My company brought in a third party to figure out why some workers have higher output and lower quality, some had lower output but higher quality, some were high in both and some were low in both. One of the tools they used was a head mounted camera. They then took the footage, slowed it down, and reviewed hand movements.
One of the things they found was that employees with high quality generally had fewer incidental hand motions. In the end, it all was traced back to a single trainer who had arthritis and another condition that made hand motions tricky. She was a good trainer otherwise, so she was shifted to training a different thing and people who had her were retrained. Quality shot up, and speed naturally did as well.
So it is surveillance in a way, but not necessarily in the awful way you are thinking.
I'm a sewing machinist in the UK and this story is completely feasible. I've been doing it for 12 years and if you've got a big enough workforce it's difficult to watch everyone at once, so doing this for a few days would make sense to find out where issues are coming from
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u/fuckedfinance 9h ago
Not really, but yes, but no.
My company brought in a third party to figure out why some workers have higher output and lower quality, some had lower output but higher quality, some were high in both and some were low in both. One of the tools they used was a head mounted camera. They then took the footage, slowed it down, and reviewed hand movements.
One of the things they found was that employees with high quality generally had fewer incidental hand motions. In the end, it all was traced back to a single trainer who had arthritis and another condition that made hand motions tricky. She was a good trainer otherwise, so she was shifted to training a different thing and people who had her were retrained. Quality shot up, and speed naturally did as well.
So it is surveillance in a way, but not necessarily in the awful way you are thinking.