Imagine you take a new job with a great title, a complex role profile and a generous salary.

But when you receive your first month’s pay, it’s lower that you were expecting.

That’s because your new employer is using extensive monitoring software on its remote workers, and only paying you for the time the system detects active work. 

Thinking, problem solving and reading don’t register and therefore don’t count. This requires approval as ‘manual time’.

Welcome to a dystopian view of the future of work, where invisible toil – mentoring, helping colleagues, team playing – all those things you say you’re good at in interviews to show you’re a rounded human being – don’t get a look in.

No one wants human it seems. They want machines.

The Law Society may have the solution

In a new report it says that in the future, lawyers may have microchips implanted in their brains. Such chips could allow them to prove they’re working even when they’re not moving a mouse by allowing them to charge ‘billable units of attention’ rather than billable hours.

This is all thanks to neurotechnology - an electronic device which interacts with the nervous system. 

Amazing: all those great ideas and genius breakthroughs will get their due, even if they happen while you’re at the gym or in the shower.

But what happens if they don’t? When your mind wanders in a client meeting? Will your brain reduce your fee?

Silliness aside, this does highlight the complexity of charging for professional services because with or without a microchip so much of the value is invisible.

It’s hard for clients to appreciate this, especially when it comes to ongoing advice – that their needs will change, that market conditions alter, that the economy and the tax system are moving feasts that you’re on top of on their behalf. 

Not necessarily while they’re in front of you for that once or twice a year review, but at other times too.

So until that microchip comes along and they can burrow into your brain and see everything you’re doing for them, the best you can do is ensure that you’re communicating regularly, reminding them of how you’re having an impact on their and others’ lives and what else you’re doing in the background, even when you’re washing the car.

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