RNZ Tech Tuesday with Jessie Mulligan and Daniel Watson discussing bossware

Jessie Mulligan: RNZ National Time Tech. Tuesday, Daniel Watson is the head of Vertech IT Services. He joins me now. Hi, Dan.

Daniel Watson: Hello.

Jessie Mulligan: Dan. Dan the big boss man. Did you always want to be a boss man?

Daniel Watson: No, but I worked for enough people to realize that all my complaints about my boss were a very fundamental common denominator,

Jessie Mulligan: Which was….

Daniel Watson: Me. So it was either stop complaining about them or do something about it. Right. Yeah. And…

Jessie Mulligan: Being a boss is hard in 2023. I'm sort of leading us towards our topic today because it used to be you just look around the room and if someone wasn't doing what they're supposed to be doing, you'd give 'em a yell. But that's a bit more complicated when you've got the, are you running the, so-called hybrid office environment?

Daniel Watson: Yes. Yes, we have. We've got some outsource staff in several roles. Anyway, so before Covid it wasn't a big shock to the system, but I see my clients in the wider market that there is an ongoing trend for both outsourcing and also either working from home for some people almost entirely or in some portions of the week. And that presents some challenges for the way people may have traditionally managed. For myself, I haven't been the kind of one that would have a drum and a whip and try and get the galley slaves to sweep through the Mediterranean. I kind of have a different style in any case, but there is a massive rise in what's called bossware, which is software that may either be openly or surreptitiously installed on staff's computers to figure out if people are actually at their desk doing something. Yeah,

Jessie Mulligan: I've never come across this before. I guess it makes sense. Some bosses I suppose the best and maybe intervene if there's a problem. But otherwise, if the results are good, if the outputs are good, then well, I guess who cares what your employee is up to if they're delivering what you want them to deliver. Others, I guess, feel reassured by the idea that they want their employee to be on the clock and available and doing something work related for all those hours they're paid for.

Daniel Watson: Yeah, I am definitely of the latter case. I know we've got software tools that we can use, and even without putting specialist software in place, because there's a wide variety of tools and some of them have got some AI components to try and build out risk factors. There's always been ways, methods. And in New Zealand, for example, there is no expectation of privacy for a staff member upon the business computer system.

Jessie Mulligan: No legal expectation.

Daniel Watson: Yeah, that's right. And for years, occasionally we would get business owners who would come to us and say, look, I'm a bit concerned about, so-and-so they're here at the office every day, but I don't know what they're doing and we're not getting the results. Can you have a look and see if they're spending too much time on? And occasionally we'd find people who were running full-on side hustles, on trade me out of the office on their computer time to the point where it's like, these guys clearly aren't doing much work. And so there's logs and histories that you can get from any computer system like that, but we're talking about tools that are literally monitoring how often their mouse moves, how often the keyboard is tapped, how many emails are sent, whether webcams are actually using the webcam to see if people are actually at their desk doing GPS, tracking all sorts of stuff. So it's really, those kinds of apps are collecting data points from many things about the device. And in some situations that might be useful. If you're in a, what's the word? You're a kind of industry where you've got high levels of compliance and security required. There might be a really good argument for saying, look, we are going to monitor all these things because it's just not what, we cannot have one stray email.

Jessie Mulligan: I suppose imagine if, imagine one of your clients was the Ministry of Health, you would want to be able to show them if they audited you that you'd done everything you can. Then you can demonstrate the level of privacy required, for example. That would make sense. Yeah.

Daniel Watson: Trust but verify. But on the other hand, for most Kiwi businesses, there's not a huge number of staff. Trust is one of those bits of societal glue that if we don't have it in certain amounts, then things just don't work at all. Right. You can't tie people to the chair and force 'em to work. And if you are doing something along those lines, one, you're going to increase the stress level of the staff. You might look like they're doing more stuff, but it might become just very performative. Have you seen that Simpsons episode where he gets the nodding bird and then he realizes that actually he can just set it up and press yes to all the answers that get popped up on the computer screen at the power station? You don't want that. It has bad results because people have got little devices that will jiggle their mouse that, things like that.

Jessie Mulligan: You don't want an arms race of trying to keep up with the software. I would add, by the way, well, I think my wife would like me to add, she's got strong feelings on this. This is the area she works in. She reckons it's harder for people to hide when they're working at home. She reckons there is so much about the office environment that is useful to the ineffective worker, the meetings and the presentations and all that kind of office that actually when you work from home and all people hear from you is your work that you've done, it's actually quite hard to hide.

Daniel Watson: Yeah. Well, personally I, I get a lot more productive when I'm away. So I take two days away from the office so I can take the necessary time and focus on a task for an extended period. Whereas in the office, there's often quite a few distractions. People will come up, just have a chat, there'll be people who pop by and just want to consult you on things. And that is useful. That's one of the reasons why you come into the office is so you can have that crosstalk and understanding what everybody else is doing within the organization. And so I could see that be absolutely the case because frankly from a business owner perspective, everybody's got a number that you're working towards. If you're a company owner, you're trying to throw some dollars on the bottom line so there is some return on all the investment, the mortgage on the house, all that kind of stuff. And pay the

Jessie Mulligan: Staff.

Daniel Watson: Well, you've got to pay staff. Profit comes after everybody's been paid. It's a different thing because why be in business if you would've made more money just taking the money you earn and then putting it in the stock market and working for somebody else without the stress of having to worry about payroll,

Jessie Mulligan: You actually return investment. Or in New Zealand, just buying a house in the Auckland City limits and waiting.

Daniel Watson: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Land banking. But for every job you can pretty much find some number that you can hold 'em to, which makes it easy to manage them. And if your business operates well, when all the numbers are in the green, then would I mind so much if they were like, Hey, they managed to achieve their numbers in four hours of the day and the rest of the day they kind of fiddled around doing a hobby, something like that. Or

Jessie Mulligan: When and watch their kid at a scene, probably usually went and watched their kid at assembly and thought, man, I've got a fantastic job. I can perform, deliver what the boss wants from me, and I still get to be there for my family.

Daniel Watson: Yeah, yeah. And if they're happier and motivated, and it might be that they spend the other four hours kind of thinking of better ways to do their job, that's great too. Yeah,

Jessie Mulligan: Well sometimes some of that down, people tend to, sorry, Dan, sometimes some of that downtime, you are thinking about your job, even if you aren't consciously thinking about your job. It's really interesting. Thank you. So at the very least we'd have to agree, wouldn't we, that if you're putting the spying software on your employee's devices, you should probably tell them about it.

Daniel Watson: Yes. And be really clear about, make sure that they understand why you're doing it. Is there a really good reason? Because if you're having to hide it, then it's probably not a great one. It might be that you actually are dealing with a very specific case and there's some really justifiable points. Well, you might hide it. Do you think this person might be defrauding the company?

Daniel Watson: There might be a really good reason to keep it secret. You want to make sure that you're not falsely accusing and leading to a constructive dismissal claim, which can be enormously expensive for a business, being there, done that. At the same time, I've also had an employee that ended up in jail, so I can understand several sides of this argument. There's times when it's going to be useful for people to do this. I would think carefully about what the goals are for the organization with regards to doing it, and have there been sufficient goals put in front of the employee so they know what is the explicit value that they're adding to the organization that they're in, because that might allow them to come up with better solutions for you. Good

Jessie Mulligan: Stuff. Great chat. Dan Watson from Vertech IT Services on the rise of Boss Ware. Thanks, Dan. Great to chat.

Daniel Watson: Excellent. Anytime mate.