Clock-Punching and the Illusion of Control
This week I came across a poll on LinkedIn asking whether salaried employees should be required to punch in and out. My reply summarised my view:
"What could possibly be gained from such an exercise other than a detrimental impact on morale and engagement?
Focusing on the knowledge industry. Even if you choose to put the cultural aspects aside, what could you meaningfully deduce from the data other than "person x was (probably) in the office between the hours of y and z"? (I say "probably" as you could tailgate with colleagues, etc).
Furthermore, I can be in the office and not be present in a thousand different ways.
This is a perfect example of a vanity metric rooted in the illusion of control. You stand to lose a lot of trust and gain nothing in exchange."
Willard Le Grand Bundy invented "an early and influential time clock, sometimes described as the first" in 1888. Clock-punching became an easy way for shops and offices to calculate employees' pay in an era in which I claim it was not unreasonable to assume that physical presence approximated productivity.
I want to reiterate that my perspective is from the knowledge industry generally and software engineering specifically, but my stance is that societal shifts over the last forty years have made the practice of clock-punching obsolete.
Nearly everyone sits in front of a computer these days and, even if you have draconian firewalls, certainly everybody brings their own devices to work. Distractions are everywhere - email notifications, Instant Messaging pings, and meeting reminders are par for the course, and these are work-related interruptions (an, ahem, timely reminder that it takes on average 23 min to regain focus after an interruption).
The other annoyingly tricky thing with knowledge work is that your product comes from the same place your anxieties, current obsessions, hopes and desires reside. Neither your infatuation with new romance, nor your preoccupation with that annoying little rash you're a bit concerned about, cares that you're physically present in a specific geographic location and that your productivity is on the clock.
There's nothing for it. As a manager of knowledge workers, you cannot deduce anything meaningful from physical presence in an arbitrary building.
Just let it go. All you are hanging onto is the illusion of control.
Until next time.
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