There have been a few comments about HR looking at AI usage as part of employee performance. One person also claims HR looked at their sick leave history and treated it as a risk factor. The interesting part is the AI angle. If AI adoption is becoming part of performance management, what exactly is being measured? Logins? Copilot usage? Frequency? Actual output? Is this happening across SAP or only in certain teams? Anyone seeing AI usage show up in performance discussions, manager conversations or HR reviews?
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@cn yes but long tenured employees are not on the list for layoffs. SAP wants to save severance money so they want to first lay off employees that cost less severance and have a less "cost to company". This includes employees for who SAP has to pay sick leave money. This includes employees that use flexible mobility budgets a lot. This includes employees investing in direct insurance for who SAP has to match money. This includes employees who have taken out an SAP loan. This includes employees who... you get the point.
@ck if you don't want to be replaced by Indians, be sure to vote for AfD in the upcoming elections.
@cj Believe me, most don't care because of their long tenure, getting laid off with a severance is a blessing for tenured folks. It ends their suffering on the uncertainty on whether they will have a job or not tomorrow.
@c0 unlike 90% of people trolling here, this is something we were told in our team meeting, so I don't understand the downvotes.
@cf The bankers do that to shore up real estate values, office real estate is crashing and I have long since sold off my Office REITs and have put them in industrials and data centers instead. Likewise, office landlords have no business dictating tenants how to conduct their workplace affairs just like how my landlord has no right to walk into my apartment and tell me when I can sleep and eat. Workers who do come to the office are demanding higher salaries, which is why remote work hasn't died off, because of the salary premium that comes with dragging workers back into living in overpriced cities.
Rightfully, employers could just replace an expensive western employee with an Indian somewhere in Mumbai. CEOs who push for RTO mandates are asking for attrition and resignation without severance pay. They deserve dysfunctional, high churn workplaces.
Funnily enough, when I do come to the office, nothing gets done because people feel as though simply being "visible" counts as a KPI checked off. They rock up, turn their laptop on and walk out the building with their friends. Remote workers I have interacted with on the other hand, have consistently outperformed their RTO counterparts, due to less water cooler distractions and commute time wasted.
the Betriebsrat has asked HR to justify layoffs with adequate data. So all this data gathering is obviously for that. It's a shame that so many SAP employees still refuse to believe that management will lay off employees to increase their own bonuses. Thee Signavio management is expecting unfiltered to be above 75% this time.
@b8 Funny how that works, they want workers back in the office but won't pay city salary rates where 25% of my after tax pay goes to rent or mortgage, not 50%+. Not an SAP only thing but every employer seems to be paying s*** wages with hybrid or onsite arrangements. Including government jobs, and the companies spilling cash into AI data centres where they are removing opportunities to get promoted.
Our manager told us they were being given access to a tool that would monitor the ai usage within the team. People with very low usage and people with very high usage and little to show for it would be flagged in their performance meetings.
@bx it is installed in your browser. Whatever activity you do on your browser is tracked and this has nothing to do with work council or GDPR.
@b8 this is fake news. Walkme is not even installed on any SAP computer. I asked my manager and checked SAP One and there is no mention of Walkme for monitoring. It is an SAP product sold to customers. Betriebsrat will never agree to such data collection and monitoring. And if management is calculating AI usage then it is to keep the AI costs low. Nothing wrong with that. Stop spreading fake news.
This phenomenon is occurring throughout SAP. While I can provide additional details regarding Germany, I am aware that similar practices are being implemented in other regions, with the exception of France. Human Resources has identified three primary categories for monitoring I users. Note that C users and working students are excluded. And for headcounts that are not FTEs their usage thresholds are determined by the percentage of working hours.
The first category concerns time spent actively engaged in meetings and communication applications. Microsoft Outlook provides metrics on meeting duration, and for virtual meetings, this data is cross-referenced with actual session times recorded in Microsoft Teams. Active usage encompasses time allocated to meetings, chat communications via Microsoft Teams, and email composition in Microsoft Outlook, whereas periods outside these activities are classified as inactive time. Remote workers face heightened scrutiny, as leadership seeks to minimize work-from-home arrangements. Microsoft Teams includes a feature that automatically designates users as away following periods of inactivity. The system records active and away status based on the most recent interaction with Microsoft Teams, independent of whether a headcount has manually set their status to away or offline within the application.
The second category involves artificial intelligence utilization. Currently, data consolidation from multiple accounts remains a manual undertaking; consequently, SAP management is collaborating with Palantir to implement a third-party consolidation tool. This encompasses usage data from Hyperspace AI, Copilot, Joule Desktop, and additional SAP artificial intelligence applications. Furthermore, browser data is collected to assess external artificial intelligence usage. Walkme, an SAP-installed browser monitoring application present on all headcount computers, records every website visited and the duration of active engagement with each tab. For instance, if a headcount accesses the ChatGPT website, the system logs this as external artificial intelligence rather than internal SAP artificial intelligence. This activity is subject to close monitoring, though the specific methodology management employs to analyze this data remains unclear. Forty-five minutes are deducted for lunch breaks. Vacation and sick leave periods are excluded from calculations. Time worked outside standard business hours is not included in the assessment. Consequently, if a headcount works during early morning, evening, or weekend hours, such time is not factored into the calculation. For on-call personnel, management has not yet established an appropriate methodology for accurate calculation. Data collection prioritizes information sourced from laptop devices. While headcounts frequently utilize office telephones for communications, such usage is not documented as activity because these individuals are expected to conduct calls from their workplace rather than from mobile vehicles.
Category three encompasses periods of absence from work responsibilities. This encompasses medical leave, vacation time, and instances where a headcount has scheduled themselves as unavailable through an Outlook out-of-office meeting. SAP is contemplating the implementation of mandatory doctor sick note from the first day of absence and removing sick leave option without sick note from the vacation management application. Although the workers council has not yet ratified this proposal, it is anticipated to be incorporated into the forthcoming works agreement applicable in Germany.
Should a headcount's out-of-office duration for the preceding month exceed an established threshold or their AI usage be less than the established threshold or their 'active time' be less than the established threshold, that headcount is identified in a monthly report distributed to senior management on the second Monday of each month. Middle-level managers do not have access to these reports. Only senior executives and top-level management receive this information. And they decide what to do with it.