Barclays Plc has installed designs that move how often bankers are at their desks.
Managers were peppered with queries when investment bank staff in London detected black boxes stuck to the underside of their desks in recent months, according to various Barclays employees who asked not to be identified speaking about their workplace. They turned out to be tracking designs announced OccupEye , which use hot and flow sensors to entered how long employees are spending at their posts.
There was a" phased roll-out" of the designs, and Barclays staff and the Unite union were notified before they were installed, although the bank should not send out a specific memo about them, according to spokesman Tom Hoskin. The Barclays works said they don't remember being informed about the boxes, but spokespeople for the bank said there have been no official human-resources complaints.
The machines, make use of Blackburn, U.K.-based Cad-Capture, are pitched as a route for companies to find out how they can reduce role cavity, a multicolored dashboard to present administrators which workstations are unoccupied and analyze utilization trends.
Hot-desking may plea as a cost-cutting policy to Barclays Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley, who has said there are" huge savings" to be made by reducing the bank's real-estate footprint. In December, Barclays sublet office space in London's Canary Wharf district to the government, saving about 35 million pounds ($ 45 million) a year.
Investment banks are increasingly abusing engineering to keep tabs on how their organization invest their time. Barclays has introduced a computer method to move how much is earned from every patient, countenancing foremen to determine how much epoch brokers, commentators and salespeople should spend with each customer.
Investment banks JPMorgan Chase& Co ., Goldman Sachs Group Inc ., Citigroup Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG do not currently use any sort of desk monitoring in London, is in accordance with parties with knowledge of the banks' rules, who expected not to be identified speaking about personnel matters. Spokesperson for the four firms declined to comment.
U.K. peers HSBC Possession Plc and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc likewise have no same table monitoring work, spokespeople for the lenders said. Standard Chartered Plc, Deutsche Bank AG and Morgan Stanley didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.