Based on a mathematical analysis of work at an undisclosed Internet company, each circle represents an employee. Those who generate or pass along valuable information within the company are portrayed as large and dark-colored. And the others? “On a relative scale, they don’t add a hell of a lot,” says Elizabeth Charnock, chief executive of Cataphora, the Redwood City (Calif.) company that carried out the study for a client. The upshot for managers faced with a mandate to downsize: Small and pale circles might be a good place to start cutting.
For most of its eight-year history, Cataphora has focused on digital sleuthing. The company hunts for statistical signs of fraud. But in the past few years, Cataphora has been dispatching its data miners into a new market: statistical studies of employee performance. […] Companies can now model and optimize operations, and can calculate the return on investment on everything from corporate jets to Super Bowl ads. These successes have led to the next math project: the worker.
[…]How to hold on to hotshots? New software offers a data-mining approach. An employee retention program developed by software company SAS, for example, crunches data on employees who have quit in the past five years—their skills, profiles, studies, and friendships. Then it finds current employees with similar patterns. Another SAS program pinpoints the workers most likely to suffer accidents.
[…]In a number-driven labor market, the value of their skills will rise and fall. With these figures in hand, companies will be able to carry out cost-benefit studies on recruiting, training, and employee retention (along with its counterpart, layoffs).
[…]What about the worker who dispenses priceless wisdom the old-fashioned way, through spoken words at the coffee machine? Much of that goes unrecorded by the analytic team. So there are limits to number crunching. Machines may advance in HR, but humans will retain a strong supporting role.
Number 2: The new Number 2.
Number 6: Who is Number 1?
Number 2: You are Number 6.
Number 6: I am not a number, I am a free man.
— The Prisoner
If you have to bring in an outside firm to determine this kind of thing, you have already lost control of the company.
I never knew those lines from The Prisoner were from a tv show – I always thought it was from an Iron Maiden song…
#2 Chris
Then maybe you are just too young.
🙂
#3: I watched The Prisoner when it was shown by a local TV station one summer in the late 60’s. They got more mail about it than any show they had ever broadcast and reaired it a year later. I still consider it one of the top 5 shows I have ever seen.
And now they’re doing a remake.
When people are reduced to numbers, then all a company will possess are numbers. Ideas, dedication, and loyalty, are attributes that can never be reduced to numbers.
#5 Exactly.
So this system rewards those employees who send out obnoxious amounts of email? Terrific. Sounds like an easy enough system to game, though.
Using metrics to quantify employees is nothing new. Neither is using graphics to digest the data.
And the name of the software program is “The Two Bobs”.
@Ron Larson
Nice movie reference.
#9 exactly! I was thinking of office space.
“what’s this guys name? Na…Na…?”
“Not gonna work here much longer!”
…and a great example of GIGO. Garbage In Garbage Out
# 12 Thinker said, “…and a great example of GIGO. Garbage In Garbage Out”
Or, spam in, spam out…
First, does this mean they will sack the middle level managers and the dozens of executive VPs?
Second, I have invented a similar system based on the original D&D system from 1981.
In it I can give stats in Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma in ranges between 3 and 18.
Obviously those below average in constitution are a risk for higher health premiums for the corporation and should be sacked. People with below average strength should not work at the loading dock or mail room. And those with below normal intelligence or wisdom should have no position higher than coffee person.
Now if anyone with a company will hire me I will smite through your corporate fat with my vorpal sword, snicker snak!
Cursor_
Um, so according to this a person that merely makes sure the hardware is working or provides a product isn’t important?
Any customers of this software have clearly lost all leadership and management skills. Rather than make a hard decision, they yield to a report.
Management solely by friggin reports is no way to build and run a company. But at least they can sleep at night knowing the decisions is not theirs.
# 15 deowll said, “Um, so according to this a person that merely makes sure the hardware is working or provides a product isn’t important?”
It also means that before the advent of email, no one in any company was worth a warm bucket of spit…