The Good and the Evil of Time Tracking

A recent article featured in Harper’s Magazine is making some waves for its take on time tracking and workplace monitoring. The article in question, entitled “The Spy Who Fired Me,” makes the case that time tracking and workplace monitoring software “has taken on a life of its own.” The author, Esther Kaplan, makes some valid arguments about the dangers of work monitoring software. One example cited is of a woman who works for high-fashion retailer, Century 21, in New York City. “She’d been selling watches from seven in the morning to three-thirty in the afternoon to accommodate evening classes, but when that availability was punched in to Kronos, the system no longer recognized her as full-time. Now she was …