Uber misbehaviour

Uber drivers team up in gangs to force higher prices before they pick up passengers, research has revealed.

Researchers at the University of Warwick found Uber drivers in London and New York have been tricking the app into thinking there is a shortage of cars in order to raise surge prices...

See Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says (Cara McGoogan, The Telegraph) for more details.

IT misbehaviour

I saw a great IT misbehaviour story on the BBC News website today.

Some details:

A security check on a US company has reportedly revealed one of its staff was outsourcing his work to China.

The software developer, in his 40s, is thought to have spent his workdays surfing the web, watching cat videos on YouTube and browsing Reddit and eBay.

He reportedly paid just a fifth of his six-figure salary to a company based in Shenyang to do his job.

For more details see US employee 'outsourced job to China'.

Facebook misbehaviour at DVLA

Looks like employees at DVLA have been up to mischief again!

See DVLA: Seven staff suspended for posting "inappropriate" Facebook comments for more details (BBC News).

Facebook misbehaviour and the consequences

The Israeli military cancelled a planned raid on a Palestinian village after one of its soldiers posted details of the operation on Facebook.

The unnamed soldier revealed the time and place of the raid and the name of his unit on the social networking site.

He said on his status update that his unit planned a "clean up" raid.

The soldier was court-martialled and sentenced to 10 days in prison.

He was also ousted from his battalion and relieved of combat duties.

See Israeli military 'unfriends' soldier after Facebook leak (BBC News) for more details.

Twittering and teaching

According to a report from the BBC News website, a Scottish teacher who posted messages discussing her pupils on a social networking website is being investigated by her employers.

More details...

The secondary teacher in Argyll and Bute is understood to have posted up to 38 updates a day on the Twitter site.

It is thought the language teacher, who has not been named, may have accessed the site via her mobile phone.

One Twitter said: "Had S3 period 6 for last two years...don't know who least wants to do anything, them or me."

Another Twitter said: "Have three Asperger's boys in S1 class - never a dull moment! Always offer an interesting take on things."

For more details see Probe into teacher Twitter posts.

Work blogs as creative resistance

It's a first as far as I'm aware, but the first academic article on work blogging has just been published.

It's written by Abigail Schoneboom and published by the journal Ethnography (subscription required).

An abstract of the article follows:

Anonymous workbloggers — employees who write online diaries about their work — are often simultaneously productive workers and savage critics of the organizational cultures in which they toil.

This research focuses on a small group of white-collar workers from the Greater Manchester and Lancashire area, who risk their jobs by writing publicly about their office experiences under assumed identities.

Countering the notion that resistance to corporate culture leads to `confusion and emptiness' (Willmott, 1993: 538), this study contributes to the recent revival of interest in worker misbehavior and recalcitrance.

By focusing on workers as authors, it addresses a shortcoming in the existing critical literature, which treats informal employee resistance as an intellectually and artistically unsophisticated phenomenon.

Drawing parallels with the lives and work of authors such as Franz Kafka and T.S. Eliot, it evaluates whether embedded writers, in spite of their ambivalence about the alternative, can constitute an effective counter-hegemonic force.

It's called Diary of a working boy: Creative resistance among anonymous workbloggers.

Hopefully my work will becoming out some time in 2008, as well as another paper I have planned for a conference in March.

On the fiddle

Whilst browsing the tops of all the local and national newspapers this afternoon one story really took my eye.

The story comes courtesy of the Edinburgh Evening News and involves a 'mass brawl' of Scottish Gas call centre workers during a 'moral boosting exercise.

The brawl, it seems, is related to the dismissal of '50 staff after workers were accused of stealing £27,000 by exploiting a glitch in the company's reward scheme'.

Scottish Gas apparently held dozens of disciplinary hearings after it discovered staff had been repeatedly buying 'Winnie the Pooh bracelets' as part of the company's reward scheme.

It is believed that one member of staff made £9000 after 'buying' more than 800 of the bracelets.

You couldn't make this stuff up!

See Scottish Gas fires 50 over Winnie scam and City gas bash explodes into mass brawl (both by Alan McEwen) for up-dates on a story that is probably far from over.

