This might be your cue to stop Facebooking at work all day…
…because Microsoft has filed for a patent on software that monitors employee work habits.
But there’s a bright side to this Big Brother-esque software. From LiveScience: “[T]he Microsoft patent idea doesn’t automatically grant power to the boss or the HR department. It also envisions how workers might benefit from such monitoring software by getting feedback about their behavior directly, so that they could use it as a self-improvement tool… A cunning employer might even go further by setting up a social system with worker-assigned identification numbers, so that employees could anonymously compare themselves to colleagues in the office. Such a “gamification” system could provide workers with benchmarks for comparing their own performance scores, spur some motivational competition, and perhaps even dole out rewards for better behavior.”
Aw, you see? Being monitored George Orwell’s 1984-style could be fun! And good for business! And still really creepy!
