Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Designing for Monitoring

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | August 31st, 2015

Recently, several articles in the New York Times have indicated that the pressure under which professional employees are working is growing, dramatically. The first of the articles that appeared in the NYT profiled the work climate at Amazon, which is competitive and tension-packed, on the Amazon-ians’ least stressful workdays. The second article, on August 17, “Data-Crunching Is Coming to Help Your Boss Manage Your Time,” profiles a growing and Orwellian trend: employers and coworkers continually monitoring and judging an individual’s performance, mostly at work and sometimes away from it, as well. Continual data gathering and assessment will push workplace stress levels to “smoke-coming-out-of-employee-ears” levels. Although these new monitors are promoted as ways to enhance performance and build engagement, it seems unlikely that they’ll produce these effects. We’ve all heard of those teachers criticized for teaching in ways that prepare their students to do well on the standardized tests on whose …