss-tech Bros,
those with the broadest shoulders will come out on top.