From today, labellers working through Rungwell at Home will use Focus Assurance, a new feature of the Rungwell Tasks app. Focus Assurance uses the laptop’s camera to estimate whether a labeller is attending to the task on screen. It suggests a break when attention drifts, and it gives each session a focus score.
Focus scores do two things. They help labellers see their own patterns: many have told us in the pilot that they work best in the first two hours of a shift and least well after lunch. And they give clients evidence that work done at home meets the standard of work done in our centres, which is why several clients that previously allowed only on-site work have agreed to remote work for the first time.
The camera image is processed on the labeller’s laptop. Rungwell receives a score, not a video stream.
In the three-month pilot with 212 labellers in Nairobi and Manila, quality returns from clients fell by 18 per cent, and 81 per cent of participants said they would keep Focus Assurance switched on if it were optional.
“Working from home has opened Rungwell to people who could never commute to Kilimani or Cubao: parents of young children, people with disabilities, people outside the capital,” said Oren Feldman, Chief Operating Officer. “Focus Assurance is how we keep that door open.”