Badging Record

Monitoring and baby-sitting employees is all the rage these days and has been for a while. Now with the push to ramp productivity with AI across the board, the conditions will remain unfavorable to employees 

HSBC UK, which encompasses the lender’s British retail and domestic commercial banking units, would start providing line managers with more data so they could better monitor office attendance under the updated policy, said a person familiar with the matter.

Other large UK-based employers, including Big Four accounting firms PwC and EY, have also introduced closer monitoring of office attendance. PwC UK told its 26,000 staff last year that it would track their office attendance in the same way it does their chargeable hours.

When attendance becomes the arbiter of all decisions about a person's career, it has the effect of making sure that some will game the system to the point where they will do nothing other than meticulously attend and do performative work that is seen by those who need to see it. By policy, these folks cannot be let go because they are clearly doing what was asked of them and will have the metrics to demonstrate it. It is not hard to imagine such an employee running a full scale side hustle while badge swiping away, exactly as required. So the person is in office, doing the hours, checking off the goals (mostly assisted by AI) and yet not providing any real value to the employer. Instead they are working on their passion project which they make sure cannot be monitored. 

That is how your employee with the most stellar attendance record lets you know one morning that he is quitting to focus on the startup, he and his best friend down the hallway have been working on for a couple of years. Neither ever fell short on the attendance record and they did the jobs they were assigned without any misses. A bit of respect and trust goes a long way I think.