Getting your own back on a colleague at work

I came across quite an interesting, yet short account of what an employee can and should do if they feel that they need to right a wrong with a work colleague, a boss, etc.

Such ideas are deliberated by Jon Bentham of The Guardian (Office Hours) in How to...Get your own back.

Take the following quote as flavour of the article:

Getting even in an office environment requires immense cunning, tenacity, and very possibly a Crocodile Dundee-style hunting knife - depending how far you want to take it.

The scale of revenge you wreak will of course depend on the degree to which you have been wronged.

Responding to a colleague who has put one too many lumps of sugar in your tea by pinning them against a wall and pummelling their kidneys might earn you a reputation as a bit of a grumpy-pants.

So keep things in perspective...

Use the article to see alternative ways in which to tackle problems with colleagues, senior management and your employer.

Employers, personal use of the Internet and trust

According to an article in the most recent People Management magazine: 'The majority of employers trust their staff “to do the right thing” when it comes to blogging and using social networking sites such as Facebook'.

Findings from the poll on how employers deal with personal use of the Internet by employees on work time suggest:

• 40 per cent - We trust all our employees to "do the right thing"

• 19 per cent - We rely on our existing employee contracts

• 19 per cent - We ban employees from blogging and bar them from particular sites

• 12 per cent - We're thinking about writing a dedicated policy

• 10 per cent - We have a dedicated policy

It seems fair to say that the poll produces quite a mixed bag of opinion on the subject of employee personal use of the Internet while on work time.

A mixture of not doing anything until something major happens (the majority) through to doing something that makes it clear what employees can and should not do (the minority).

It suggests a lot more employees will be disciplined for misappropriation of the Internet in the years to come.

For more details see Employers 'trust staff to use web responsibly' by Lucy Philips (available for a month to non-subscribers).

Extreme misbehaviour

I came across probably the most intriguing form of misbehaviour (beyond mischief of course, if you pick apart the larger intention) I've heard of for a while.

The article describes the court case of a worker who was employed by a company that manufactures luxury yachts.

The criminal case alleged James Light, an engineer, to have stolen hundreds of components from his employer - Sunseeker - in the hope of building his own dream boat.

As the article suggests:

"He accumulated parts worth £55,000, including electrical components, a 4ft radar mast, widescreen television, lifting straps and sternlights. They were carefully stored in more than 100 boxes at a lockup garage in Bournemouth."

It seems that despite very stringent security measures in place, Light even managed to make off with very bulky components.

Comparisons, in the article, are made with a song by Johnny Cash, who sang about a lowly car factory worker who stole components over many years hoping to make his own Cadillac.

See Worker was stealing £1m yacht one piece at a time (Simon de Bruxelles, The Times) for more details and may be some ideas ;->.

On the fiddle

According to a survey mentioned in today's Scotsman, British workers are cheating employers out of £1 billion a year through their expenses claims.

What is more, "some are making outrageous claims, asking employers to pay for escorts, condoms and pet care, the survey found."

More details include:

The typical worker swindles an extra £14.60 with every claim, normally once a month, adding up to £7,796 over a working lifetime.

Of the 4,000 workers questioned for the survey, only 7 per cent admitted to feeling guilty about false claims.

However, it pales into insignificance considering it is claimed that workers "give" their employers £23 billion of free work every year.

See Fiddling expenses a £1bn British industry and UK workers 'fiddle £1bn expenses' (BBC News: Business) for more details.

Supermarket workers upload pranks to YouTube

A BBC news story from yesterday reports on how Somerfield has launched an inquiry after video clips of people performing stunts wearing the firm's uniform were posted on the Internet.

The article - Supermarket probes YouTube prank (BBC News: Business) - summarises a variety of short videos uploaded to YouTube by (seemingly) bored staff.

For example: "The antics include a man balancing on a beam in a store room, another riding on a floor cleaner and somebody racing round a car park on a pallet lifter."

Recently I've been thinking about how I'd like to do some research on workers who use the Internet for their own ends.

This is clearly a good example of how workers can use the Internet to share some fun on work time.

It could also be a way of undermining management.

The difference with the Internet is that fun or subversion can now be viewed and taken beyond a close network of friends and colleagues.

See the full range of videos here.

