Some startling and impressive facts emerged from the recent TechAmerica annual Cyberstates report. First, California is number one in the nation for technology employment with almost one million employees. That's a whopping number of workers. You can imagine the tech sector payroll in California is huge, and it is: $120 billion. California not only has almost one million tech sector workers, the Golden State also has the fastest rate of growth for tech workers. They are also among the highest paid in the nation. Technology workers in California technology workers earned an average pay of $123,900 a year. That number is undoubtedly driven up by successful IPOs for companies like FaceBook.

US Department of Labor Free iPhone App for Time Tracking Hits 14,000 Downloads
After nearly two years of availability, a free iPhone app called DOL-Timesheet created by the US Department of Labor has been downloaded 14,000 times, according to XYO.net. The point of the app is not at all to replace standard time sheets used by companies, but to allow workers to track their own time. In a case of an investigation or audit, then an employee would have her or his own hours documented and could provide evidence of time worked, with dates  and having used a respectable method. A free app like this could come in especially handy if an employee's work hours are recorded by someone other than the employee, such as a manager.

The link to the app is here.

Being able to track hours using a portable personal device must be an advantage, because of the ready and constant accessibility. Especially during field work, when an employee might not have access to a company desktop or laptop and is working odd hours, such an app might serve a critical purpose. The app does not handle things like holiday and weekend pay, tips, or commissions. This new Department of Labor app might have some serious ramifications. For example, a company's own timesheet tracking might not easily be accessible to employees, automated adequately, or employee timesheets might not be tracked and stored properly. Employers could be in the embarrassing position of having less reliable timesheet data than their individual employees using this Department of Labor app.  

Contract Employees are Replacing Some Full-time Workers
A recent survey from CareerBuilder found that 40% of companies plan to use contractors this year. A little over 30% of new jobs in the private sector created after the recession ended were contract positions. Before the recession, the number of new contract positions was only about 2%. The reasons for this major shift are obviously related to cost-cutting by companies that are trying to survive. Recruiters who don't work with contract workers and help them with their timesheets (usually Web-based) could be left behind by a shifting economy. Additionally, staffing companies surveyed predict that 40-50% of all employees will be contracted staffers by 2020. If this were the case, a great many corporations would need to have extensive cloud-based timesheet systems to track these contract workers across the enterprise.

Image Credit: AgnosticPreacherKid, Wiki Commons

Google will track attendee whereabouts at the Google I/O at Moscone Center. Some might find this kind of granular people data tracking very offputting, but Big Data is not going away, ever. In point of fact, it seems much more likely with the development and proliferation of more sensors and the additional data points, almost everything under the Sun will be fair game for tracking.


At a conference several years ago (admittedly a very tedious one) two employees were overheard planning their escape to a local shopping center. If they had been wearing sensors, perhaps all of their movements would have been recorded and management would have hard data about their play time when they were supposed to be at the conference. So, the question is what to do with the data, because bored employees might be indicating that part of the conference was wasted time for everyone, not just those two.

While this kind of people monitoring can appear far too Big Brotherish, some employees do try to submit fraudulent timesheets, as was the case in Texas recently.

'The indictment also alleges that in order to personally profit from their fraudulent billings, Ramirez and Velasquez allegedly created payroll records from the fraudulent time sheet that they sent to Caring Touch’s payroll staff.' (Source: 7thspace.com)

The home healthcare company did nothing wrong, but two employees were charged with fraud after altering time records in order to receive payroll checks without having actually done the work. Well over 600 false and fraudulent claims were submitted, resulting in payments totaling $155,127.72. Texas Medicaid, Evercare, and Superior were the organizations that paid these exorbitant and illegally obtained funds.

So, even though there is much potential for the abuse of personal and employee data, time tracking and potentially even people tracking can be warranted in certain contexts.

Image Credit: Public Domain, Wikipedia