Automated time tracking at work

Happy May Day, workers!

My stress-inducing company is going to be introducing a new way to track employee hours in the near future and I’m wondering if it will be to our benefit or just be more oppression.

For years we had touch-style cards that we’d hold up at the door. A simple touch. Then last year they introduced a new system where you have to log in to a third-party site using either a computer or your phone, enter a username and password, then click 出勤 and then “OK” just to be sure; same on the way out. Seven or eight clicks including loading a shortcut from your phone, but on the other hand, you can log in on the elevator and not feel like you have to sprint for the door if time is short. You take the good with the bad.

Now we’re getting something new: 打刻レス *dakoku-less* clocking. How? By automatically tracking when our PCs are open and in use. We in the HR department are getting it first before it gets rolled out to everyone.

The system is a Japanese equivalent of Hubstaff or Time Doctor, both of which get good ratings online, but surely those ratings are written by the managers and not the working stiffs who are *being* managed.

I suppose saving all those clicks is going to be a help, but (and call me cynical) I see far more problems than benefits. To get started, the new system imported all our PC data (so it had already been tracked…) since March 3, and people’s records show a whole lot of red exclamation points after each date with「遅刻した理由を書いてください」added. Of course we weren’t *late*; we just didn’t have our computers logged in. I arrive 15-25 minutes early to get a bunch of stuff laid out for the employees (postal bags, distribution of mail) before the day begins, and might not log in to the PC until 5-10 minutes after starting time.

Under the new system I suspect everyone will have to start making a point of not just being at their desk, but logged in and working before the starting time and after the ending time, even though there’s a lot of work we do that isn’t in front of a PC.

We’ve also been having to manually log each half hour’s activity into Microsoft Outlook, which is seriously stress-inducing, so perhaps this will go away now that they’ll know what we’re working on automatically?

I’ve heard of these kinds of systems being used to keep home-based workers’ noses to the grindstone, checking up on everything they do and not trusting them for a second. But does the automation of tracking activity relieve you of having to track it yourself? Is this kind of thing just the standard nowadays and my Luddite self should stop complaining? It’s already happening with Teams and Outlook showing whether you’re busy to anyone who hovers over your name. “Your icon should never be green or yellow,” says the boss. And the world seems to have accepted this as the norm these days.

So what experience have you folks had with these? I’m *expecting* more totalitarian control and more evidence with which to bully underperformers, but I’m *hoping* that this can automate away some of the stifling, misery-inducing self-reporting that has also been unbearable in recent years. Thoughts?