Revenge beyond the workplace

You'd have thought that a modest award at the end of an employment tribunal would have been an end to the matter.

This was not quite the case for a Mr Raine, from Burnhope in County Durham, who was expecting a cheque for the balance of his cash award, following an employment tribunal win.

Instead of a cheque for the entire £2,300 he got a cheque for £1,000 and the remaining amount in coins from 1p to 20p.

The story clearly has a humorous side to it, but it also demonstrates how some employers may view the employment tribunal system.

See Back pay row over crate of coins (BBC News: England) for more details.

Employers respond to use of Internet at work

A development in the private use of the Internet was noted the other day in the Wall Street Journal.

In Employers are changing how they use web filters (Vauhini Vara) a focus of attention is a new generation of employee that has grown up with on-line social networking and the availability of downloadable videos and sound files.

The main emphasis of the article is reproduced as follows:

"Now, they see no reason to stop, even if they've graduated to the workplace.

But some of their companies' technology and human-resources officers do.

They argue that when employees access media like online video, it saps technology resources, which can slow down tasks like transferring files over the corporate network or accessing email or the Internet.

Company overseers worry about Internet safety and security.

Plus they don't like the idea of employees goofing around on the Internet."

The article is particularly interesting in the sense that it looks at how this expectation or "problem" is tackled by a range of employers.

Fun on the buses

I always take more than a curious interest in work-related mischief and this story the other day, courtesy of the Manchester Evening News, made me laugh.

The story concerns an out-of-service bus and how the word "SEX" denoted its destination.

A statement from the bus company after the incident went along the following lines - "This is a bit of festive high jinks that should not have happened and which the company does not condone. We will investigate what is behind this and those involved will be interviewed. We offer our apologies for any embarrassment caused ."

Judging by the comments that have been added to the article few people took offence at the mischief. The typical Mancunian humour included:

- How much is it to old'em?
- But did three come at once?
- Did they need a ticket to ride?!

Counter jargon

The other day I commented on some survey findings about 'management speak' and 'jargon' and how readers of the BBC website had inundated one of their forums on the said subject.

The next day the BBC ran an article on what was said in the forum - some of which could be referred to as 'counter jargon', or employees coming up with phrases to mock or undermine management speak and jargon. See if you can guess what the following counter jargon means before visitng the actual article - Let's help to herd the dinosaurs (Claire Heald, BBC News: Magazine).

1) red sky thinking
2) horizoning
3) workspace-specific perceptual abstraction
4) non-specific interfacing
5) activity deficit substitution

There is also an interesting article in The Scotsman today on the matter of management speak and jargon - it lists 30 such sayings and their supposed 'true meaning' - Why can't we say what we mean? (Jim Gilchrist).

Curbing employee misuse of technology through"e-breaks"

It's ironic that after yesterday's post on how workers are supposedly turning their employee's technology to their advantage comes an article on how employers can deal with this management-related problem.

Indeed, it has been reported that one particular employer - Virgin Money - has introduced an "e-break" to curtail Internet and e-mail abuse in the workplace.

In the article - E-breaks to replace tea breaks at work (Jane Fraser, The Scotsman) - Virgin's policy is said to involve:

"...staff will be allowed 15 minutes to do online shopping and other personal tasks at work. With time-wasting constituting the main concern for employers looking to curb e-mail and internet abuse, the scheme could help maximise productivity, while still allowing employees a measure of freedom."

I'd say that there is nothing new about this scheme whatsoever. Managers have been making formal and informal concessions to workers since industrialisation began. It's called accommodation in sociology and tokenism in social psychology. All that is different is the situation, i.e. ICT, like telephones and the use of machinery for 'homers', is now a focus of contention between employer and employee.

Employees turning workplace technology to their advantage

It seems that workers are increasingly making "alternative" use of their employer's technology.

In Workers waste hours in web of receipts Natasha McLeod (The Scotsman) outlines how, "At a time when long hours gnaw relentlessly into the nation's spare time, employees are turning workplace technology to their advantage, by logging on there rather than at home."

The main advantage of getting domestic things done at work (mostly over the Internet or telephone) means that workers can make more of evenings and weekends.

The article comments on a survey and how, for example, two out of three workers (64 per cent) plan their holidays at work.