Posted by Denham on June 21, 1997 at 10:22:16:

In Reply to: Concern: Will participation tracking and metrics be an excuse for more surveillance in the workplace? posted by Michael Kran on June 21, 1997 at 00:59:55:

Michael,

You raise an important issue, there is a fine line between metrics and surveillance. Metrics can provide solid data to justify compensation e.g. rewarding consultants for their contributions to the knowledge repository, judging personal productivity and quality by monitoring failure to meet deadlines or counting document rework or searching for indices of proactivity e.g. contributions to meeting agendas. Recorded activities are used by corporate ethnologists to model problem solving, verify information sources or log interface tool use and abuse.

The same data can be used in different ways, 1) to suggest a more efficient way to accomplish the task (wizard) 2) to rate your competence with the tool (training needs), 3) to judge your learning ability (longitudinal comparisons).

If your personal knowledge forms part of your skill set, is a major item in setting your compensation and is the reason for hiring you in the first place (e.g. sales contacts) have you not implicitly "sold" that information to the company?

With more and more best practices & lessons learned (those KM nuggets) residing in knowledge repositories, the ability to store more in your head becomes a critical skill if you are thinking of moving. Can you ethically use this info on the other side?. Lets say its not trade secrets or magical formulae but tips on how to share knowledge, where do we draw the line?

I would be interested to explore (and expose?) where the line sits, how it shifts between occupations, the influence of mining tools and the medium on how any line is drawn.

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Follow Ups:

• help! Ali ELEREN 06:46:00 8/02/97 (0)
• Re: Tracking connections & mining workflow, drawing a line John Zavacki 12:05:32 6/22/97 (1)
  • customer satisfaction about life insurance bongkyun lee 21:36:57 7/31/97 (0)

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