Who's Watchin' Ya'?

A friend of mine posed the following question on FaceBook:

Do you have undergrad research assistants? If yes & they work at a computer, how do you make sure they're doing work instead of IMing, etc not related to the project? I don't want to introduce drastic measures..., but can't afford to pay research assistants who aren't contributing to the project either. I ask for weekly reports on work and that helps, but still curious how others address this.

This is a very basic social control arena -- no big sovereign power vs. the peasants or corporate overseers vs. non-unionized janitors here -- and the people involved are all of good will (they are quite literally people like you and me -- students and professors), but many of the elements of control that we've seen in Discipline and Punish will jump out at you as you read along. And, depending on your experience as a supervisor, you will probably have different takes on the legitimacy of the various approaches to surveillance and control being contemplated.
Here are some responses/comments:

would something like this or this [links to time management and tracking software] be helpful?

It is an interesting question - I guess you need to look at output/outcome measures rather than input. We went around and around about that at one point and now my position is I am less concerned about counting hours than on a negotiated output/deliverable.

The original questioner responds:

Thanks, when I said I was trying to avoid drastic measures, I meant that I was trying to avoid monitoring, but I'll look into ManicTime. As to TimeEdition, it seems to require that the user start/stop the clock, which wouldn't work since people aren't going to log their non-work time when they're not supposed to be engaging in such activities in the first place.

[to 2nd post] this is precisely what I've tried to do with the work reports, thanks for the suggestion. However, ... two issues. First, with 9 undergrad RAs, that's a lot of time sheets to go through. Second, it may be ... someone ... genuinely focused ... takes longer, because ... doing a more careful job. In contrast, someone may do a task quickly, but not well .... So it's not a foolproof method either (uhm, not that I expect to find such a method).

More suggestions...

Do you set goals for them, what they need to accomplish and so forth? If so, they might be more productive with a little IM'ing thrown in than with monitoring systems that they then find sneaky ways to get around on principle (Oh, the Challenge!). I think the monitoring has to come at the expectation/output end not on the process/input end. At least, that's my philosophy. ... i.e. your "weekly reports" idea is great but I mean a more fixed system of accomplishment, perhaps even set by them! I'm a bit fanatic these days about peer-to-peer evaluation systems, and I admit most people think this is crazy and unrealistic.

Again, the original poster:

I completely agree that it's not realistic nor necessarily good for productivity to restrict use of systems they're used to all the time. Again, this is why I don't want to take drastic measures. I also don't want students to feel like they're working in a hostile environment.

With this many students, it's very challenging for me to be so closely tied to each person's day-to-day activity. Ideally I'd have a lab manager who'd interface in between, but I don't have that at the moment. Would love thoughts on how to set realistic goals that includes their input, but also has a component to make sure it's realistic. (I pay more than the average research job on campus and I take non work-study students, which I think is rare. Students keep coming back so for now they like the set-up, but I don't want that to be because they get to not deliver much.)

And a few more responses.

Oh, I hear you, I hear you. That's why I was thinking peer-team review might be a method. It's way too much for one person to oversee and the monitoring devices, automated ones, tend to put us even more in that role than we want. Something like community standards on a social network but for management. (After the rewired brain, I'm thinking my next book is the "rewired office" and I'm just starting to explore such peer-evaluation and peer-workflow systems in the workplace . . . It's all very new, but you raise such real and pressing issues for all of us. Thanks so much for this. It's crucially important to our lives. And no one has it figured out.)

I've struggled with this, and have tried both CVS task management tools that track times and tasks more specifically. I've also gone with a fishbowl method, where we all work in the presence of each other, with a giant screen rotating each others' screens. That's high cost (in my time mostly) but effective...

One thought is to have regular lab meetings where everybody gives an update. Perhaps this approximates what [was mentioned above]. The tricky part ... if I pay for the meeting time (which it seems like would only be fair) then depending on meeting length, I'm out $100-200 just to check what everyone's up to. Of course, feedback from others could be very helpful for project progress so it could be worth it even just for that purpose. I'll give some such format some thought. Thanks again!

That's easy! Tell them, "Hey, just fyi, the internet connection here is completely unblocked. You can surf to anything you want; just know that I've installed a keylogger. Removing, tampering with, or disabling that keylogger is a violation of [your] law and will result in a forfeiture of all pay. Okay, now get to work!" :-)